About this item
One of Hollywood's first scandals was nearly its last. 1936 looked like it would be a great year for the movie industry. With the economy picking up after the Great Depression, Americans everywhere were sitting in the dark watching the stars -- and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's story wasn't a happy one. She was born poor, and at the first sign that she could earn money, her parents grabbed the reins and the checks. Widowed at twenty-four, Mary Astor was looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe. But the marriage was rocky from the start; both were unfaithful, but they did not divorce until after Mary Astor gave birth to little Marylyn Thorpe. What followed was a custody battle that pushed The Spanish Civil War and Hitler's 1936 Olympic Games off of the front pages all over America.
About the Author
How The Purple Diaries came to be written is an interesting story. A number of years ago I put together a massive conceptual installation which consisted of a series of paper collage works dealing with the American film Industry from the 20s through the 90s. For the 1930s The Mary Astor Custody Battle was chosen. Over the years the Astor material intrigued me. It was the story of a woman who, for the sake of her little baby, took on the American media and the Hollywood establishment to do what she believed was right. I soon discovered that every book and even magazine article had never gotten the story right but, more often than not, printed rumor as fact. The idea of writing about the custody battle was sparked when I read the Mary Astor chapter in Kenneth Anger's hugely successful book, Hollywood Babylon. It was Anger's intention to scandalize and he succeeded quite well at this. Thus, the piece on Astor was filled with so many falsehoods, often substituting the salacious for the truth that I felt the record needed to be set straight. Unfortunately this idea languished until I read a short piece on the trial in New York Magazine for which Anger's book was the principal source. In short, Hollywood Babylon and its many falsehoods had, and would continue to be, source material for any writer wanting to discuss the Mary Astor Franklyn Thorpe Custody Trial. This provided me with just the motivation I needed to write a book that would finally 'set the record straight'. The result is an exhaustively researched and compelling courtroom drama. You can learn more about the book and about Mary Astor by visiting: http://thepurplediaries.com/ and http://themaryastorcollection.com/
