Ola Humphrey


Ola Humphrey was an American actress who was briefly married to a diplomat, Prince Ibrahim Hassan.

Early life

Pearl Ola Jane Humphrey was born in Iowa and gave the impression that she'd been almost entirely brought up in Oakland, California, some sources even giving it as her place of birth. However, she was a teenager when the family moved to Oakland, probably in 1891. Ola gave her birth year as 1884, but census figures establish it as 1875. She graduated Class of 1893 from the Snell Seminary in Oakland, and was celebrated for her ability at dramatic recitation. She was the daughter of Thomas Marshall Humphrey and Minnie J. Paschal Humphrey. Her father owned a furniture store. Her brother Orrall Humphrey was an actor and film director.

Career

Humphrey toured in stage companies in Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain, in The Empress, The Prodigal Son, The Little Gray Lady, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The Thief, and Another Woman's Window, among others. She appeared in three silent films: Under the Crescent. The first of six two-reel chapters was entitled The Purple Iris. Other films were Missing, and Coax Me.

Personal life

Ola Humphrey married three times. Her first husband was Edwin Mordant, a fellow actor; they divorced. She was acting in London when she met Prince Ibrahim Hassan. Hassan was a cousin to Abbas II of Egypt. They married in 1911. The marriage soon foundered, and they separated; the complicated matter of divorce was resolved when she was widowed in 1918. She remarried to John Henry Broadwood, an English military officer, in 1920. Widowed again, she lived in Los Angeles in 1935, and donated Egyptian artifacts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Late in life, she was living in an apartment in New York, her fortune lost or withheld by the Prince's relatives. Ola Humphrey died in California in 1948, aged about 73 years.