May Yohé
Mary Augusta "May" Yohé was an American musical theatre actress. She began her career in 1886 with the McCaull Comic Opera Company in New York and Chicago. After other performances in the United States, she quickly gained success on the London stage, beginning in 1893. There she created the title role in the hit show Little Christopher Columbus in 1894.
The same year, she married Lord Francis Hope, the owner of the Hope Diamond. After the wedding, she continued to perform in musical theatre in London's West End and then the U.S. After squandering their wealth, the two divorced in 1902, and she later married a series of other financially unsuccessful, but often adventurous, men. In the early 20th century, she performed in music hall and vaudeville on the West Coast and elsewhere in the U.S., but she was frequently in financial jeopardy. By 1924, she and her last husband, John Smuts, had settled in Boston, where she died in near poverty.
Early years
Yohé was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the daughter of William W. and Elizabeth Yohé. Her father, an American Civil War veteran, was either the son or nephew of Caleb Yohé, proprietor of the Eagle Hotel, where she was born. William Yohé inherited the hotel and was locally famous for the elaborate miniature village scenes he constructed on the hotel grounds, especially for his annual Christmas putz. Yohé's mother, a descendant of the Narragansett people, was a talented dressmaker. According to Yohé, her mother had a clientele in Philadelphia that included many famous theater people. As a young girl, Yohé entertained the hotel's guests by dancing and singing in the lobby and recounting childhood stories. What became of her father is unclear: in 1878, he applied for a U.S. passport, planning to travel to Brazil. According to family lore, he died in Colorado or Montana around 1885. At around the age of ten, Yohé was sent to Europe for a refined education, studying in Dresden and later at the Convent of the Sacré Coeur in Paris.Career
Yohé began her career as a soprano, but within a short while her voice lowered into a contralto that was described as peculiar. She debuted as May Yohé in January 1886 with the McCaull Comic Opera Company as Dilly Dimple in The Little Tycoon, a comic opera by Willard Spencer, presented at Temple Theatre in Philadelphia and in March of that year at the Standard Theatre in New York. In March 1887, she appeared in McCaull's Broadway production of Lorraine, composed by Rudolph Dellinger to a libretto by Oscar Walther, which was adapted in English by William J. Henderson. She then played in the same production at the Chicago Opera House. In that production, she sang the following song with much success:File:May Yohe 4.jpg|right|thumb|Little Christopher Columbus, c. 1894
The song remained popular in the Chicago area for several years. Later in 1887, with McCaull at the Chicago Opera House, she sang "Bid Me Good-By and Go" in the musical comedy Natural Gas by Henry Grattan Donnelly. Yohé's unique vocal quality attracted the attention of the manager of the Chicago Opera House, and she was engaged to play princess Zal-Am-Boo in Alfred Thompson's extravaganza Arabian Nights, which premiered on June 2, 1887. The following year, she appeared in The Crystal Slipper: or Prince Pretliwittz and Little Cinderella, also at the Chicago Opera House. In 1888, on the weekend that preceded the Fourth of July, Yohé travelled to Cleveland, Ohio in the company of Edward Shaw, the son of W. W. Shaw, a major stockholder in the Chicago Opera House. She missed at least two performances before returning. Shaw's young wife filed for divorce a week later. She subsequently toured in America and abroad with George Lederer's Players in the farce comedy U & I and as Celia Cliquot in Hoss and Hoss, both in 1891.
In 1893, Yohé made her London debut as Martina in The Magic Opal by Isaac Albéniz, and the following year she played the title character in the musical The Lady Slavey, composed by Gustave Adolph Kerker, with a book by Sir George Dance, in which she sang "What's a Poor Girl to Do". She starred as the title character in the 1894 hit burlesque Little Christopher Columbus, "a great personal success" for her. In an interview, Yohé said the music, "had to be specially written for me – crammed so to speak, into my voice's shrunken circumference." While in London, she became a favorite of the Prince of Wales. The next year she played the title role in the comic opera Dandy Dick Whittington, at the Avenue Theatre, written by George Robert Sims and composed by Ivan Caryll. Sims noted that Yohé "could be rude if she didn't get just what she wanted."
In 1896, Yohé played the title role in the musical The Belle of Cairo at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She later returned twice to Broadway. There she was Lady Muriel Despair in the musical The Giddy Throng and appeared in the brief revival of the revue Mamzelle Champagne in 1906. That same year at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York, Yohé appeared in Mlle. Nitouche, a piece that she had produced a decade or so earlier at the Royal Court Theatre and at the Duke of York's Theatre in London.
Marriages: 1893–1908
Yohé had three marriages, beginning in 1893. The following is transcribed from a 1908 article in Bystander magazine:Love, marriage, and divorce
Their marriage took place quietly at a suburban registry office in 1894. Already Lord Francis had been a bankrupt, but a year after the marriage his remaining wealth, his lands, the famous Hope Diamond, and all his pictures and heirlooms were frittered away by the combined efforts of the young couple. Pecuniary troubles, however, embarrassed the two but slightly. A future Duke and Duchess can always beg or borrow, and they did. In 1900 they made a tour of the world, and on their way home fell in with Captain Bradlee Strong, at that time one of the handsomest and most popular men in the United States Army, and a special favorite with President McKinley. The actress fell head over ears in love with him. She refused to return to England with Lord Francis, and, after he had divorced her , married the Captain in San Francisco.The second marriage
The second marriage turned out even more disastrously than the first. The pair quarreled from the beginning, and there was never any money. The woman had renounced the certainty of becoming a duchess for the man, and the man had renounced family, fame, and friends for the woman. Only a very great and very unselfish love could have survived all that, and theirs was neither. In 1902, Mrs. Strong announced to the newspapers that her husband had decamped with £20,000 worth of her jewelry. A few days later, Captain Strong arrived in London, heard with surprise, and denied with disgust, his wife's preposterous story. She followed him to London, and a sort of reconciliation was effected.The return to the stage?
On their return to America the two went on the music-hall stage together. But May Yohé's star had long since waned, the public taste had altered, and the gallant Captain was not a histrionic genius. Very soon he, too, became bankrupt, and in 1905 sued for, and obtained, a divorce from the woman who had caused his downfall. For a time May Yohé was forgotten, but a year ago it was announced that she had married Mr. Newton Brown, a friend of her childhood, and described by his bride as "still the same lovely boy."Hope and Strong
According to Yohé, she was introduced to Francis Hope at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York before she came to England in the early 1890s. The couple was often seen together at fashionable night spots around London. On March 30, 1894, Burke's Peerage announced their wedding. The wedding took place on November 27, 1893, at Hampstead Parrish in London. Press reports at the time claimed Hope's family offered him around £200,000 to call off the engagement. In June 1894, The New York Times reported that Hope had filed for bankruptcy with liabilities amounting to £405,277 and assets of £194,042. At the time of her marriage to Hope, there had been reports in the press implying she had been married twice before: first, in San Francisco to the son of a General Williams, and next in Massachusetts to a local politician.Yohé met Strong early in 1901 on the last leg of her world trip with Hope. In July of that year, Strong, who had served as Assistant Adjutant General in the Philippines, resigned his commission once it was reported in the press that he had been asked to leave by the manager of the California Hotel in San Francisco where the couple registered as H. L. Hastings and wife. Later the two sailed to Japan, where they lived for several months in Yokohama. The following year, Hope lost a foot to a hunting accident, divorced his wife and again declared bankruptcy. Even though Major Strong had resigned his commission some months earlier, the War Department in Washington D.C. announced on March 22, 1902, the same day of Yohé's divorce, his nomination for promotion to lieutenant colonel by brevet for his service in the Philippines.
In April 1902, they returned to America to live with Yohé's mother at her residence in Hastings-on-Hudson. Three months later, Yohé accused Strong of running off with her jewelry worth many thousands of dollars. With the financial assistance of Strong's family, Yohé later reconciled with "Putty" while both were in Europe. A few months later, once her divorce decree from Hope was made absolute, they married in Buenos Ayres on October 3, 1902. Strong later joined his wife on the vaudeville stage. In 1905 he declared bankruptcy, even though he and his wife were making $750 a week as entertainers. That December, Yohé filed for divorce, claiming desertion. Strong, who reportedly was living in Macau after their divorce, died in New York in 1945 at the age of 70. In 1913 the press reported that Yohé and Francis Hope were reconciling. Hope declared the story to be preposterous.