Ovidia Jubiella Marie Christiansen

Biography

Born the fourth child of a fourth wife to Inger Marie Larsen and famed missionary Hans Jacob Christiansen, Ovidia grew up in Salt Lake City deeply ensconced in the local Scandinavian community, and married Australian-born mechanic Lawrence A. Hughes in that city immediately after he returned from his service in World War I. The two moved to California, where Ovidia found work as an actress for the Stewart Motion Picture Company with the stage name Diana Hughes and Lawrence worked in the film industry in various capacities, from screenwriter to actor to general manager of the Stewart Motion Picture Company. Ovidia acted in various films, marketed as a “Danish bombshell” and “the prettiest girl in the pictures.” In 1924, she wrote an article for the volume “The Truth About the Movies: By The Stars,” a work of advice from established movie stars to hopeful actors and admirers of the film; this book was edited by Lawrence, and other contributors included Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, and more. By 1930, Ovidia and Lawrence had separated, and on June 24, 1930 Ovidia married actor Theodore Lorch, whom she had first seen and, according to the newspapers reporting their marriage, fallen in love with when she was thirteen years old and he was in a traveling acting company touring the western United States and Mexico, making several highly praised stops in Salt Lake. Ovidia’s mother, by now a widow, lived with them until her death in 1934. By 1946 Theodore and Ovidia had separated; a year later, Theodore died. Seven years later, in 1953, Ovidia married building supplies salesman Harry Wolpa, with whom she remained until his death in 1966. Ovidia stayed in California for the rest of her life, dying in Orange County and being laid to rest in Hollywood, the city that defined so much of her life.