Helen Bonfils

Helen Gilmer Bonfils (November 16, 1889 – June 6, 1972) was an American heiress, actress, theatrical producer, newspaper executive, and philanthropist. She acted in local theatre in Denver, Colorado, and on Broadway, and also co-produced plays in Denver, New York City, and London. She succeeded her father, Frederick Gilmer Bonfils, as manager of The Denver Post in 1933, and eventually became president of the company. Lacking heirs, she invested her fortune into providing for the city of Denver and the state of Colorado, supporting the Belle Bonfils Blood Bank, the Bonfils Memorial Theatre, the University of Denver, the Denver Zoo, the Dumb Friends League, churches, and synagogues. Her estate endowed the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Colorado Performing Arts Hall of Fame in 1999.

Early life and family Helen Gilmer Bonfils was born in Peekskill, New York to American newspaper publisher Frederick Gilmer Bonfils and his wife Belle Barton Bonfils. She and her older sister, Mary Madeline ("May") Bonfils (1883–1962), had a strict Catholic upbringing. In 1894 the family moved to Kansas where Frederick ran legal lotteries, and in 1895 to Denver, where Frederick and his partner Harry Heye Tammen bought a newspaper that they renamed The Denver Post.

In Denver, the Bonfils girls attended an elite private girls' school. Helen attended finishing school at the National Park Seminary in Forest Glen Park, Maryland. Frederick kept a tight rein on his daughters, forbidding them to date and warning them that "the boys were only out for their money". Helen became the "favored daughter" after May eloped at age 21 with a non-Catholic salesman, a move that estranged May from her family for decades.

Upon their father's death in 1933, Helen, who still lived at home, received $14 million from his estate. She received another $10 million bequest in 1935 upon the death of her mother, plus newspaper stock and possession of the family's Humboldt Street mansion. May received only a $25,000 annual allowance from a trust, and sued her sister over her mother's estate. After a pitched, three-year legal battle, May was awarded $5 million cash from her mother's estate, some cash from her father's estate, 15% of the Denver Post stock, and additional real estate. The court case divided the sisters even further and they cut off all communication with each other.

The Denver Post In 1933, Bonfils assumed the management of The Denver Post and served as secretary-treasurer of the corporation. Her flair for the theatrical extended to her ordering two dozen yellow roses to be placed in the lobby of The Denver Post to welcome her arrival; she drove to the building in a Pierce-Arrow touring car bearing the Colorado license plate "#1". In 1934, she introduced a free summer series of Broadway plays and light opera staged outdoors at the Cheesman Park Pavilion under the auspices of The Denver Post. Starring Broadway performers in the lead roles and local players in lesser parts, these performances attracted up to 20,000 people per performance, and were staged every year until Bonfils' death in 1972.

In 1946, she hired a new editor, Palmer Hoyt, to give the paper more journalistic integrity.

With her first husband, George Somnes, she co-produced plays in Denver and in New York City through the Bonfils & Somnes Producing Co. Among their hit productions were The Greatest Show on Earth (1938), in which Helen also performed. After Somnes' death in 1956, Helen co-produced plays on Broadway and in London with actress Haila Stoddard and Donald Seawell under Bonard Productions, and co-produced Broadway plays with Seawell under Bonfils-Seawell Enterprises. The latter partnership produced the successful Broadway musical Sail Away (1962), The Hollow Crown (1963), The Last Analysis (1964), and Sleuth, which won the 1971 Tony Award.

Marriages

Bonfils met English actor and theatrical producer George Somnes when he was hired by the Elitch Theatre in 1936. They married that year, when Bonfils was 47. The couple – always referred to as "Helen Bonfils and George Somnes" – bought a condominium at River House in New York City and resided in Denver at the Humboldt Street mansion. In 1948 Helen sold the mansion to the Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary and purchased the Wood–Morris–Bonfils House, a French Mediterranean Revival mansion at 707 Washington Street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Denver. The couple's amicable personal and professional partnership ended with Somnes' death in February 1956 due to liver failure. Bonfils sued for divorce in December 1971 after 12 years of marriage, possibly to preempt any claim Davis might have to her estate. The divorce was granted on the grounds of cruelty. Helen further established the Bonfils Tumor Clinic in her father's memory, finished and furnished the Holy Ghost Catholic Church at a cost of $1.2 million, and helped construct the Nurses' Home at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

In 1953 she dedicated the 550-seat Bonfils Memorial Theatre at 1475 Elizabeth Street, corner East Colfax Avenue, in memory of both her parents. As the headquarters for the Denver Civic Theatre, the $1.25 million theatre hosted plays, operas, concerts, lectures, films, and television shows. it closed in 1986 and was converted into a Tattered Cover bookstore in 2006. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. She was named to the inaugural class of the Colorado Performing Arts Hall of Fame in 1999. A stage play, The Bonfils Girl by Mike Broemmel, premiered in Denver, Colorado, in 2016. It starred Cathy Washburn in the title role. Beginning in 2024, Karilyn Starks took over the role of Helen Bonfils and Selena A. Naumoff directs the revival production. The Bonfils Girl was selected as the stage play to relaunch theatrical productions at the historic Elitch Theatre in 2024. Elitch Theatre was the first summer stock playhouse in the United States and shuttered over 30 years before the play chronicling the life of Helen Bonfils headlined the reopening of the venue.