Mary Astor

Mary Astor, born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906, in Quincy, Illinois, was an American actress whose career extended from the silent film era through television, stage, and published writing before her retirement in 1964. She died on September 25, 1987. Her Broadway appearances spanned from 1945 to 1954 and included The Starcross Story and the comedy Many Happy Returns.

Astor was the only child of Otto Ludwig Wilhelm Langhanke, a German-born teacher who had immigrated from Berlin in 1891 and become a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Helen Marie de Vasconcellos Langhanke, an American woman of Portuguese descent born in Jacksonville, Illinois, who taught drama and elocution. Her parents married on August 3, 1904, in Lyons, Kansas. Otto taught German at Quincy High School until the United States entered World War I, after which he took up light farming. Astor was home-schooled and learned piano under her father's instruction, a skill she later employed on screen in The Great Lie and Meet Me in St. Louis.

In 1919, Astor entered a beauty contest in Motion Picture Magazine and became a semifinalist. When she was fifteen, the family relocated to Chicago, where she took drama lessons and participated in amateur stage productions. She entered the Motion Picture Magazine contest again the following year, advancing to finalist and then runner-up. Her father subsequently moved the family to New York City so that Astor could pursue a film career, managing her professional affairs from September 1920 to June 1930. Manhattan photographer Charles Albin photographed her, and those images were seen by Harry Durant of Famous Players–Lasky, leading to a six-month contract with Paramount Pictures. Her stage name was chosen during a conference among Paramount chief Jesse Lasky, producer Walter Wanger, and gossip columnist Louella Parsons.

Her first screen test was directed by Lillian Gish, who filmed a thousand feet of footage after being impressed by Astor's recitation of Shakespeare. Astor made her film debut at age fourteen in the 1921 picture Sentimental Tommy, though her role was cut from the final print. She received critical recognition for the 1921 two-reeler The Beggar Maid, and her first feature-length film was John Smith in 1922, followed that same year by The Man Who Played God. The family moved to Hollywood in 1923. After Paramount allowed her initial contract to lapse, she was signed again, this time at $500 a week. John Barrymore, having seen her photograph in a magazine, requested her for Beau Brummel in 1924, for which she was loaned to Warner Bros. Their relationship was constrained by her parents' refusal to allow the two to spend time alone, and the involvement ended partly due to that interference and partly because Barrymore became involved with Dolores Costello, whom he later married.

In 1925, Astor's parents purchased a Moorish-style mansion known as Moorcrest in the hills above Hollywood, living off her earnings while keeping her under strict control. Astor was not granted control of her own salary until she was twenty-six, at which point her parents sued her for financial support; she settled by agreeing to pay them $100 a month. When her Paramount contract ended in 1925, she signed with Warner Bros., where she appeared again with Barrymore in Don Juan in 1926. That same year she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, alongside Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray, Dolores Costello, Dolores del Río, and Mary Brian. On loan to Fox Film Corporation, she starred in Dressed to Kill and Dry Martini, both released in 1928.

When sound films arrived, Astor's voice was initially deemed too masculine and she was absent from the screen for a year. Her return came after she appeared in a stage production alongside her friend Florence Eldridge, which renewed interest from film studios. Her sound-era career proved durable, and she became a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s. In 1941 she delivered two notable performances: as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon, a role for which she remains widely recognized, and as concert pianist Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1936, a custody dispute over her daughter brought a public scandal when her former husband revealed her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman, generating significant negative press. Astor continued working through and beyond that period, sustaining her film career into the following decade. Her Broadway work during the late 1940s and early 1950s, including The Starcross Story and Many Happy Returns, reflected her continued engagement with live performance during her MGM years and after.

Beyond acting, Astor authored five novels. Her autobiography became a bestseller, as did her subsequent book A Life on Film, which focused on her screen career. She continued working in film, television, and on stage until her retirement in 1964.