Quotes from Edward Sorel

George S. Kaufman was not Miss Astor's last love. George had been supplanted in her affections by one of his best friends, whose name would surely have been disclosed had the hearing gone on. The scoop appeared on August 12 in the Daily Mirror, announcing that the best friend, an unnamed dashing broker and bachelor, maintained a seven-room penthouse on Park Avenue, complete with butler and maid. Kaufman had introduced Mary to "Mr. Big" in December, according to the Mirror.

Otto's racial theories. These boiled down to the unquestionable fact that the German race had produced the greatest geniuses in art, music, and literature. As a member of that race, Otto found it insufferable that he was now forced to deal with, as he saw it, his inferiors, a bunch of illiterate, lecherous Jews who cared only about money.

I tried finding out all I could about Mary Astor. My curiosity was obviously prurient in nature, whetted by those 1936 tabloids. They had given me an itch to find out all I could about the scandal.

Mary had written a memoir in 1959, making it easy for me to scratch the surface of her life. I found a dog-eared copy at the Strand Book Store downtown, read it, and was hooked. She was smart, witty, and self-denigrating.

when the Internet made it possible, I was in touch with her daughter, Marylyn, who was living in a mobile home in Utah with a companion. She was the grandmother of eighteen children and the great-grandmother of twenty-two. In what she said online, Marylyn had nothing but kind words to say about both parents, upsetting my conviction, after reading Mary's memoir, that Daddy was the bad guy.

As he once famously said, "I'm not always right, but I'm never wrong.

Thalberg rose in all his craven majesty. Speaking for the assembled, he said the plaintiff and her attorney were making a grave mistake. The diary, in addition to creating a scandal devastating to the industry, would probably cause her to lose the case and the child too. They urged her to drop it and seek an out-of-court settlement.

I SHALL PROCEED WITH MY CASE AS MY LAWYER HAS ADVISED ME!

A woman fighting for her child?" he said. "THIS IS GOOD!!!

Sam Goldwyn hated above all others was Mayer, who had forced Sam out after he and Louis had formed MGM. "Once Mayer told him to dump you, your future was secure.

Mary felt the cause of the conflict was Chatterton's hatred of her role, that of a woman "trying to hang on to her youth—which is exactly what Ruth herself was doing.

When Dodsworth was released, in September 1936, just two months after the trial ended, Mary's performance together with that film's emotional ending would win her forgiveness and new admirers, and mark a turn in her career.

Why would Donald Trump, who prides himself on his good taste, fall in love with Donald Trump? I mean, who can explain these things? Obsessions by their very nature defy reason.

WHEN DODSWORTH OPENED two months later, there were lines around the block at New York's Rivoli Theatre. Mary snuck into a theater in Los Angeles to catch it. As soon as the audience heard her voice offscreen they burst into applause. She said it was one of the most satisfying moments in her life.

If you are proud that God loves you, that He has given you great gifts, then you are acknowledging His existence and dependence on Him—and that is humility.

She was a great actress, and dammit—I want to see her on a goddam postage stamp!!

Postscript: In 1952 Mary's diary and its copy were removed by court order from the bank vault where it had sat for sixteen years, and, with a judge standing by, the pages were set aflame and turned to ashes.

Thanks to her having kept a diary even as a teenager, Mary was able to give the exact date of her arrival in Hollywood: April 19, 1923, two weeks before her seventeenth birthday.

Barrymore turned on the charm, making her feel they were both professionals involved in a silly enterprise unworthy of their talents. When the time came for them to align their silhouettes, he whispered, "You are so goddamned beautiful you make me feel faint." Mary, as she later revealed in her memoir, was instantly, madly, and completely in love with him, and he apparently with her—since even the most expert seducer may occasionally transcend himself.

I always get scared doing a job. To this day, I start every job thinking, I really can't do this. And what I do when I'm insecure is I tighten up. If you work through the night you can do anything.