Her mother, Ernestine Marguerite (known as "Margot") Erskine, grand-daughter of the Earl of Kellie, was married to Richard Murray McGusty, of a family of Dublin solicitors, who worked in Canada for the government. The child"s father, though, was Arthur Bendir, with whom her mother had an affair, and eventually married in 1921, having divorced her first husband in 1908 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. 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.
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.
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. Their 1935 marriage record gives the bride"s surname as "Greene or McGustry or Bendir".
