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My Story: An Autobiography
by
Mary Astor
book
Hardcover
,
332 pages
Published
by Doubleday
(first published January 1st 1959)
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Community Reviews
(showing
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102)
Mary Astor is one of my favorite actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood - she's best-remembered today for her iconic performance as one of the screen's great
femme fatales
, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), as well as for THE GREAT LIE (for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) DODSWORTH (1936), MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1945) and ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948). She all but ran away with RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE (1961), neatly showing the rest of the cast the fine art of ri
...more
Oct 22, 2008
Graceann
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Film Lovers
Recommended to Graceann by:
My Husband
Shelves:
memoir
Please see my detailed review at Amazon.co.uk
Graceann's "Mary Astor" Review"
Please click that the review was helpful to you at Amazon so that my rating continues to climb!
As I just said to a friend of mine earlier today (here on Goodreads, as a matter of fact), I think I got a lot more out of reading this at age 40 than I might have if I'd not yet had some rough experiences. Now I'd love to read an objective biography of Mary, if one has ever been written. She seems as if she might have been ...more
Please click that the review was helpful to you at Amazon so that my rating continues to climb!
As I just said to a friend of mine earlier today (here on Goodreads, as a matter of fact), I think I got a lot more out of reading this at age 40 than I might have if I'd not yet had some rough experiences. Now I'd love to read an objective biography of Mary, if one has ever been written. She seems as if she might have been ...more
Thinking about this honest exposition of Marty Astor's love life, drinking and pills addiction, and hatred of the movie & TV treadmill makes me consider
My Wicked Wicked Ways
. Is the salacious, tell-all autobiography a Hollywood invention of the mid-Twentieth Century?
Mary's story starts with parents, especially her father, that was incredibly ambitious for her; even maniacally so. Their plan succeeds and an incredibly sheltered Mary Astor becomes a contract player and has to individuate unde ...more
Mary's story starts with parents, especially her father, that was incredibly ambitious for her; even maniacally so. Their plan succeeds and an incredibly sheltered Mary Astor becomes a contract player and has to individuate unde ...more
Nov 28, 2007
Marsha
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
older generation who remember Mary Astor
The book was ok, but not a humdinger of an autobiography - I did not know some of the people who she talked about because they were of the 30s and 40s. This book would be good for someone who went to a lot of movies back then and would know who she was referring to.
Focused on her personal life, not nearly as interesting to me as her A Life On Film, which details movie-making in its early, and golden years. Very troubled life, one wants to hug her after reading accounts of a lonely childhood, early widowhood, alcoholism and suicide attempts. Such suffering and turbulence makes her letter-perfect on-screen portrayals even more astounding.
Excellent autobiography by one of my favorite actresses; brutally frank about her alcoholism, her men, how she came to peace with her parents, and more inportantly, herself. Ms. Astor briefly speaks of the films she was making at the time, but does not go into detail on the craft of filmmaking (I need to read A Life on Film for that). This book is strictly about her life.
I didn't really know anything about Mary Astor except that she was an actress, but now I know all about her horrible parents and her alcoholism. She's a pretty good writer, but the book was originally written as part of a therapy program and you can kind of tell. Really interesting peek into the early days of the movie business though.
Good read with a heavy dose of catholic guilt and alcoholism thrown in. Very different movie star Cinderella story. Would have liked a little more dish about the studios and such but overall entertaining.
I have long thought Mary Astor was a wonderful actress and never understood why she was usually not the lead in a movie. This book explains why. She was a remarkable woman.
I remember reading this one in high school, and thought it was very interesting--some of the stories she told still stick with me after all these years.
Feb 19, 2015
Samantha Glasser
marked it as to-read
Read this book for free through the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/stream/mystoryana...
https://archive.org/stream/mystoryana...
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Oct 22, 2008 08:26AM