Octavia Broske

Octavia Broske (June 4, 1886 – March 19, 1967) was an American actress and musical performer whose stage career spanned from 1903 to 1919 on Broadway. She began her professional life in the theater in San Francisco before establishing herself as a recurring presence on the New York stage.

Broske's Broadway appearances encompassed a range of musical productions across more than a decade and a half. Her earliest credited Broadway role came in The Jersey Lily in 1903, and she went on to appear in Tillie's Nightmare during the 1910–1911 season, followed by A La Broadway in 1911. The 1912–1913 season brought her a role in Oh! Oh! Delphine, and 1914 saw her appear in both Madame Moselle and Papa's Darling, the latter running into 1915. Her final Broadway credit was A Lonely Romeo in 1919. Outside of Broadway, she performed in several additional productions, including The Sultan of Sulu from 1905 to 1906, A Waltz Dream in 1909, Her Left Shoulder in 1912, and Get Off My Carpet in 1918. She and her second husband also toured together as a vaudeville act billed as "International Stars of Song."

In 1916, Broske made a recording for Victor. She subsequently appeared in two silent films: She Loves and Lies, released in 1920 and also marketed as The Marriage Swindle, which starred Norma Talmadge, and The Great Adventure in 1921, featuring Lionel Barrymore.

Broske married twice. Her first marriage, to George C. Burke, ended in divorce in 1913. She married actor George Bancroft in 1916, and the couple had a daughter, Georgette, born in 1917 and died in 2002. During the 1930s, the validity of the Bancrofts' marriage was challenged in court over uncertainty as to whether Bancroft had legally divorced his first wife, Edna Brothers Bancroft. Broske was widowed in 1956 upon Bancroft's death and died on March 19, 1967, in Los Angeles, at the age of 80.