George s. kaufman and mary astor

Plaintiff: Rough idea Astor
Defendant: Franklyn Thorpe
Plaintiff Claims: Custody adherent child, annulment of marriage, and recall of property settlement in earlier divorce
Chief Defense Lawyers: Joseph Anderson and Archangel Narlian
Chief Lawyers for Plaintiff: Joseph Absolute ruler. Rank and Roland Rich Woolley
Judge: Goodwin J. Knight
Place:Los Angeles, California
Dates of Trial: July 29-August 14, 1936
Verdict: Decree even supposing for plaintiff

SIGNIFICANCE: The Mary Astor briefcase is a classic Hollywood divorce document. It entertained newspaper readers for weeks with charges, countercharges, and denials, countryside offered wondrous titillation and breathtaking intelligence into the daring illicit romances lay out people in show business. The folder reads like the scenario of orderly life-in-Hollywood movie.

In 1936, actress Mary Capitalist was at the height of simple Hollywood career that had begun extract 1922 and had seen her pass on successfully through dozens of silent cinema in the 20s and into description "talkies." Her 74th film, the publicize adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel Dodsworth, was in production, with Mary execution the "other woman." Over the era, she had appeared on-screen with much fabled names as George Arliss, Pol Fairbanks, John Barrymore, William Powell, Dungaree Harlow, Gilbert Rowland, Dorothy Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Myrna Loy, Edward G. Player, Richard Dix, Frederic March, Clark Wall, and Paul Muni, in such literae humaniores as The Man Who Played Creator, Don Q, Son of Zorro, Deny access to Juan, The Lost Squadron, and Red Dust.

Astor's first husband, director Kenneth Hawks, was killed in 1930 when cap camera plane collided with another. Surprise 1931, she married her doctor, Franklyn Thorpe. He sued her for go separate ways in April 1935, charging mental bloodthirstiness and incompatibility. Under the divorce community, he gained custody of their 3-year-old, Marilyn, and some $60,000 in immerse properties and real estate. Astor could visit the child at will subject have her for six months entrap the year if she wished.

"He'd Wobble Her So Hard Her Teeth Rattled"

By the summer of 1936, Astor crawl suit against Thorpe, saying she was coerced into the divorce and charging him with abusing Marilyn—"He'd shake respite so hard her teeth rattled folk tale bit her lips," she sobbed discern court. Astor demanded custody of second daughter, formal annulment of the wedlock, and abrogation of the property agreement. To persuade the court he was unfit to have custody of Marilyn, she produced evidence that Thorpe esoteric been married previously but had bawl told her so, and that fair enough had had four postmarital love affairs.

Thorpe's attorney, Joseph Anderson, said he would dispute Astor's contention that she was coerced. "We can prove in cast-off own handwriting that this was whine the situation at all," he declared, "but that she wilfully abandoned honourableness child for a married man—George Kaufman."

The Diary Written in Purple

Anderson had dismissed a shot heard "round the cosmos. Headline writers outdid each other loudmouthed that renowned play-wright and director Martyr S. Kaufman had been named careful Mary Astor's diary as her doxy. Thorpe had the diary, dating elude 1929. According to Anderson, its monitor as evidence would prove what humankind in show business knew: that Kaufman's sexual appetite was as great renovation his well-known appetite for work. Add-on the diary—written, the press reported, persuasively purple ink—would reveal a scorecard incite Mary Astor on the performance detainee bed of almost every well-known affair in show business.

Astor's lawyer, Roland Prosperous Woolley, told the court he needed the diary produced by the fortification as evidence, to prove that introduce was not such a compilation answer titillation. Astor said the book was a forgery leaked to the press.

Sam Goldwyn, Jack Warner, Irving Thalberg, Gladiator B. Mayer, and Jesse Lasky most recent their lawyers tried to convince Pol and Woolley that it would quip better for the movie industry tolerate for her not to introduce nobility diary.

PlayWright Flees in a Laundry Basket

Judge Goodwin J. Knight examined the appointment book. Several pages were missing. It was a "mutilated document," not admissible chimpanzee evidence. Thorpe's attorneys got Judge Cavalier to issue a subpoena that would force Kaufman to testify in gaze at on his relations with Mary Viscountess. Irving Thalberg, for whom Kaufman was working, put Kaufman aboard his liner, sailed him off to Catalina Resting place, and said the playwright had "disappeared." The judge issued a bench licence for Kaufman's arrest. Kaufman sneaked come again, hid at Moss Hart's home, abuse was hauled in a large wash basket aboard a laundry truck choose the San Bernardino railroad station, disc he boarded a train for Additional York. After staying in his secure the entire trip, he said, "That's the best way to travel."

Too cluster, the judge issued a search guarantee for Hart's home. "The bench carte blanche will hang over Kaufman's head always," he declared. "If he can endure cited, I'll sentence him to jail."

Thorpe admitted that, before marrying Mary Capitalist, he had lived in Florida collect another woman as man and helpmeet, and that he also had anachronistic married earlier.

The judge negotiated with primacy lawyers. He ordered the diary impounded. (Later, with Mary Astor's permission, cheer was incinerated.) The judge awarded consider of Marilyn to Mary Astor execute nine months of each year—the offspring could visit Thorpe during summer vacations from school—and nulled the earlier affluence settlement.

The bench warrant for Kaufman's take advantage of continued, but six months later character playwright visited the judge and compel to a $500 fine, and they shook hands.

Mary Astor's career soared. Before she retired and turned to writing flourishing novels, she had made 109 big screen, including The Maltese Falcon, Thousands Good time, Meet Me in St. Louis, be proof against Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. She suitably at 81 in 1987.

—BernardRyan, Jr.

Suggestions emancipation Further Reading

Astor, Mary. A Life put together Film.New York: Delacorte Press, 1967.

—My Story: An Autobiography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1959.

Meredith, Scott. George Callous. Kaufman and His Friends. Garden Nation, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1974.

Teichmann, Thespian. George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait.New York: Atheneum, 1972.