Mary Astor, My Story
Astor, Mary. Mary Astor, My Story. First Edition. 1959. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—there are tape marks to the covers, and jacket shows minor edgewear and few tiny tears.
A divorce scandal in the 1930s overshadows how we remember Mary Astor, but she had a remarkably long Hollywood career, with screen credits from the 1920s to the 1960s and an Academy Award to her name. She made the mistake of writing in her diary about her adulterous affair with George Kaufman, and her soon-to-be ex-husband attempted to use it against her in a bitter custody battle. The resulting scandal was notorious, and only the intervention of Samuel Goldwyn, the most kindly of the great Hollywood moguls, saved her career. This intelligent and well-written biography covers the scandal and how the diaries came to be, but also the rest of Astor’s eventful life, including her eventual victory over alcoholism.
“There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor?”
--Mary Astor