—Director Lindsay Anderson
At the age of 20, Astor co-starred with John Barrymore in the silent film Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1926) .
An autographed photo, 1929
With short hair, 1934
A 1939 publicity photo shows Astor as stylish and sophisticated.By this time she'd been in the movie business for 19 years.
And 1939 was the year Astor put that sophistication to good use flirting with Francis Lederer in Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939). Claudette Colbert's character in the film cattily tells Astor : "That hat does something for your face.... It gives you a chin!"
"Mary Astor is one of the few actresses who got better and more interesting as she got older." - Mike McCrann, Frontiers LA
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With Humphrey Bogart in her best-remembered role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941). Surprisingly, Astor was not the first choice for the role. Producer Hal Wallis wanted Geraldine Fitzgerald.
"As Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Mary Astor created the prototype of the noir femme fatale, and her version is unusual in telling ways. When she enters Sam Spade's office she is impeccably genteel, a far cry from later "sex bombs" like Ava Gardner or Audrey Totter. With her fur piece and little rakish hat, she seems to have stopped in to hire a detective on her way to a cocktail party. But she's too nervous for a society matron, and she radiates deceit. As she tells her story her eyes dart around, never meeting Spade's as he watches her calmly and steadily. Her voice is soft and breathless: Astor deliberately hyperventilated before her scenes to create this quality, recognizing how desperate Brigid is to be believed. The only real, unchanging basis of her personality is fear. The truth of the femme fatale is that for all her sexual power and toughness and confidence, she is always vulnerable and has to use her vulnerability, find a man to protect and help her. She is never a woman who can stand on her own."
- Imogen Sara Smith, Bright Lights Film Journal
Brigid O'Shaughnessy escaping one lie by spinning another. The character was like an onion, layer upon layer.
"There are actresses who are sex bombs, and then there are actresses whom the American male quietly identifies as really sexy. Mary Astor was one of those."
-Richard Schickel
Our final glimpse of Brigid O'Shaughnessy is as she's being taken away by the police.
Astor won an Oscar for co-starring with Bette Davis in The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941) but I find the film unwatchable now, sudsy and limp except for a great showdown between the two women 2/3 of the way in.
Without too much public fuss, Astor transitioned to 'mother" roles, most notably in Meet Me in St Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) and in the undistinguished remake of Little Women in 1949. Privately, though, she struggled with alcoholism and depression, committing herself to a sanitarium for treatment.
Three years later he she re-emerged as the star of the successful Broadway play The Time of the Cuckoo which was later filmed with Katharine Hepburn as Summertime. For the rest of the 1950s, she did more stage work, appeared numerous times on television, wrote 2 books of memoirs and 5 novels. She never stopped drinking, but she managed to carry on. Her last film appearance was in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich, 1964) with longtime friend Bette Davis. That was 44 years after her first appearance in the 1920 film Scarecrow.
She retired to the Motion Picture Country Home in the 1970s and died in 1987.
Mary Astor is not one of the biggest names from the classic Hollywood era, but she was a talented, complicated, beautiful actress who made out a place for herself in the movie business as a unique and intriguing presence. She will not be forgotten.
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