Mary Astor, an all-American self-assured beauty with a hint of pathos, known for The Maltese Falcon (1941), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and The Great Lie (1941), left an indelible imprint on the American psyche. But, by age 50, she was drinking uncontrollably to relieve a pain she could not name. What was it? she prayed.
A lonely childhood
Born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906, in the small Midwest town of Quincy, Illinois, she was the only child of German emigre Otto Ludwig Wilhelm Langhanke and Helen Vasconcellos of Lyons, Kansas.
In the summer of 1913, the family moved from their small, dingy flat above a saloon to a farm with a large mid-Victorian mansion. Lucile loved to roam the lush countryside in her sandals and overalls, collie in tow — escaping to Cedar Creek, with its great “hideaways.”
Meanwhile, with Otto’s get-rich-quick schemes all falling flat, he began pressuring Lucile to make something of herself. He dreamed of her becoming a concert pianist. But when she confided her dream of marriage and motherhood, his mood changed dramatically, and he called her a “good-for-nothing.” This display of temper ended any real communication with her father.
Blossoming beauty becomes a star
Soon Lucile’s natural farm girl beauty, in contrast with affectatious “town girls,” gave birth to “the Great Idea.” Forget piano — Lucile would become an actress. After a sojourn in Chicago, they headed to New York in 1920, where she landed a screen test at the Motion Picture Magazine editor’s estate. There, she met fashion photographer Charles Albin, who felt “Rusty” (Lucile’s nickname) had a “Madonna quality,” and she posed for him.
One day, Famous Players-Lasky Studios in Astoria summoned her to their offices, where the bosses immediately changed her name to Mary Astor, gave her a new wardrobe and hairstyle, and offered her a six-month contract for 60 dollars a week.
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Escape to Hollywood
By 1923, Otto, who had become her manager, moved the family out to Hollywood. With studios on both coasts, Mary crisscrossed the country with her canary, Tweetums, while her father pocketed her earnings. A virtual prisoner in her own home, she would desperately escape, just as she had as a child — only this time it was into the mysterious adult world where, she wrote, she “rushed headlong into nothing but trouble.”
The first trouble came in the form of legendary actor John Barrymore, 24 years her senior, separated from his wife, with whom she had a steamy affair while starring with him in Warner Bros.’ Beau Brummel (1924). When the affair ended in 1926, she was heartbroken. The hurt only intensified when Warner Bros. cast her opposite her former lover, this time in Don Juan (1926), which co-starred his new flame, Dolores Costello — Drew Barrymore’s grandmother.
After Don Juan premiered on August 6, 1926 (including the first Vitaphone recording of background music and sound), Mary joined Rough Riders (1926). The location set barreled into hot, dusty San Antonio — a whole new world that eased the pain of her 18-month adulterous affair.
Finding true love
No sooner had production wrapped in late November 1926 than she met Ken Hawks, brother of up-and-coming director Howard Hawks. They made a cute couple at golf tournaments and film premieres and were soon engaged. Yet after they wed, Ken was troubled by the Barrymore affair, which Mary had confessed, not wanting to keep anything from him. He was shy about consummating the marriage, and Mary fell headlong into another adulterous affair, with Ken once again forgiving her.
Life was good. Ken, making mounds of money in the stock market, was now a Fox director. Mary, though, was having trouble breaking into “talking pictures” and began socializing at writer Marian Spitzer’s patented dinner parties — one night featuring a newcomer named Bob Hope and his song “Thanks for the Memory.” “The stimulation of the mind,” she writes, “seemed to lessen the nagging of the body.” She was introduced to Edward Everett Horton, from which flowed a starring role in the play, Among the Married. Though low paying, it paved her way back into films.
Twists and turns
As the 1930s dawned, tragedy struck when Ken’s plane was downed while filming. As if the shock of losing him were not enough, Mary was also in desperate financial straits, and fell ill, one day discovering an unusual rash on her skin.
She was 24 and had fled social reminders of Ken. Into the void stepped her doctor, Franklyn Thorpe, 12 years her senior and previously married. While a less-than-perfect match, they wed on June 29, 1931, Mary vowing to make it work.
Meanwhile, Mary’s star continued to rise, as she made film after film for RKO Pictures and gave birth to her daughter, Marylyn Hauoli Thorpe.
However, life with Franklyn had become “a series of explosions” and she fled to New York, where she began an affair with the playwright George S. Kaufman, divorcing her husband in 1935. It set the stage for a ferocious custody battle. Her diary, altered and published in the press without her knowledge, had news about prominent Hollywood figures. Though the most salacious parts were pure fiction, careers were ruined.
In the summer of 1936, while the custody hearing was held at night, Mary filmed Dodsworth (1936). During the day, she played Mrs. Edith Cortright, even as headlines focused on “Mary Astor’s Diary.” In the end, she won custody of her daughter, Marylyn, and the judge ordered the diary incinerated.
With that chapter closed, a new one was about to open at a party hosted by Dodsworth co-star Ruth Chatterton, where Mary, now 30, met the famous English director Auriol Lee, who talked up and introduced her to his British friend “Manuelito,” now his secretary, who had studied at Cambridge until family funds ran out. “Mike,” just 24, with gorgeous wide-set blue eyes, was shy, soft-spoken, and needy — needing people and needing to impress.
They married in early 1937, but Mike’s fondness for drink soon took over their relationship and Mary, who only drank heavily in the immediate aftermath of Ken’s death, was now drinking routinely.
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Discovering God
Their son, Anthony “Tono” del Campo, was born on June 5, 1939. He would be baptized Catholic — no ifs, ands, or buts. One weekend, Mary began asking his godparents at their Palm Springs retreat about the Catholic faith, and they introduced her to Fr. Augustin O’Dea, who took it from there.
Since her checkered life had been cruelly splattered in the worldwide press, one concept she found particularly powerful was God as a loving Father. Sin, though, was a bit murky. Fr. O’Dea told her to stay calm; faith was a gift she must petition God for.
After praying the Rosary, Mary began saying a novena to St. Therese of Lisieux for light and faith. These words of St. Thérèse, “Jesus Christ (is) God,” she writes, “were a revelation which made me slip to my knees in prayer…. If Christ were God, and lived on this earth, then anything could happen. Even my tangled life could be untangled.” Accompanying this “illumination,” she writes, was “an actual physical brilliance,” that required her to close her eyes.”
1941 was “my year,” she writes. That year, she converted to Catholicism; cemented her acting reputation with her Oscar-winning performance in The Great Lie; made The Maltese Falcon, a huge hit, co-starring Humphrey Bogart; and began doing radio, including The Hollywood Showcase. To top it off, she learned to fly — making her first solo flight the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor!
Counting on her own strength, then God’s strength
As the difficulties inevitably mounted, but for “the unseen and unfailing ministrations of this Tremendous Lover,” she writes, she would have been utterly destroyed.
In 1943, after she signed with Metro Goldwyn Mayer, to her increasing dismay, she began playing mother roles almost exclusively — same voice, same look, same attitude.
Then her ill-fated fourth and final marriage to an unsuccessful businessman and retired Army sergeant with a fondness for alcohol began to end, as Mary suffered many ailments — including an accidental near-lethal mixing of vodka and sleeping pills in May 1951. Fr. O’Dea saved her life when she reached out for help, saying she had taken “some poison” — she gradually realized her faith was the rock she needed to endure life’s trials, including false reports that she tried to kill herself.
Five years later, returning home one evening from the East Coast after a week of TV filming, she drank herself numb as usual. She suddenly realized she was sick and “a sick person can get well.”
She was introduced to Fr. Peter Ciklic, professor and chairman of the department of psychology at Loyola University in Manhattan Beach, and, she writes, “the tangled threads began to form a pattern.” In 1959, she gave the world My Story: An Autobiography in which she named the pain. With the grace of God, she transformed her pain, her escape from abuse, into a means of growth and sanctity.
Now, her goal was not just pleasing a film director, but was directed to the larger purpose of her life — pleasing Him whom she made her focus until her death on September 25, 1987, of pulmonary emphysema at age 81. Mary Astor finally escaped into the loving arms of her father God.
This article is based on and excerpted from Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, Chapter Five: “Mary Astor: Becoming A Star… and A Saint,” by Mary Claire Kendall.
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