Friday, August 07, 2009

The Purple Diaries

Many people who know of Mary Astor associate her with the infamous scandal of 1936: The Purple Diaries. It was a divorce case that involved both of my great-grandparents battling it out over a custody battle for my grammy Marylyn; and it was also one of the first tabloid divorce cases to hit front page newspaper.

Dr. Franklin Thorpe, my great-grandfather, alleged that Mary kept a diary whose pages were scrawled with purple ink, that noted all of her dubious affairs with many hollywood bigwigs, but mostly in relation to her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman.
While looking around on the internet for other things, i stumbled upon an article from the LA times blog, in their regular Movie Star Mystery Photo section. I posted a few things from the link below, fun read!!



Pages from the diary??




Ms Astor in court. Work the eyebrows!




Ms Astor on the far left, Her lawyer in the middle whispering to gossip queen Ruth Chatterton.




Fascinating article from the time--click for a larger read!!

4 comments:

Gabby said...

HowEVER in the world did you find these goodies!!?!?!?
Well done!

Anonymous said...

the handwriting is hers. The picture with Ruth Chatterton should say that they were best friends and they starred together in Dodsworth.
Love, Marmee

Kayla said...

Um. That is all I can say. :)

--Kayla

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