Mary Astor, 81, Is Dead; Star of 'Maltese Falcon'
By Peter B. Flint Sept. 26, 1987
Mary Astor, who had a delicate beauty, extraordinary grace, and a compelling acting style in more than 100 movies over 45 years, died early yesterday of complications from emphysema at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 81 years old.
Miss Astor entered silent films in 1920 as a willowy 14-year-old and portrayed scores of vulnerable ingenues. Two decades later she gave her most indelible performance opposite Humphrey Bogart in ''The Maltese Falcon,'' John Huston's crime classic. Her subtle, mature portrayal of a seemingly sympathetic woman who was, in fact, evilly duplicitous, took audiences by surprise. Such women were rarely the heroines of movies then, nor had they been portrayed as deceptively as Miss Astor portrayed the homicidal Brigid O'Shaughnessy.
In the same year, 1941, she was a ruthless, egocentric concert pianist battling Bette Davis in ''The Great Lie,'' for which Miss Astor won an Oscar as the best actress in a supporting role. ''If I'd had my druthers,'' she later wrote, ''I would have preferred getting my Oscar for 'The Maltese Falcon.' '' Sophisticates and Villains
Other skillful characterizations included a warmly urbane widow in ''Dodsworth'' (1936), a spurned mistress in the 1937 version of the swashbuckling ''Prizoner of Zenda,'' a disillusioned wife in ''The Hurricane'' (1937) and a sympathetic prostitute in ''Act of Violence'' (1949).
But few of her films matched the turmoil of her private life. In 1936, she was the center of one of Hollywood's most spectacular scandals when she sued Dr. Franklyn Thorpe for legal custody of their 4-year-old daughter, Marylyn. Dr. Thorpe had divorced Miss Astor a year earlier.
The suit led to the disclosure of her diary, which allegedly contained accounts of liaisons with many celebrities.
Dr. Thorpe sought to use the diary to prove she was an unfit mother, and purported excerpts were published in newspapers under suggestive headlines.
Miss Astor repeatedly maintained that the excerpts were lurid forgeries. She later acknowledged that an authentic portion published by one newspaper included ''a rather overemotional account of a romantic interlude with George S. Kaufman,'' the playwright.
The trial judge ordered the diary sealed and impounded. It was inadmissible as evidence, she wrote later, because her former husband had removed pages involving himself. Miss Astor was granted custody of her daughter for nine months a year, with Dr. Thorpe allowed custody for the three other months. The diary was never made public, and a judge witnessed its burning in 1952.
Won Beauty Contest at 11
During the 30-day trial, Hollywood producers, fearing the scandal would damage the film industry, pressed Miss Astor to drop the suit, but she refused, risking her reputation and career to keep her daughter. Soon after the trial, throngs of people hailed her courage when she toured with screenings of ''Dodsworth.''
Mary Astor was born Lucile Langhanke on May 3, 1906, in Quincy, Ill., the only child of the former Helen Vasconcelos, an American, and Otto Ludwig Wilhelm Langhanke, a German immigrant who made an uncertain income from such diverse activities as teaching German and poultry farming until he began to cash in on his daughter's film success.
The girl won her first movie contract with Famous Players-Lasky and, with it, the name Mary Astor. Within two years she was making features and her salary started soaring. In 1923, the family went to Hollywood and she became John Barrymore's leading lady in ''Beau Brummel.''
Mary was again with Barrymore in ''Don Juan'' (1926), which introduced a Vitaphone background-music soundtrack, the harbinger of talkies. Her early sound films included ''Holiday'' (1930), playing the materialistic sister of Ann Harding, and ''Red Dust'' (1932), in which she portrayed a frustrated wife attracted to Clark Gable. Sued for Nonsupport by Parents
Later movies included ''Midnight'' (1939), ''Brigham Young - Frontiersman'' (1940), ''Across the Pacific'' (1942), ''The Palm Beach Story'' (1942), ''Claudia and David'' (1946), and ''Return to Peyton Place'' (1961).
Miss Astor's professional successes were punctuated by personal tragedies. In 1930, her first husband, Kenneth Hawks, was killed in a plane crash while directing a movie.
Her parents lived lavishly, taking nearly all her salary, but in 1934 she put them on an allowance. Unable to continue embellishing the mansion and estate she had given them, they sued her for nonsupport. She said that ''from 1920 to 1930, I gave my father $461,000'' while she kept only $24,000. She agreed to pay them $100 monthly, and the suit was dismissed.
After the diary scandal, Miss Astor was married to Manuel del Campo, a Mexican sportsman, by whom she had a son, Anthony, and later to Thomas G. Wheelock, a businessman. Both marriages ended in divorce. A Drinking Problem
Her tangled personal life and the financial pressures to keep working worsened a longtime drinking problem. She sought help from a priest-psychologist, the Rev. Peter Ciklic, and to further her therapy, he had her write notes about her life. At his urging, she revised the notes into a 1959 autobiography, ''My Story.'' It was praised by reviewers for its style and uncompromising insights.
Personally regenerated, she began writing novels and completed a successful memoir on movie making, ''A Life on Film,'' in 1971. Her first novel, ''The Incredible Charlie Carewe,'' about a charming rotter, was described by a reviewer in The New York Times as ''lively entertainment.''
In ''A Life on Film,'' Miss Astor deplored a ''poverty of spirit'' in many contemporary movies, writing that ''whatever we did - we old moviemakers - we gave people a lot of fun. Through depressions and wars and calamities, we gave them the sense of glory, of a future that would be braver than today.''
Miss Astor retired to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills in 1974 and contributed to it from her writing income.
Besides her daughter and son, the actress is survived by an undisclosed number of grandchildren.
A funeral service will be private.
ADVERTISEMENT
BY
Looking for more information?
Amanda S. Stevenson 
