Princess Beatrice, Prince Henry of Battenberg and family

[Marlene]

Actually,  I have to check if she was one of Juliana's bridesmaids.  definitely one of Marina's  and one of Queen Elizabeth's trainbearers at the 1937 Coronation .... and she was presented at court in 1937.
Marlene adds:  I got it wrong - it was not Iris who did both weddings .... Juliana of the Netherlands (Queen Juliana)



yes of course there are photos -of the bridesmaids, etc.  Even postcards.  Newspapers, books, etc.

She was a bridesmaid at the weddings of the Duke of Kent and Princess Juliana.

She was also at the 1937 Coronation.  I do not think she attended Elizabeth and Philip's wedding.

I'm curious why there was such a disconnect from her royal lineage.  Nature or nurture, a bit of both?

Did she participate in royal functions as a child and young woman?

Who is Princess Juliana that Lady Iris was bridesmaid for?

Are there any pictures of her in these royal functions? It would be interesting to know what the royal family think of her.

[basilforever]

I meant are there photos on the internet of Lady Iris as a bridesmaid? I will go get out my books later and look for her.
I thought you must mean that Juliana. But I thought, what does Iris have to do with her? How would they even have known each other...?

[alixaannencova]

Talking of inetesrting or rather outcast Mountbattens, what about the George and Nadjeda Milford Haven's, the first Lady Tatiana? Was she really mentally ill or is that just another whitewash? Sorry I seem to have a fixation with whitewashes at the moment!

[Marlene]

Lady Tatiana was severely mentally handicapped.

Talking of inetesrting or rather outcast Mountbattens, what about the George and Nadjeda Milford Haven's, the first Lady Tatiana? Was she really mentally ill or is that just another whitewash? Sorry I seem to have a fixation with whitewashes at the moment!

[Marlene]

I have no idea if there are photos of Lady Iris as a bridesmaid on the internet.  Numerous photo archives would have photos from Marina's wedding --and some may be online - others may offer online sevices solely to the press.

Postcards from Marina's wedding are easy to find on Ebay, for example

I believe it was Kira of Russia who was a bridesmaid at both weddings. 

I meant are there photos on the internet of Lady Iris as a bridesmaid? I will go get out my books later and look for her.
I thought you must mean that Juliana. But I thought, what does Iris have to do with her? How would they even have known each other...?

[basilforever]

From Corbis:



Iris Mountbatten Sitting in Elaborate Room
Original caption: Lady Iris Mountbatten is seen at the Garrett House, on Cleveland Row in London.



Extravagantly Dressed Iris Mountbatten Standing in Hallway
Original caption: Lady Iris Mountbatten is seen at the Garrett House, on Cleveland Row in London.

[basilforever]

From Time.com

Lady Iris Mountbatten, 27, pretty great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin to George VI and Admiral Viscount Mountbatten, was back to shirtsleeves. Since arriving in the U.S. last October, her blonde ladyship has lent her name to a line of Indian textiles, to a dancing school, to a chewing-gum ad ("[Gum] is the height of good taste"). Now, she announced, she had a job, as plain Miss Mountbatten, in the Manhattan publicity offices of Columbia Pictures Corp., and liked the U.S. so much that she had decided to stay.


Posted Monday, Jul. 14, 1947

[grandduchessella]

She didn't have a lot of money ...

But she still had the two de Laszlo portraits of her parents, which were on the walls of the liviing room

Is the de Laszlo of her mother?



Here's a painting of her father, but I don't know the painter--it doesn't look like de Laszlo's style

[grandduchessella]

From Time's Milestones:

1957: Married. Lady Iris Mountbatten, 37, honey-blonde great -granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin of the late King George VI and Admiral Viscount Mountbatten and well-publicized victim (1947) of the quaint American custom of not honoring hot checks (in England "the bank notifies you and you cover the overdraft, all in good taste"); and Michael N. Bryan, 41, well-to-do broker; she for the second time, he for the first; in Pound Ridge, N.Y.

A later issue noted that she, like Tina Onassis and Grace Metalious obtained Alabama divorces--Alabama was apparently trying to become a 'quickie divorce' site ala Reno, Nevada.


From Time:

1947: "Queen Victoria would not have been amused. Her sightly granddaughter, Lady Iris Mountbatten, was pinched in Manhattan for passing bum checks ($185.05) to a Washington dress shop. Hauled into night court, she huffed: "[In England] it's common practice to be overdrawn. . . . The bank notifies you and you cover the overdraft, all in good taste." Lady Iris covered and the dress shop dropped charges. But all the exciting publicity (which is now Lady Iris' business for Columbia Pictures Corp.) had excited the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. They found that Lady Iris had overstayed her visitor's permit, gave her until Sept. 1 to get out of the country. "

 1951: "Lady Iris Mountbatten, who arrived in the U.S. in 1946 and made headlines the following year by cashing checks that temporarily exceeded her bank balance, announced in Manhattan that she had written a song, Once I Lost My Way. The tune, she said, "has been bothering me for three years."

[basilforever]

Why did her three marriages go so wrong?

Particularly the first one didn't even last a year. And was Lady Iris's son Robin born after the divorce or before?

Why didn't she want to live in England and associate with her family, the Royals?

I think she looked quite beautiful in that gum ad. Particularly in that second picture I posted of it.

[basilforever]

Biography for
Lady Iris Mountbatten

Birth name
Lady Iris Victoria Beatrice Grace Mountbatten
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spouse
William Alexander Kemp (11 December 1965 - 1 September 1982) (her death)
Michael Neely Bryan (4 May 1957 - ?) (divorced) 1 child
Captain Hamilton Joseph Keyes-O Mailley' (15 February 1941 - ?) (divorced)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trivia
Descendant of Pocahontas.

[basilforever]

Her filmography from the imdb:

Actress - filmography

"Versatile Varieties" (1949) TV Series .... Emcee (1951)
... aka Bonny Maid Versatile Varieties

[basilforever]

Lady Iris Mountbatten

Lady Iris Mountbatten (1920-1982) Born 13 January 1920 London Died 1 September 1982 Toronto, Ontario, Canada Married (1) 15 February 1941 Haywards Heath D.1946 Hamilton Keyes O'Malley, son of Middleton O'Malley Keyes and Jane Byrnes Malley Born 18 October 1910 Farnborough, Hampshire Married (2) 5 May 1957 Pound Ridge, New York D.1957 Michael Bryan, son of James R. Bryan and Laura A. Neely Born 9 August 1916 Byhalia, Missisippi Died 20 August 1972 Glendale, California Married (3) 11 December 1965 Toronto William Kemp, son of Clarence Kemp and Helen Janet Ballantyne Born 10 July 1921 Toronto

At the age of sixteen, Lady Iris was a train-bearer at the coronation of King George VI. Three years earlier she had been a bridesmaid at the wedding of the Duke of Kent to Princess Marina of Greece. Her first marriage in 1941 to Captain Hamilton O'Malley ended in divorce only five years later. "If I had divorced him, it would have been okay, but for him to divorce me that was really scandalous," Lady Iris said in a 1981 interview. After the divorce, she went to America in search of work and had a string of short-lived jobs, including selling brassieres and posing for a bubble-gum advertisement. In 1947 she was arrested for passing a worthless check in a Washington D.C. store. Lady Iris was cleared of the charge, but a check by immigration officials revealed that her visitor's permit had expired and was also working in the United States illegally. After a visit to Canada, she was permitted to return to the U.S. on a permanent visa. Her second marriage, to American jazz guitarist Michael Neely Bryan, ended after only a few months but provided her with her only child. Her third marriage, to Canadian William Kemp, took place in Toronto in December 1965. Several weeks later the couple separated and, although they never divorced, Lady Iris continued to live in Toronto until her death. When Lady Iris died in 1982, no member of the Mountbatten family or British Royal family were present. Her ashes were brought to the Isle of Wight for internment in the Battenberg chapel at Whippingham Church where her grandparents had been married.

Copied from /brigitte/royal/bio/irismountbattenbio.html

[basilforever]

More From Time:

Posted Monday, Feb. 24, 1941

Married. Lady Iris Mountbatten, cousin of George VI and great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria; and Captain Hamilton O'Malley, of the Irish Guards; at Haywards Heath, Sussex, England. Her cousin Lady Louis Mountbatten was a great friend of their cousin, Edward Windsor.



Her father, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, eldest son of Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria's daughter.

[Marlene]

Michael Neely  Bryan was not a broker.  He was a jazz musician.

From Time's Milestones:

1957: Married. Lady Iris Mountbatten, 37, honey-blonde great -granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin of the late King George VI and Admiral Viscount Mountbatten and well-publicized victim (1947) of the quaint American custom of not honoring hot checks (in England "the bank notifies you and you cover the overdraft, all in good taste"); and Michael N. Bryan, 41, well-to-do broker; she for the second time, he for the first; in Pound Ridge, N.Y.

A later issue noted that she, like Tina Onassis and Grace Metalious obtained Alabama divorces--Alabama was apparently trying to become a 'quickie divorce' site ala Reno, Nevada.


From Time:

1947: "Queen Victoria would not have been amused. Her sightly granddaughter, Lady Iris Mountbatten, was pinched in Manhattan for passing bum checks ($185.05) to a Washington dress shop. Hauled into night court, she huffed: "[In England] it's common practice to be overdrawn. . . . The bank notifies you and you cover the overdraft, all in good taste." Lady Iris covered and the dress shop dropped charges. But all the exciting publicity (which is now Lady Iris' business for Columbia Pictures Corp.) had excited the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. They found that Lady Iris had overstayed her visitor's permit, gave her until Sept. 1 to get out of the country. "

 1951: "Lady Iris Mountbatten, who arrived in the U.S. in 1946 and made headlines the following year by cashing checks that temporarily exceeded her bank balance, announced in Manhattan that she had written a song, Once I Lost My Way. The tune, she said, "has been bothering me for three years."