Mary Astor

Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress.

Silent movie career

At age fourteen, she debuted with her new stage name in the silent movie Sentimental Tommy (1921), but her small part in a dream sequence wound up on the cutting room floor. Paramount let her contract lapse. She then appeared in some movie shorts with sequences based on famous paintings. She received critical recognition for the two-reeler The Beggar Maid (1921).

Related Topics:
Stage name - Silent movie - 1921

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Her first feature-length movie was John Smith (1922), which was followed that same year by The Man Who Played God starring George Arliss for United Artists. In 1923, she and her parents moved to Hollywood.

Related Topics:
1922 - The Man Who Played God - George Arliss - United Artists - 1923 - Hollywood

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After appearing in several larger roles at various studios, she was signed by Paramount again, this time to a one-year contract at $500 a week. She appeared in several more movies, then John Barrymore saw a photograph of her in a magazine and wanted her cast in his upcoming movie. On loan-out to Warner Bros., she starred opposite "The Great Profile" in Beau Brummel (1924). The older actor wooed the young actress, but their engagement ended when he became involved with Dolores Costello.

Related Topics:
John Barrymore - Warner Bros. - Beau Brummel - 1924 - Dolores Costello

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In 1925, Astor's parents bought a Moorish style mansion with one acre of land known as "Moorcroft" in the hills above Hollywood. They lived lavishly on her earnings, had servants, a grand piano, a luxury car and a chauffeur. Moorcroft, which still stands at 6147 Temple Hill Drive north of Franklin Avenue and just west of Beachwood Drive, was, incidentally, rented by Charlie Chaplin before the Langhankes bought the place. It was from this garish looking mansion that Astor, fed up with her father's constant badgering to practice the piano, climbed from her second floor bedroom window and walked down to Hollywood Boulevard, as recounted in her memoirs.

Related Topics:
1925 - Hollywood - Charlie Chaplin - Hollywood Boulevard

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Astor went on appearing in one movie after another at various studios. When her Paramount contract ended in 1925, she was signed at Warner Bros. Among her assignments was another role with John Barrymore, this time in Don Juan (1926).

Related Topics:
1925 - Don Juan - 1926

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She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, along with Mary Brian, Dolores Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Janet Gaynor, and Fay Wray.

Related Topics:
WAMPAS Baby Stars - 1926 - Mary Brian - Dolores Costello - Joan Crawford - Dolores Del Rio - Janet Gaynor - Fay Wray

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On loan-out to Fox, Astor starred in the role as Jeanne in Dressed To Kill (1928), which received good reviews. That same year, she starred as Elizabeth Quimby in the sophisticated comedy Dry Martini at Fox. She later said that, while working on the latter, she "absorbed and assumed something of the atmosphere and emotional climate of the picture." She said it offered "a new and exciting point of view; with its specious doctrine of self-indulgence, it rushed into the vacuum of my moral sense and captivated me completely." When her Warner Bros. contract ended, she was signed at Fox for $3,750 a week.

Related Topics:
Fox - 1928

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In 1928, she and director Kenneth Hawks were married at her family home, Moorcroft. He gave her a Packard automobile for a wedding gift and they moved into a home high up on Lookout Mountain in Los Angeles above Beverly Hills.

Related Topics:
1928 - Director - Kenneth Hawks - Los Angeles - Beverly Hills

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As the movie industry made the transition to talkies, Fox gave her a sound test, which she failed because the studio found her voice to be too deep. Though this was probably due to early sound equipment and the inexperience of technicians, the studio released her from her contract and she found herself out of work for eight months in 1929.

Related Topics:
Talkies - 1929

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