- Margerie Bonner
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Margerie Bonner (17 February 1905 – 28 September 1988) was an actress, scriptwriter and novelist who 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.[1]
The younger sister of silent screen star Priscilla Bonner, she also appeared in several films (spelling her first name Marjorie), among them Cecil B. De Mille's The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), and the talkie Cleopatra (1934). By the late 1930s her movie career was over and she was working as a personal assistant to the actress Penny Singleton.
On June 7, 1939, she met the British author Malcolm Lowry on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue at the time he had had begun the second draft of Under the Volcano.[2] They married in 1940 and settled in a beach shack in Dollarton, a small town near Vancouver, British Columbia. Bonner wrote scripts for CBC radio and published two mystery novels, The Shapes That Creep (1944) and The Last Twist of the Knife (1946).
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.[3] She is widely “considered to be the model for its central female character, the consul's wife, Yvonne."[4]
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.[5]
Lowry's death
Margerie Bonner was interviewed for a 1976 documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada about Malcolm Lowry's life.[6]
In 1955 Lowry was persuaded by her to return to Ripe, a small village in Sussex, England, where he died two years later "after a fatal mixture of gin and sodium amytol: the coroner's verdict was 'Death by misadventure'".[7]
A 2007 collection of texts by Lowry suggests "he either committed suicide or was in fact murdered by his wife".[8]
- ^ "All Time 100 Novels". Time. October 16, 2005. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,under_the_volcano,00.html.
- ^ M. C. Bradbrook (1974). Malcolm Lowry. His Art and Early Life - A Study in Transformation. London: Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=ytc8AAAAIAAJ&dq=malcolm+lowry&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=8_zCBlOwIA&sig=2Q6Iv7J8ZuzR3CSAwDCzv2NEQHY&hl=en&ei=2h1VS_SgMYzplAeOqdziCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=18&ved=0CE4Q6AEwEQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false.
- ^ National Film Board of Canada (NFB) interview - 1976 film on Lowry's life
- ^ "Margerie Lowry, 83, Actress and a Writer". The New York Times. October 4, 1988. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/04/obituaries/margerie-lowry-83-actress-and-a-writer.html?pagewanted=1.
- ^ "Margerie Lowry, 83, Actress and a Writer". The New York Times. October 4, 1988. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/04/obituaries/margerie-lowry-83-actress-and-a-writer.html?pagewanted=1.
- ^ NFB film on Lowry's life
- ^ Bradbrook (1974), 19.
- ^ The Voyage that Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry in His Own Words, ed. Michael Hofmann
Categories:- 1905 births
- 1988 deaths
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