Mary Astor - worst casting ever? - The Maltese Falcon (1941) Discussion

[–] mdonln 10 years ago

She was 35 at the time (but looked 45 due to her alchoholic habits) and looked like everyone's maiden aunt. She even had that annoying, yodely vocal style. This was the woman that every man she encountered (well, maybe not Joel "gardenia" Cairo) was willing to sacrifice his life for? In the book, the description was Veronic Lake to a tee.This is perhaps the only weakness in what may be the greatest all-time rookie-director debut.

Well, it's a darn good thing John Huston made this movie and not you. His movie, the one with Ms. Astor cast as Brigid, was very successful; it went on to become a classic that's still relevant all these years later.

I find Ms. Astor believable in the role which called for more than sex appeal. At times she's glamorous and others frazzled and desperate. A younger actress might not have been able to pull it off as well.

By the way, according to the Trivia for this movie, Huston and Astor carried on an affair during the making of the film. Her age and alcoholism didn't seem to slow her down nor did they deter him. The trivia also claims her notoriety as an adulteress and drunk helped win her the role.

Astor may not have looked the part as described in the book but she actually lived it; the character, on the other hand, is only imagined. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you're more able to buy a fictionalized version of a woman than the real thing. Wallis Simpson was no great beauty; she was also an older divorced woman but, for her, a king gave up his throne. Go figure.

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[–] babybates 10 years ago

Great post mdonin.

BTW, when did Humphrey Bogart EVER look young? Even in his early films he looked weather beaten. I have loved many films with Bogie, but he never looked "youthful".

I adore films with Mary Astor and only wish that more were available on DVD (or even VHS, for that matter).

As for the long-ago post on this thread that said Mary Astor looked like Bogie's mother......you're crazy!

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[–] mdonln 10 years ago

Thanks babybates! I agree with you about Bogart. His looks never seemed to be an issue.

I don't collect movies myself but I hope these older movies and classics never fade away. I wasn't around in those days and would never have gotten the chance to see many great movies. Hopefully, you'll find the DVDs you're hoping to find and future generations will always be able to find them in good condition somewhere.

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[–] gentey 10 years ago

According to this blog http://www.wordandfilm.com/2011/09/john-huston-and-the-making-of-the-maltese-falcon/ which quotes "John Huston: Courage and Art" by Jeffrey Meyers, Mary Astor was his lover at that time of casting/filming.

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[–] jackmronner 10 years ago

AHA!!!!! You are a man of nice {in the older sense of accurate, subtle} judgement and (evidently) many resources. After all these years, the final mystery of the film is solved! Thank you.

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[–] kaskait 10 years ago

This was the whole point of the character in the film. The film is a different animal than the book.

Spade wasn't attracted to her for her looks (although I think Astor was very attractive), he was attracted to her because she was a bad, bad girl. And he likes bad girls...too much.

You don't think she is sexy?

How about the scene in which she allows him to come to her hotel room for a meeting at the beginning of the film. She is only dressed in a bathrobe. She guides him to the seating area opposite her bedroom, door wide open and the bed very unmade.

The film even shows it from Spades POV and he has a nasty grin on his face throughout the whole scene.

She played him and he knew he was being played and he loved every minute of it.

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[–] Dovebelle 10 years ago

Yes, I got the idea that she was desirable because she was naughty, not because she was a knockout. Plus, given the conventions at the time, and that the character was a liar, I don't think the audience was supposed to "like" her.

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[–] lucyrfisher 9 years ago

Just Googled her (and her hairstyles!). She was very pretty in the style of the 30s, when small features were fashionable. It was then she adopted the asymmetrical (wonky) hairstyle for her curly red hair. In her autobiography she praises the stylist who came up with the "do" for Maltese Falcon. I think she had recently had children, and if you look closely you can see she is wearing a "body belt"- like wearing several Spanx. The hair, the corset, plus the "ladylike" clothes all combine to make her look frumpy. But her character is supposed to be a "bad" girl who is pretending to be a lady. No wonder her act is a bit over the top. Sam is not fooled by it. Thanks to the Hays Code, their affair is muted. His taking her door key is supposed to tell us that they are on different terms now. When does he begin to suspect her? When they all gather at his flat and Gutman reveals that she has been negotiating with him and Cairo all along, and her account of how she spent that day is a farrago of lies. She wanted to be in at the death (and get her share of the loot), so she throws a refined faint. On a recent viewing I could see Sam's faith in her slipping throughout the final scene. He is also working out who killed Miles. Bogart couldn't act? Puh-lease!

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[–] josephnatescott 9 years ago

Bogart was a great actor, but his acting in this movie is inconsistent, in part because of Huston's weird script.

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[–] lucyrfisher 9 years ago

Lifted almost bodily from the book! Blame Hammett.

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[–] doug65oh 9 years ago

Sad, but very true. I read the book about 6 months back and was amazed at how closely screen followed page, so to speak.

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[–] josephnatescott 9 years ago

Do you think Hammett's book makes as little sense as Huston's script does?

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[–] lucyrfisher 9 years ago

Makes a lot of sense - it's just hard to follow because all the characters are double-crossing each other.

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[–] josephnatescott 9 years ago

This is funny:

http://bettermyths.com/sam-spade-looks-like-satan/

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[–] willjohn 9 years ago

Elisha Cook was nearly 40 and he was being called a boy.

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[–] yunie1281 9 years ago

I don't know about the part being miscast but I do know that I hated the character and didn't get the appeal and she was absolutely my least favorite in the whole movie. But I don't know if it was the actress or just the character. I don't really get why she kept betraying everyone or was involved at all and her murdering Spade's partner and pretending badly to be innocent when she was so obviously guilty...I really don't think Spade was playing her because of his speech at the end (and I hated how he treated her, too, particularly when he took all her money when she explained she needed some of it for living expenses) but I honestly don't see why he felt anything even remotely resembling fondness for her since ever since their literal second meeting he knew she was immoral and got his partner killed and was willingly mixed up in all sorts of terrible things. She was pretty up-front since the second meeting about how she couldn't be trusted. I've seen femme fatale before and I've bought the ill-advised love the heroes have for them (the Big Sleep particularly comes to mind) but I just can't buy it here. Why was he so taken with her?

Is it the actress or the character?

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[–] doug65oh 9 years ago

It could be a little of both, I'm not sure. The only thing I am certain of is that I despised both the actress and that character for many years and yet loved everything else - including (perhaps strangely) the scenes between Brigid and Joel Cairo, as when they get into the behind-closed-doors ruckus and he calls out for help. 

My own thought about Spade's taking essentially every dime she had is simply this: If he hadn't done it that way nothing would have gotten anywhere. A moneyed Brigid was not only vexing but potentially dangerous. Perhaps not on the same level as the jovially-menacing Fat Man Gutman, but dangerous just the same. Look at Archer. Sam's "You've got brains - yes you have" comment was sheer flattery, when the truth was that in this case Miles Archer had nothing but the sucking whisper of the wind between his ears.

As for Sam's attraction to Brigid, I don't get it either. But what the hell...that's Hollywood! 

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[–] darogr 9 years ago

I watched this again last night on TCM. I honestly have never thought of anyone but Astor in the role. Now that the subject comes up (I know this is an old thread) I could see Veronica Lake, Alexis Smith or even Lauren Bacall being more believable than Astor.
A couple of people mentioned that this was actually kind of a "comeback" for Astor. She had been involved in a very lurid scandal that became as I understand kind of a national joke. This role gave her back her credibility.
As far as being too old for the role, so was everyone involved, but that was just Hollywood at the time.

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[–] kenny-164 8 years ago

I don't think Falcon was the comeback for Ms. Astor after her divorce and the lurid stories. Right after the divorce she made the very successful Dodsworth, and so I don't know what coming back has to do with her career at that point.

It occurs to me maybe Ms. Astor suffers negative comments here due to a subtle change in standards of beauty. Her mouth seems rather small by contemporary standards. Maybe...

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[–] Pervy_Grin 8 years ago

This thread will never die because whenever someone sees this movie for the first time, hears Effie tell Sam that a "knockout" is waiting to see him, and then sees Mary Astor, he will say to himself "here's the frumpy maiden aunt, where's the knockout?". Yes the hairstyle has a lot to do with it, but Mary Astor was at best somewhat pretty 10 to 15 years earlier. In Falcon she's just not believable as a "knockout".

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[–] GoodSOVeryVeryGood 8 years ago

So very very true. When I first saw this film and heard that line, seeing Mary Astor come in my first thought was, I guess the knockout left. Veronica Lake as others have said would have been perfect.

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[–] lubin-freddy 8 years ago

Perfect for the part.

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

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[–] CountJohn (603) 8 years ago

I thought she was great and the best thing about the movie. So enigmatic, you can tell she's up to something but not what it is specifically, which is the same situation Bogart's in for most the movie. The performance is supposed to be a bit theatrical since the audience is supposed to know she's a faker on some level but not that she's as sinister as she is. I believed that she made Bogart invested in protecting her. This thread reeks of "I didn't think she was hot so the performance wasn't good"

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[–] Destinata (3564) 8 years ago

This thread reeks of "I didn't think she was hot so the performance wasn't good"

Yes, but she was supposed to be so hot that Bogey was risking his life for her, so hot that he had remorse when he *SPOILER* hands her over to the cops. If "she looks like everyone's maiden aunt" (my old maid aunts made a fortune putting out for their rich bosses who paid them off in stocks, so if everyone's "maiden" aunts were as well-used and over-the-hill as mine, then yes, she looked like the "maiden aunt" type), then it's hard to see why Bogart fell so hard for her. The post isn't about her performance -- well done -- as much as it is about her simply being miscast. Of course, Bogart's character could have been the sort of gumshoe who liked them old and cheap. That doesn't mean we can see the appeal, however great the performance.

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