From the Los Angeles Times TIMES PAST Mary Astor's Diary Ends
Up in Court
August 12, 2006
Aug. 12, 1936: A sensational court case came to an end when
actress Mary Astor and Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, her surgeon
ex-husband, agreed on joint custody of their 4-year-old
daughter, Marylyn.
But it wasn't news of the custody arrangement for which the
public waited breathlessly. People wanted to know the fate of
Astor's famous diary - in which she wrote more than 200 pages
in lavender ink, sometimes of extramarital
assignations.
Thorpe had used the diary as evidence of Astor's immoral
conduct. She wrote of her affair with Broadway playwright
George S. Kaufman, saying of one of their early meetings that
after going to a show, "we went to a little flat in 73rd
Street where we could be alone and it was all very thrilling
and beautiful."
Then, as part of the custody agreement, the judge ordered
that the diary be locked away in a bank vault and eventually
destroyed.
In 1952, a judge and several officials supervised as the
diary was burned page by page.
Oh. That's why.
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