Bancroft, Mary

Mary Bancroft, author and intelligence officer for the Office of Strategic Services, was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1903, the daughter of Mary Agnes Cogan and of Hugh Bancroft, later publisher of The Wall Street Journal . Her mother had studied at Radcliffe College and died shortly after Mary's birth. MB graduated from The Winsor School, in Boston in 1921, and attended Smith College for three months in 1922. She married Sherwin Badger, Harvard College Class of 1923, and figure skating champion of the U.S.A. After graduating, he took a position with the United Fruit Company and they spent a year in Cuba. They had three children: a son George who died in infancy, Sherwin, Jr., and Mary Jane. They were divorced in 1932.

In 1935 MB married Jean Rufenacht, a Swiss businessman, and later in the 30s moved to Zurich, where she was analyzed by and studied with C.G. Jung. This was a formative experience and psychology became a life-long interest. She was proficient in French and German and was hired to work for Allen Dulles in the Office of Strategic Services. For a time MB and Dulles were lovers. As an agent, she analyzed speeches and writings of Nazi leaders, wrote reports on conversations with German contacts, and was assigned to help translate a book written by Hans Bernd Gisevius, one of the July 20th (1944) plotters against Hitler. She had frequent conversations with Gisevius and tried to elicit information from him to pass along to Allen Dulles, but he was in direct contact with Dulles and MB had no role in the plot. MB divorced Jean Rufenacht in 1947 and returned permanently to the United States in 1953.

MB was a translator, author, and prolific letter writer (her correspondents included Henry R. Luce and Norman Mailer, among others). After her divorce, being in need of income, she worked as a freelance journalist, writing articles for the Swiss weekly, Die Weltwoche, and translating filmscripts and film documentaries. On her return from Europe she lectured professionallly on international topics under the auspices of the Columbia Lecture Bureau. She published two novels, Upside Down in the Magnolia Tree (1952), and The Inseparables (1958) and drafted many more. Her translations appeared in Atlas: The Magazine of the World Press, 1962-64, and articles and book reviews, in Manhattan East in the 1960s. Her memoir, Autobiography of a Spy, was published in 1983.

After settling in New York City, MB threw herself into local politics as a means of reconnecting to the United States after so many expatriate years. She worked for her friend Anthony J. Akers in his two unsuccessful campaigns to represent the 17th Congressional District. She ran in the Democratic primary for the 8th Assembly District in 1960 and as a delegate for the 1964 Democratic National Convention, both unsuccessfully. She was a member of the James F. Farley Democratic Club, the Lexington Democratic Club, and until she became disenchanted with New York "reform" politics, the Lenox Hill Club. She kept up her interest in psychology through correspondence and membership in the Analytical Psychology Club of New York City and the C.G. Jung Foundation. She served on the editorial board of Psychological Perspectives, and was a consultant and book reviewer for it.

MB died on January 10, 1997.

From the guide to the Papers, 1872, 1932-1997, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)