Mary Astor
| Mary Astor | |
|---|---|
Astor in 1933
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| Born |
Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke May 3, 1906 Quincy, Illinois, United States |
| Died | September 25, 1987 (aged 81) Woodland Hills, California, United States |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1920–1964 |
| Spouse(s) |
Kenneth Hawks (m. 1928; his death 1930) Franklin Thorpe (m. 1931; div. 1935) Manuel del Campo (m. 1936; div. 1941) Thomas Gordon Wheelock (m. 1945; div. 1955) |
| Children | 2 |
Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress. She is best remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. She eventually changed to talkies. At first her voice was considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. But she appeared in a play with friend Florence Eldridge and the film offers came in and she was able to resume her career in talking films. Four years later her career was nearly destroyed due to scandal. In 1936 Astor was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband, in a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor went on to greater success on screen, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Great Lie (1941).
Astor was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to work in film, television and on stage until her retirement in 1964. Astor was the author of five novels. Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career. Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of her in 1990 that "when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played".
Astor was born in Quincy, Illinois, the only child of Otto Ludwig Langhanke (October 2, 1871 – February 3, 1943) and Helen Marie de Vasconcellos (April 19, 1881 – January 18, 1947). Both of her parents were teachers. Her father, a German man from Berlin, emigrated to the United States in 1891 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen; her American mother was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and had Irish and Portuguese roots. They married on August 3, 1904 in Lyons, Kansas.
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