My story: An autobiography

by Mary Astor

book

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Media Tie In

332 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

Reviews

[Creolecat · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 rising above inferior material.

Astor's private life was difficult, and this autobiography wouldn't be out-of-place on the same shelf with Lillian Roth's I'LL CRY TOMORROW and Diana Barrymore's TOO MUCH, TOO SOON - she was a beautiful young woman whose beauty and earning-power was exploited by her parents - she co-starred with John Barrymore in her teens, and this was the first of several turbulent relationships which eventually led Astor to a dependency on alcohol with which she struggled for many years (though aside from blunting her good looks in the late 1940s, leading MGM to cast her mainly in motherly roles, it never interfered with her performances). And she was at the center of a highly-publicized divorce/custody battle in the mid-1930s which became scandalous due to rumors of her diary entries which supposedly gave some very intimate details of her romantic affairs - as it turned out, some people were more concerned with what Astor might have known - or written - about their affairs than hers!). She weathered the storm of publicity and emerged more popular on the screen than ever.

If one seeks a detailed overview of Astor's film career, this isn't it - she gave us that years later with A LIFE ON FILM. MY STORY is the story of a woman who finally gains emotional independence.

[Samantha Glasser]

Read this book for free through the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/stream/mystoryana...

[Judith McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago via a copy from my local library. It is interesting but needs to be paired with the book that Ms. Astor wrote about her film career to get a full idea of Ms. Astor as a person from her own account not an interpretation by people who never met her.

It's my understanding that the family intends to re-issue "My Story" adding photographs which the original edition sorely lacked. If anyone wishes to read it, they may want to wait for this edition to be published.

[Graceann · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 a very interesting woman.

[Arthur Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best-written and most entertaining show biz bios I've read. Miss Astor is harsh in her judgement of herself, but she none-the-less comes across as being a fascinating and sympathetic woman. Her conversion to Catholicism was obviously very important to her, but she doesn't hit the reader over the head with it.

[Marsha · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went through a phase of tracking down as many Mary Astor films as possible. Dodsworthy and The Maltese Falcon being the better known. An excellent role in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
With a handful with fingers left over, as she has commented in the past, so much of the body of her work just isn't available for viewing.

I have read another book about Mary Astor where she discusses her film work, and I wanted to know more about her.

She led a pretty sad life when she was younger. The family put her to work early, living off of her earnings from making silent films. She was shipped her off to Los Angeles when she was 17. She started in silent films, and luckily moved to talkies. She had a mature beauty that had her playing mothers in her early 30's. She had several husbands, every one a clunker, an overly controlling father that she broke free of, an independent spirit and a willingness to be a working actress versus a star.

This is the book if you want to know about her life, and she can be brutally honest about herself and her perceived flaws. The other book is excellent in terms of the day to dayness--and the real lack of glamour in being a working actor.

The sad part was her mother and father took all her money and spent it very lavishly. Her mother hated her, and the stepfather abused her. At 24 she told her parents I am done supporting you.

She married a few times, but no one was her perfect match. She was also a very great actress, and her movies tell you that. Such an amazing women. I will not tell you anymore, you have to read the book. And it truly is a good read.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Story was a raw memoir written by Hollywood actress Mary Astor. I first saw Mary as the mother in Meet Me In St. Louis, but soon came to love her in The Palm Beach Story and The Maltese Falcon. What made this such an honest book, was that Mary was prompted to write it after seeking treatment for alcoholism. She stepped back and really examined her life from an emotional perspective. The result was this truthful account of her decisions and life as a Hollywood star.

I would say that the majority of the novel discussed her relationships with her parents and husbands. She candidly talked about her parents expectation that they would live off her wealth, and how she slowly crept away from their overbearing grasp on her. Her love life was complicated with working and money, and she floundered between several men in an attempt to find true love.

I wanted her to describe a bit more about her roles in some of Hollywood's biggest movies. I was eager for her to recount adventures on the set with other giants such as Elizabeth Taylor and Humphrey Bogart, but those stories were kept to a minimum. Instead, she focused on her life during filming, and how the film impacted her ability to be a mother. This was more of an introspective look in Mary's life as a woman than it was into her life as a film star.

This was an interesting read, although it was not quite what I hoped for.


[Nicola Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book a few years back and can't remember why but I am so glad that I finally picked it up to read. In terms of celebrity memoirs, I think that Mary Astor's is the best I have ever read. She has - in places - a sensational story to tell but she is also an excellent writer. I have just noted that she went on to write novels and must check them out too. This is one of the most honest and intelligently written memoirs I have ever read. It is the result of therapy sessions with a priest who urged her to write down her story in order to make sense of what she had gone through with her parents etc. My only disappointment is how much she hated starring in one of my favourite versions of 'Little Women'. Now, I must start chasing up her other films. Highly recommend it!

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better celebrity memoirs that I've read (Errol Flynn's is still the gold standard). Astor is frank about her battle with alcoholism, but I was most impressed by how introspective she is concerning her faith. She admits struggling with having to change her lifestyle after joining the Roman Catholic church, an especially difficult struggle given her scandalous private life. She often falls short. She understands her hypocrisy but, most importantly, does not want to remain a hypocrite.

All Christians face this dilemma: how should we live in this world while possessing the knowledge that we are not of this world? Astor doesn't have the answer, but it is admirable that she is serious in confronting the challenge and seeking spiritual guidance.

[Nicole Marie Story · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this autobiography many years ago, but I am writing a review at this moment because a fellow human requested life work recommendations, and I immediately thought of Ms. Astor's book. Introduced to the screen as a beautiful youthful thin talented actress in the early 1930s, her career continued forward, spanning several decades. Something about her appearance caused me to think that she lived with addictions and hardship hence my searching for this old book. And my oh my! My predictions were grandly true... she lived with addiction (alcohol), scandal (adultery), and poverty (as one of the highest paid performers of her time). A beautifully raw story told by a screen legend.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and quite well written. I have long been a fan of Miss Astor's. But geez, lady, stop marrying men because they're there and you don't want to be alone. Ferris sounded like a total loser but oh well, they knew each other well, so why not get married....thank God he married someone else and saved her from a fifth not-great marriage.
Looking forward to reading her memoir about her films.

[Lee Behlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Distressingly sad. Astor's upbringing was wretched and she records the damage compellingly. I do wish there had been more on her film and theater work, less on her romantic attachments, but that's the story here. The material on Astor's conversion to Catholicism is quite moving - though she's terribly hard on herself.

[Halina · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book. She writes very well and enjoyed reading her insight into her issues and life.

[Mary Narkiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting memoir .

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 under artificial and extreme circumstances. Marriages and mania follow until Mary finds a path to peace through Catholicism and psychology. Both come from caring and competent priests. A divorce makes Mary's diary both a legal and public issue, but writing that caused so much stress is also an answer as this autobiography is the result of a therapeutic writing assignment.

Mary's honest and direct delivery makes this an engaging read. The only thing that keeps it from four starts for me is the architecture. The chapter divisions, for instance, seems just to segment material into even buckets. A little editing could have nudged this from very good to great.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actress Mary Astor is brutally honest in her autobiography about her life, her marriages, and her struggles with alcoholism. Published in 1959, Astor doesn't actually talk that much about her film work; this seems to have been more of a therapeutic writing exercise for her. She followed this bestseller with a book on her film career in 1973, called Mary Astor: A Life on Film.

[James Chambers · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Dar · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Mrs.Chardonnay · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best autobiographies I've ever read.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Astor lays it all out there for the reader: this is a confession of sorts. We learn that her parents were controlling moochers. We learn that Astor couldn't maintain a relationship with a man. We learn she liked to booze. We learn she was the focus