Babe Plunket-Greene

William Acton, Margot Bendir, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Harry Melville, Babe Plunket Greene at David Tennant's party 1928

Babe Plunket Greene (also 'Plunket-Greene') (born 27 Oct 1907[1], date of death unknown), birth registered as Enid Margot Bendir[2][3] was one of the 1920s socialites known as the 'Bright Young Things'. She also used the surname of her mother's first husband, McGusty, and the first name 'Marguerite'[4].

Portrait of Mrs Bendir (1926) by Sir William Orpen

At the time of Enid's birth, her mother, Ernestine Marguerite (known as 'Margot') Erskine, grand-daughter of the Earl of Kellie,[5] was married to Richard Murray McGusty, of a family of Dublin solicitors, who worked in Canada for the government.[5] Enid's father, though, was Arthur Bendir, with whom her mother had an affair starting in 1906, and eventually married in 1921, having been divorced by McGusty in 1908[6] following the child's birth.

Arthur Bendir was the Chairman of Ladbrokes, which he founded in 1902, and immensely rich, although some, including Evelyn Waugh, made demeaning references to his 'common' origins. Despite her name being recorded as 'Bendir' at birth, she used the name 'McGusty', presumably to obscure her illegitimate origins.[7][8][9]

She played a leading role in the hedonistic activities of the Bright Young Things, usually in the company of her friends Sylvia Ashley and Elizabeth Ponsonby (the latter also a cousin by marriage).[10] She married David Plunket Greene (19 November 1904 – 24 February 1941), the son of the singer Harry Plunket Greene, in 1926. His mother, Gwendolen Maud, was the daughter of the composer Hubert Parry, with whom Harry Plunket Greene had collaborated. The marriage was very short-lived, ending in divorce in 1928.

She was also romantically involved with the Winchester-educated Anthony Herbert de Bosdari, son of the Italian banker Count Maurizio de Bosdari (allowing Anthony to also use the title of 'Count', alongside his brothers). Anthony de Bosdari's romantic entanglements are somewhat unclear; he was engaged to the actress Enid Stamp Taylor in 1926, married, for a brief period in 1928 (from March 15–October 31), to Josephine Fish, an American heiress, and was engaged to Tallulah Bankhead from the end of 1928 to May 1929. In 1931 he was engaged to marry the Duchess of Croy (born Helen Lewis, of American origin). Bosdari and Marguerite, having married in October 1929, divorced in 1935 following several years of separation, with the illegality of Bosdari's divorce from Josephine Fish having come to light.[11] Bosdari was, according to the writer Alec Waugh, a friend in the 1920s, interned by the Germans during the World War II, and he is said to have later lived in North Africa or South America.[7]

In Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure, Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster mentions a third marriage of Marguerite's, to 'an American Hollywood magnate' (pg 160). This was German-born screenwriter and director Lothar Mendes.[12] Their 1935 marriage record gives the bride's surname as "Greene or McGustry [sic] or Bendir".[13]

References

  1. ↑ The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, later Supreme Court of Judicature: Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Files; Class: J 77; Piece: 916; Item: 7811
  2. ↑ General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office. © Crown copyright
  3. ↑ Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, Helm, 1989, pg 159
  4. ↑ Marriage to David Plunkett Green as "Marguerite E McGusty" in 1926; General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office. © Crown copyright.
  5. 1 2 Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 1931, Kelly's Directories, pg 599
  6. ↑ The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, later Supreme Court of Judicature: Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Files; Class: J 77; Piece: 916; Item: 7811
  7. 1 2 "Babe Plunket Greene (part one)". Cocktails With Elvira.
  8. ↑ Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, Paula Byrne, 2009, pg 36
  9. ↑ Patterson, Troy (January 22, 2009). "Young, Idle And Terribly Jaded In The Jazz Age". NPR.
  10. ↑ Nancy Mitford, Selina Hastings, 2012, Vintage, pg 43
  11. ↑ Steele, John (February 5, 1935). "British Court Rules Illinois Divorce Invalid". Chicago Daily Tribune.
  12. ↑ The American Mercury, vol. 37, 1936, pg 80
  13. ↑ "Person Details for Lothar Mendes, "England and Wales Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005"". FamilySearch.org.


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