How Larger-Than-Life Theater Actress May Yohe Overcame Fainting Spells to Find Success on the Stage

She launched a whirlwind musical theater career on the strength of her “true as steel” singing voice

Reporter: Do you know, Miss Yohe, that yours is the sort of voice that goes right to the heart?

May: Is it? Well, perhaps that is because it comes straight from it—at least from the chest, which is somewhere in the same neighborhood.

May Yohe (1866–1938) was the drama queen of her time, a woman who lived an amazingly tumultuous life in the period spanning the Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression. With her outsized personality, roller-coaster career, and endlessly complicated love life, she was the Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Di, Britney Spears, and Tina Fey of her era, all rolled into one. Yet today, her truly fabulous story is unknown, her name, pronounced “yo-e” (rhymes with “snowy”), unrecognized.

May’s first big billing was in The Arabian Nights: Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp at the newly opened Chicago Opera House in the summer of 1887. David Henderson, a Scottish-born newspaper man who worked closely with McCaull, built the Opera House and was responsible for its theatrical productions.

The Arabian Nights was regarded as “a spectacular burlesque.” Like other such productions of the genre, it was short on plot but full of pageantry, with great costumed marches involving as many as 180 actors in one scene. It included the ominous “crypt of crimson crystal” as a prop, a vapor curtain used for tricks and special effects, and featured ballets, topical songs, a grand chorus, and an intriguing dolls’ quadrille, with actors and actresses magically “wound up” to dance. May, playing Princess Balroubadora, was the featured singer in a “charming” balcony serenade. She totally enthralled some of the reviewers:

In the center of them all is Yohe, lustrous of eye, dusky of tress and modest of mien . . . A girl of slight lithe build and a grace of carriage . . . She has great solemn black eyes, with a sparkle of mischief in them . . . She has the misfortune of being pretty. Not kittenishly aggressively pretty, but slyly, seductively, amiably pretty, with the prettiness of a Lillian Russell or Marie Junson, without the corporeal liberality of the one or the perverse come-and-be-sacrificed whimsicality of the other. . . She doesn’t walk; she glides. She doesn’t dance; she floats. And when she sings—well, she sings . . .

There is a hush, and then Yohe takes two steps forward and sings . . . Every note is true as steel and has the ring of a bugle call in it . . . It is the very deepest sort of a contralto— rich, mellow and resonant.

The Arabian Nights fit well with a growing and popular interest in the East. The play had a popular and critically acclaimed thirteen-week run in Chicago, and May’s performance was especially noted and lauded. However, she became ill during the run and had to be replaced. Nevertheless, May had done such a good job with her singing role that the theatrically powerful Henderson became her manager and agreed to include her in the touring version of the show produced by his Imperial Burlesque Company. May rejoined the cast in New York for the fall and in Boston and at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Opera House for the winter.

One promoter opined that the play was “equal in brilliancy and novel effects to anything New York has seen.” The show did well in New York and Boston, attracting audiences every night and for three weekly matinees. Some 27,000 people a week came on foot, in horse carts, and by train, and paid from twenty cents for general admission to seventy-five cents for a box seat to see the show.

In New York, May’s rich singing performance drew special praise—so much so that when she later, on tour, suffered fits of fainting, the New York Times applauded her heroic resolve.

Bravery of spirit and genius are inseparable in the accomplishment of great results, whether upon the so-called mimic-stage or upon the field of battle. This young heroine has been so much worn down by many daily rehearsals and nightly performances, that at last the arduous labor overcame the powers of her mortal frame, but not of her daring and aspiring soul.

Apparently, May fainted ten different times—each time she came into the wings during the performance. Yet, despite Henderson’s urging, she was determined to return to the stage each time. “No amount of argument could keep her off the stage.” An assistant would administer “restoratives” every time May lost consciousness, including at the end of the show, when the audience applauded “long and loud, while the little songstress lay in the wings insensible of it all.”

The “heroic” May next performed in Natural Gas, a social satire in the form of a musical comedy that opened in Chicago in 1888. Crowds packed in to see the touted actress. The plot followed an Irish scrubwoman who inherits land rich in natural gas, becomes wealthy, and puts on airs to mimic ladies of fashion and standing—another theme that would resonate with May later in her life. May was grateful to her mother Lizzie for making her “exquisite” gown and attending the premiere. “It was to my mother that I sang that first night, driving away my nervousness and fright."

The play was popular, but the Chicago Daily Tribune reviewer summed up the performance as “a flat extravaganza [by] a clever and hardworking company.” He noted that “there are a number of pretty girls in the cast who add much to the entertainment by their singing and dancing. Among them is Miss May Yohe who displays to advantage her rich contralto voice in a number of selections.” May, recalling that opening night decades later, wrote that she became “overnight a celebrity.” Despite the overstatement, May became more well-known and Henderson increased her salary to $200 per week—a hefty amount at the time, equivalent to about $4,700 a week today.

The New York Times recognized her ability and called Yohe “the maiden for the money.”

May Yohe at once arrested the attention of the audience with her rich, rare contralto voice and high-toned diction. This young girl has the organ, the bearing and the spirit of which grand singers are composed.

May went on to get her first major role in The Crystal Slipper, a musical take-on on the Cinderella story, featuring, among others, the very popular entertainer Eddie Foy. Opening at the Chicago Opera House in June 1888, May was greeted by an overflow crowd with wild applause and flowers. A review in the Chicago Current noted that:

The Crystal Slipper, or Prince Prettiwitz and Little Cinderella proved the greatest theatrical success ever known in the city. At every performance crowds were turned away unable to obtain admission. The scenic splendors of the piece, the beauty of the large ballets, and . . . the great chorus are important factors in this success. Robert E. Graham, Eddie Foy . . . and May Yohe may be credited with having scored emphatic hits.

May was on the road to celebrity, followed by dozens of male fans, or “mashers” as they were called at the time. May played the title role of Prince Polydore von Prettiwittz. It was the first of several male roles she would play.

Yohe took to the part, perhaps partially because of her self-proclaimed tomboy youth, but also because of her somewhat androgynous demeanor. She was an attractive woman who drew many a male gaze. Her stature was slight and willowy and her features delicate. A reviewer called her “angelic,” another “vestal.” As a fellow troupe member recalled, “In those days, when plumpness was the vogue with stage femininity, May was almost painfully thin. In spite of it she was a vibrant personality, with dark hair and flashing eyes.” She had a complexion in which “lilies and roses seem striving for supremacy” as one reporter described her. Made up as a man, she was also alluring in a boyish, cute, adolescent way.

The play was a tremendous success, with a run of 855 performances. May’s fame and public presence grew—and so did the trouble she spawned.

Read more in Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men, and Hope, which is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit Smithsonian Books’ website to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from Madcap May © 2012 by Richard Kurin

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RICHARD KURIN is a Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large. A former Fulbright fellow with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he is the author of Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem and Reflections of a Culture Broker: A View from the Smithsonian. Kurin has been awarded the Smithsonian Secretary's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service and the American Folklore Society's Botkin Prize for lifetime achievement.