TORONTO -- Lady Iris Mountbatten, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, died of cancer in a Toronto hospital, it was announced Thursday. She was 62.
Lady Iris died Wednesday.
Lady Iris, whose third marriage to actor William Kemp ended shortly after her arrival in Toronto in 1965, had worked as a nurse's aide in London during World War II and for advertising agencies and as host of a children's show in Washington, D.C., and New York during the 1950s and early 1960s.
She was admitted to Wellesley Hospital 10 days ago and had been treated at a cancer center for several weeks earlier in 1982.
Born in 1920 in Kensington Palace, London, Lady Iris participated in the coronation ceremony for George VI at age 16 and, as a debutante, was acquainted with such personalities of the day as Beatrice Lillie, Noel Coward and Tallulah Bankhead.
She was the only child of Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who received the title Marquess of Carisbrooke in 1917 and whose mother was Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria.
She was a first cousin of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army in 1979, and a second cousin to both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
Lady Iris formally renounced any claim to the throne of England in 1941, when she married Capt. Hamilton O'Malley, a Roman Catholic in the Irish Guards. The couple was divorced in 1946.
Lady Iris in 1947 moved to the United States and in 1957 married Michael Kelly Bryan, a stockbroker and jazz guitarist who had worked with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. The couple had a son, Robin Bryan, but the marriage dissolved after several months.
She made few trips to England after coming to North America, returning only for her parents' funerals.
