Academy Award-winning actress Mary Astor appeared in over 120 movies and more than 25 TV shows in her long career of 44 years from 1920 to 1964. She is probably best remembered today for her role as "Brigid O'Shaughnessy," the client and scheming romantic interest of private eye Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941). But only three years later she started to make the transition to classic roles as the family matriarch in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Little Women (1949).
According to studio publicity sources of the era, Mary was born in Quincy, Illinois on May 3, 1906. Some sources however including some records in Quincy indicate the year might have been 1903. Her name at birth was Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke. She was the only daughter of Otto Langhanke who was a German immigrant who came to America in 1891. Her mother Helen Vaconcells was born in Jacksonville the daughter of a Potruguese father and an Irish mother whose family had lived in Illinois for a generation.
Helen wanted to be an actress and was a drama teacher. Otto was a German teacher at Quincy High School. Nothwithstanding her father's job as a teacher in a public school, Mary had little formal schooling and was mostly educated at home where she had a somewhat lonely childhood due to lack of social contact with school mates. She studied drama with her mother and learned to play the piano.
Hard times hit the family when Otto lost his job as a German teacher due to the general anti-German passions generated by America's entry into World War I in April 1917. In 1919, Mary's photograph made her a finalist in a national film magazine contest but editors thought she was too young at the time to start acting. She might have been either 13 or 16 at the time depending on the real year of her birth. He father moved to Chicago to take a job as a German teacher. Because such a large number of Chicagoans were of German heritage, the anti-German feeling of the First World War probably receded there and in Milwaukee quicker than in most cities.
When Mary's photo became a finalist again in 1920, Otto and Helen began to look on Mary's career as a potential meal ticket for the family and moved with her to New York. Otto became her business manager from 1920 to 1930 and checks were deposited directly in bank accounts controlled by him and Mary was given a small allowance. This financial tension with her parents eventually wound up in court in the 1930s.
"Lucille" took the name "Mary Astor" in 1925 partly on the recommendation of Paramount executives and also on the advice of Hollywood gossip-columnist Louella Parsons, who was also a native Illinoisan from Freeport.
Mary's personal life was in turmoil during much of her early movie career with four marriages and the falling out with her parents. Nevertheless, she made the transition from silent films to sound films and always improved on her acting.
There is a fine distinction between what was in her time considered to be a "star" and a "featured player." Mary thought of herself as the latter category of actress even though she worked constantly. Her name was seldom above the title of the movie and she apparently did not want the responsibility of the success of a movie resting heavily on her shoulders. Parts offered to her became infrequent in the 1950s with only five major films to her credit. But she was making waves in the new medium of television at that time. Her final movie was Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte in 1964. After that film, Mary Astor retired from acting and formally turned in her membership card in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
Mary lived her retirement years at the Motion Picture Country Home in California. She died on Sept. 25, 1987 in her early 80s. Click here to see a list of the movie parts of Mary Astor.
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