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Kathleen Spaltro

The Great Lie:: The Creation of Mary Astor Paperback – February 9, 2021

by Kathleen Spaltro (Author)

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Many lies have been told about Mary Astor. She never abandoned her parents to poverty. Her face was their fortune rather than her own. Nor did she rate on a private scorecard the sexual prowess of Hollywood leading men. But two more dangerous and persistent lies have distorted the understanding of her life. One lie defines Astor as the survivor of sex scandals and suicide attempts who ended up living on charity in a retirement home for film folk. There is much more to her story than that miserable scenario, for, in fact, with grit and determination, she rebounded from middle-aged decline to invest her energies in a new career as an excellent memoirist and novelist. The other most important lie—indeed, the great lie—robbed her of her core identity as Lucile Langhanke and imposed on her a movie stardom that she did not want. This book tells how "Mary Astor" recovered who she really was and really wanted to be. "Falsehood flies," Jonathan Swift noted, "and the Truth comes limping after it." However halting its pace, the truth about this gifted and highly intelligent person is much more interesting than any of the lies.The first full biography of Mary Astor, this book makes extensive use of previously unknown primary material from archives. In doing so, it corrects many errors of dates and facts in previous accounts. Respecting Astor's own priorities, it rebalances its account of Astor’s life in terms of her personal struggles, as well as her achievements as an actress on radio, in film, on stage, and in TV as well as an excellent memoirist and novelist. It also extends our understanding of Astor’s difficult life by explaining the profound effects of emotional abuse and financial exploitation by a narcissistic parent.

Print length

248 pages
Language

English
Publication date

February 9, 2021
Dimensions

6 x 0.56 x 9 inches
ISBN-13

979-8706724467
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A Gibson Girl beauty pushed into becoming a movie star in her teens by the archetypal stage parents, Lucille Langhanke went through heartbreak and scandal as "Mary Astor" before refining her craft, becoming sober and finding a new creative outlet as a memoirist and novelist in mid-career and later life. Illinois-based historian Kathleen Spaltro found a previously unseen collection of Astor's letters to a childhood friend in the library in Quincy, Illinois, which started her on her journey to tell the story of the star who became the original noir bad girl in The Maltese Falcon, in her independently published The Great Lie: The Creation of Mary Astor.

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Interview of Kathleen Spaltro by Carl Rollyson about The Great Lie: The Creation of Mary Astor

anchor.fm/carl-rollyson/episodes/Episode-49-A-talk-with-Kathleen-Spaltro--Author-of-The-Great-Lie-The-Creation-of-Mary-Astor-erpmno?fbclid=IwAR0drc_tVRfbEKuZEwuNPXz6Jgkwstq-upA2mP5xamkS4RROmGXWNPxy4Qo

'The Great Lie' chronicles life, struggles of Mary Astor

March 31, 2021

BY RAY KELLY
What sparked your interest in Astor?
As a film buff, I of course felt impressed by her in "The Maltese Falcon." I wondered why I did not see her act in more leading roles in 40s and 50s films. I was surprised to learn she was one of the biggest female stars of the silent era.
I had heard sad accounts of her 1936 sex scandal, alcoholism, and suicide attempts. I learned more from her two memoirs, "My Story" and "A Life on Film," of financial exploitation and emotional abuse. This created a picture of self-destructiveness. After I gradually realized that this was only part of the story -- and not the most interesting part, I decided to write about her.
You discovered some of Astor's personal papers in her hometown library in Quincy, Illinois. What materials did you find there and elsewhere?
The Quincy Public Library's Marian Kesler Collection contains Astor's letters to her lifelong friend, as well as the digitization of the three daily newspapers published in Quincy while Astor and her parents lived there. The daily papers of the time focused on minute details of social life, and her family members often appeared in news articles. In addition, the Boston University Library Mary Astor archive, to which she donated her papers, and also the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other resources were invaluable.
Astor won an Oscar for her portrayal of concert pianist Sandra Kovak in "The Great Lie." But your book's title is more than just a play on an old movie title. What was the great lie about Astor?
It robbed her of her core identity as Lucile Langhanke and imposed on her a movie stardom that she never wanted. This book tells how "Mary Astor" recovered who she really was and really wanted to be. Her upbringing, as well as her becoming, at others' insistence, a commodity, created what she bitterly called "the product called Mary Astor." The betrayal of her "true self" is at the core of both her personal troubles and her ambivalent relationship with stardom. The imposition upon her of her identity and her acting vocation was her tragedy. The identity "Mary Astor" trapped her in a gilded cage of unhappiness and self-loathing. Some of her self-destructiveness came out of having to disavow who she really was to placate others. Eventually, she rescued herself from this predicament. A highly intelligent, creative, and gifted person, Astor overcame longstanding abuse and exploitation and turned away from self-destruction. Grasping a new self-concept in later life, she then pursued a career that reflected her true self.
What can you say about Astor as a writer and how it relates to her life and career?
From 1959 to 1971 she published five novels and two memoirs. She had always wanted to be a writer and was a writer forced into acting rather than an actress who developed a later-life writing hobby. By forsaking acting for writing, she found and expressed herself; she had the courage both to reinvent herself and to risk failure. A writer by both nature and fate who had worked as an actress, rather than an actress whose late-life hobby was writing, Astor left her papers to an university archive but preserved in that archive nothing of her film career that did not relate to her primary interest, writing memoirs and novels.
What would you like readers to come away with after finishing "The Great Lie"?
I would like them to understand how dehumanizing "stardom" often has been and to respect this woman who fought to reclaim her true identity and control of her life after many years as a star.
("The Great Lie:: The Creation of Mary Astor" is available on Kindle, paperback and hardcover from Amazon.)
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08W7R1DXG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (February 9, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8706724467
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.56 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,611,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,629 in Artist & Architect Biographies
- #20,103 in Women's Biographies

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Joseph McBride

A constantly surprising biography, always insightful and fresh and moving

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2021

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What a fascinating and revealing biography this is. Kathleen Spaltro challenges conventional views
of Mary Astor and presents a wholly new look into her soul. What the author finds is a complex woman
of great intelligence and talent who loathed the Hollywood star system into which she was thrust
by her despicable parents but tried to carve out a better life for herself both as an actress and a writer
while reconstructing her broken personality. Astor succeeded in getting occasional fine roles she imbued
with truth and wit, but had to put up with all the nonsense and humiliation that surrounds stardom. Spaltro
shows what a thorough professional Astor was throughout a long and often tough career in films, TV, and theater. But Astor felt most alive when she recreated herself as a writer of insightful memoirs and novels. This biography reveals the struggles Astor went through to find herself and not to succumb to what others wanted or expected of her or how to fight back against how the media and others falsely painted her. Along the way Spaltro incisively analyzes the psychological damage Astor's parents and the film industry did to her but also how confronting those problems helped Astor grow into a more fully rounded human being, if not a particularly happy one. The book avoids the salacious traps it could have fallen into (including correcting the record on her forged "diary") and frankly confronts Astor's difficulties dealing with her marriages, her other romances, and her children, as well as the self-protective impulses that drove her to isolate herself in later years. Astor's efforts to self-medicate
with alcohol are part of the story, as are her involvements with psychotherapy and religion in her efforts
to come out alive and whole. It is a freshly told, constantly surprising story, written with great insight and compassion and deep research. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know some hard and moving truths about the film world and human nature. You will find yourself elevated by this book's warm heart, wisdom, and intelligence, and feel you have to come to know two remarkable women, Mary Astor and Kathleen Spaltro.

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Eve Howard

Fascinating bio

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2021

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Good book about a smart woman, by a scholarly writer with facts and flair.

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Carl Rollyson

A unique perspective based on deep research in archives and interviews

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2021

This significant new biography of Mary Astor takes careful account of Astor’s own writing, as well as her performances as a screen, stage, radio, and television actress, and it integrates a discussion of her work with a sensitive exploration of her life. The book offers a unique perspective based on deep research into archival materials as well as interviews and consultations with various sources. A comprehensive biography treating all important aspects of Astor’s life, this book should appeal to general readers—almost anyone interested in Hollywood, in any of the films Astor appeared in, and in how she made the important transition in her life from actress to writer. It goes into considerable depth about Astor’s efforts to establish not only a successful career but an independent identity. Her struggle should be of keen interest to a broad audience. Although other books have certainly dealt with aspects of Astor’s career, this is the first fully researched book to deal with her life as a whole.”
—Carl Rollyson, author of more than 40 books, including biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, Jill Craigie, Dana Andrews, Sylvia Plath, Amy Lowell, and Walter Brennan

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