Ida Brooks Hunt

Ida Grace Brooks Hunt (August 7, 1878 – December 6, 1929) was an American actress and singer whose Broadway career spanned from 1904 to 1929. Born in Panama to an American banker father and a mother from Barcelona with a musical background, she received her early education at a convent school in Panama and later at St. Francis Xavier school in Brooklyn.

Hunt possessed what contemporaries described as an unusually high soprano voice, and she built her stage career around that instrument. Her Broadway debut came with the musical Woodland, which ran during the 1904–1905 season. She went on to star in Algeria in 1908, the same year she traveled to Paris to study music alongside fellow American singer Oriska Worden. Her role in The Chocolate Soldier followed, with the production running from 1909 into 1910. Beyond the Broadway stage, Hunt maintained a vaudeville act with Alfred de Manby. In 1906, she threw the first pitch at a New York Giants baseball game.

During and after World War I, Hunt traveled to Europe under the auspices of the YMCA to entertain American troops. The work took a toll on her health, and she spent months recovering in a French hospital from ailments connected to that service.

Her final appearance on a New York stage came in Robin Hood, a production she completed just weeks before her death. Hunt died on December 6, 1929, following a stroke, at her cousin's home in Brooklyn.

In her personal life, Hunt had married George Edwin Hunt, a dental surgeon, in 1898. The couple lived in Indianapolis before divorcing in 1906. George Hunt remarried in 1908.