View source for Margerie Bonner

{{short description|American actress}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Margerie Bonner
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1905|2|17}}
| birth_place        = Washington, D.C., U.S.
| death_date         = {{death date and age|1988|9|28|1905|2|17}}
| death_place        = Los Angeles, California, U.S.
| occupation         = Actress
| relatives          = [[Priscilla Bonner]] (sister)
}}
'''Margerie Bonner''' (February 17, 1905 – September 28, 1988) was an American actress, scriptwriter, and novelist. She is best known as the wife of [[Malcolm Lowry]] and for her support of the author while he wrote his best known novel, ''[[Under the Volcano]]'', considered one of the finest novels of the 20th century.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,under_the_volcano,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051022174955/http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,under_the_volcano,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 22, 2005|work=Time|title=All Time 100 Novels|date=October 16, 2005}}</ref>
==Biography==
===Acting career===
The younger sister of silent screen star [[Priscilla Bonner]],<ref name="nytimes.com" /> she also appeared in several films (spelling her first name Marjorie), among them Cecil B. DeMille's ''[[The King of Kings (1927 film)|The King of Kings]]'' (1927), ''[[The Sign of the Cross (1932 film)|The Sign of the Cross]]'' (1932), and the talkie ''[[Cleopatra (1934 film)|Cleopatra]]'' (1934). By the late 1930s her movie career was over and she was working as a personal assistant to the actress [[Penny Singleton]].
===Relationship with Malcolm Lowry and writing career===
On June 7, 1939, she met British author [[Malcolm Lowry]] on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue at the time he had begun the second draft of ''Under the Volcano''.<ref>{{Cite book |author = M. C. Bradbrook |title = Malcolm Lowry. His Art and Early Life - A Study in Transformation |publisher = Cambridge University Press |location = London |year = 1974 |isbn = 9780521099851 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ytc8AAAAIAAJ&q=malcolm+lowry}}</ref> They married in 1940 and settled in a beach shack in [[Dollarton]], a small town near [[Vancouver, British Columbia|Vancouver]], British Columbia. Bonner wrote scripts for [[CBC Radio]] and worked with Lowry on a screenplay for the [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]] novel ''[[Tender Is the Night]]''. She wrote three novels during the 1940s. Two were mystery novels, ''The Shapes That Creep'' (1944) and ''The Last Twist of the Knife'' (1946) (both "in the vein of Agatha Christie"); a third was "a more ambitious novel about human passions, dreams, and failure", ''Horse in the Sky'' (1947). A fourth novel, ''The Castle of Malatesta'', was a [[psychological novel]] that remained in manuscript.<ref name=grace/>
She is chiefly remembered for her unsung role in the creation of Lowry's masterpiece, ''Under the Volcano'' (1947). Not only did she provide the supportive environment her husband needed in order to write, she meticulously edited the novel's manuscript while various passages were rewritten at her suggestion.<ref>[http://www.nfb.ca/film/volcano National Film Board of Canada (NFB) interview - 1976 film on Lowry's life]</ref> Since Lowry had a tendency toward verbosity, her most frequent editorial comment was "cut".<ref name=grace>{{cite journal|last=Grace|first=Sherrill|year=1977|title=Margerie Bonner's Three Forgotten Novels|journal=[[Journal of Modern Literature]]|volume=6|issue=2|pages=321–24|jstor=3831175}}</ref> She is widely “considered to be the model for its central female character, the consul's wife, Yvonne."<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/04/obituaries/margerie-lowry-83-actress-and-a-writer.html?pagewanted=1 | work=The New York Times | title=Margerie Lowry, 83, Actress and a Writer | date=October 4, 1988}}</ref>
After Lowry's death in 1957, Margerie Bonner returned to Los Angeles and co-edited with [[Douglas Day]] the unfinished novel ''Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid'' in 1968, and edited his ''Psalms and Songs'' in 1975.<ref name="nytimes.com"/>
====Lowry's death====
In 1955 Lowry was persuaded by her to return to [[Ripe, East Sussex|Ripe]], a small village in [[Sussex]], England, where he died two years later "after a fatal mixture of gin and [[Amobarbital|sodium amytol]]: the coroner's verdict was 'Death by misadventure.'"<ref>Bradbrook (1974), 19.</ref>
"Foul play at White Cottage", an article by biographer [[Gordon Bowker (writer)|Gordon Bowker]] published in the ''[[The Times Literary Supplement|Times Literary Supplement]]'' on 20 February 2004, outlined inconsistencies in the various different accounts of Lowry's death offered by Margerie.<ref>[http://malcolmlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/foul-play-at-white-cottage.html Bowker(2004)]</ref>
A 2007 collection of texts by Lowry suggests "he either committed suicide or was in fact murdered by his wife."<ref>[http://www.buy.com/prod/the-voyage-that-never-ends/q/loc/106/203441093.html ''The Voyage that Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry in His Own Words'', ed. Michael Hofmann]</ref>
==Selected filmography==
* ''[[Reno (1923 film)|Reno]]'' (1923)
* ''[[The Four-Footed Ranger]]'' (1923)
* ''[[Daughters of Today (1924 film)|Daughters of Today]]'' (1924)
* ''[[Broadway Lady]]'' (1925)
* ''[[High and Handsome]]'' (1925)
* ''[[The Ancient Highway]]'' (1925)
* ''[[Riding Romance]]'' (1925)
* ''[[Secret Orders]]'' (1926)
* ''[[Rapid Fire Romance]]'' (1926)
* ''[[Trail of Courage]]'' (1928)
* ''[[Sinner's Parade]]'' (1928)
* ''[[The Film Parade]]'' (1933)
* ''[[Cleopatra (1934 film)|Cleopatra]]'' (1934)
==References==
{{Reflist}}
== Works ==
*''The Shapes That Creep'', Scribners, c. 1940<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/17/day-of-the-dead|title=Day of the Dead|last=Max|first=D. T.|date=December 10, 2007|website=The New Yorker|access-date=2019-07-02}}</ref>
*''The Last Twist of the Knife'', Scribners, c. 1940<ref name=":0" />
*''Horse in the Sky'', Scribners, 1947
==Bibliography==
* Lynn Kear & James King. ''Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook''. McFarland, 2009.
==External links==
*{{IMDb name|0094918}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonner, Margerie}}
[[Category:1905 births]]
[[Category:1988 deaths]]
[[Category:American film actresses]]
[[Category:American silent film actresses]]
[[Category:20th-century American actresses]]
[[Category:People from Chalvington with Ripe]]
[[Category:Actresses from Washington, D.C.]]
{{Authority control}}