Victorian attitudes—favoring frugality, propriety, the social hierarchy, and the repression of sexuality—had become increasingly prevalent in American social life by the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1860s, Victorian attitudes began to affect public entertainment in American cities, which heretofore had largely been raucous men-only evenings of song and dance as an excuse for smoking, drinking, and whoring. A new group of entrepreneurs, such as Chicago’s lead impresario J. H. McVicker, promoted “a better class of entertainment in keeping with the artistic tastes of the public.” Over the next decades, a more serious, family-friendly theater emerged, typified by clean, genteel surroundings for mixed-sex audiences and a new innovation, the matinee, which aimed to attract women and children.
But even as Victorian middle-class ideals reached dominance in public life in the 1870s and 1880s, they were already being challenged by the behavior of a new class of wealthy Americans living in what Mark Twain called the “Gilded Age.” A certain immorality characterized the “robber barons”—Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, and Flagler—as they gained unimagined wealth. Entrepreneurial license came with boundary-breaking excesses of individual desire and its fulfillment in houses, fashion, food, romance, and, later, philanthropy. These excesses contrasted with Victorian mores and drove the narrative tension in many real-life stories and fictional tales in the era’s popular literature and entertainment.
The late 1880s and the 1890s found expressions of personal freedom and independence spreading to a broader group of people: the urban, educated, Anglo-Saxon middle class, including women as well as men. May Yohe and her ilk offered an alternative to Victorian stuffiness precisely when many parts of the United States, particularly New York, Boston, and Chicago, were rapidly changing. Northern cities were growing larger and more cosmopolitan, awash in new wealth from trade and the Industrial Revolution. The movement for women to gain the right to vote was stirring. Popular entertainment and entertainers offered up a new American rebellion from Victorian English cultural norms.
American entertainment provided a potpourri of staged performances; by the late 1880s some four hundred theater companies were touring across the United States. In a big city like Boston, you could see the comedy Dandy-Dick, hear the National Opera perform Wagner, or attend a concert of the First Regiment Drum, Fife and Bugle Corps. You might also sit for a lecture on Spiritualism or instead stomp your feet at a banjo concert. The World Museum, with its menagerie and aquarium, offered skits, comedians, magicians, clowns, and wild animals! At the time, theatricals flush with costumed and musical spectacle, with casts of hundreds and special effects, were all the rage. Burlesque, popular opera, musical comedy, and the variety show dominated the scene.
The American stage at that moment provided a wonderful setting for May’s own freedom-loving, boundary-breaking proclivities. May’s infatuation with her own talent was soon to be tested before audiences, well-wishers, and critics in the theaters of New York, Chicago, Boston, and even London.
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.11
The Arabian Nights fit well with a growing and popular interest in the East. Orientalism, as a theme in fashion, design, literature, philosophy, spiritualism and even drama, was on the rise. With Aladdin’s lamp and its ability to conjure up the supernatural, The Arabian Nights highlighted the magic of the Orient. May’s appearances in this and other Orientalist dramas would later provide a repertoire of ideas and characters for her own tale-telling.
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.”12 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.13
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.”14
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.”15
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.”16 May, recalling that opening night decades later, wrote that she became “overnight a celebrity.”17 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.
Chestnut Street Opera House Theatre in Philadelphia, 1874 (photo credit 2.3)
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.18
May went on to get her first major role in The Crystal Slipper, a musical take-off 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.19
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.”20 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.”21 She had a complexion in which “lilies and roses seem striving for supremacy” as one reporter described her.22 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.
On the Fourth of July, 1888, the Chicago Daily, New York Times, and Washington Post all reported that the previous day, after an afternoon of drinking too much wine at the races, May had boarded a Chicago train bound for New York with a companion by the name of E. B. Shaw. Yohe was a “no show” for her Crystal Slipper performances, and was reported to have eloped with the good-looking, rich, and reputedly restless and wild “Elbie” Shaw.
The act seemed impetuous and scandalous, all the more so because Shaw was married to the daughter of a prominent and influential businessman. Shaw’s father was in the bakery business and was also part-owner of the Chicago Opera House.
One news report had May getting on the train at the Lake Shore station with Shaw to say goodbye, and then inadvertently getting stuck on board as it sped off toward points eastward. Shaw and other travelers had a good chuckle at her expense, and May herself joined in with her fabled silvery sweet laugh. But she faced a dilemma. She would surely miss her Crystal Slipper performance that night. She could get off at Elkhart, Indiana and be marooned there overnight, or could stay on the train until arriving in Toledo the next morning, where she could catch a train back to Chicago. May chose to stay on board. By some accounts, she spent an intimate night with Shaw, but left him the next morning in disgust after discovering that he was married.
Likely tipped off by a masher, a reporter visited May’s Chicago rental flat and confronted her mother on her whereabouts. Lizzie denied that May was away. She claimed instead that she was in the apartment, quite ill and unable to receive visitors. She admitted that May had attended the races with Shaw and had drunk wine, but had eaten nothing, was overcome by the heat, and, as a result, had taken sick.
The next day, appearing in front of reporters after her stage appearance, at which she was said to have successfully “faced a large and silent audience with a swagger,” May held to that same story.23
A week later, Elbie Shaw’s wife Jessie filed for divorce, citing her husband’s repeated adulterous affairs, including “improper and immoral relations” with May Yohe.24 Several months later that divorce was granted. The ruling was based upon the testimony of the train conductor, who swore that May was indeed on the train and that she’d spent the night in the sleeping car with Shaw.
Interestingly, that was not the end of the story. A year later, Shaw reconciled with his wife and they were remarried. A Chicago Tribune reporter called May Yohe a “footlights goddess” and noted that her “tinsel and paint” “were not the most desirable adjuncts to a happy life.25
May Yohe, c. 1880s. (photo credit 2.4)
Soon after the Shaw episode, May was confronted with an unsettling claim. Alexander Lewis, a U.S. Marine stationed in Boston, had written a letter to the legendary producer J. H. McVicker in Chicago claiming to be Yohe’s step-brother.
Lewis wrote that he hadn’t seen May since she had gone to Europe eight years before. Given the publicity surrounding May’s episode with Shaw, McVicker was reluctant to bring the letter to May, questioning its veracity. Nonetheless, McVicker, worried it might be truthful, brought the matter to her attention. According to McVicker’s account, May told him “I never heard of his [Lewis’] existence. Nevertheless, if he is my brother bring him to me. If he is my step-brother bring him to me. Bring him to me in any case. I will not deny him. Recent events have shown me the futility of denying anything or anybody.”26
There is no record of any meeting or subsequent communication between May and Alexander Lewis, but Lewis’ claim may have been real. He could well have been the son of Rebecca Lewis, the woman May’s father, William, had wed in 1872. Perhaps May had either never known about him, or knew about him and brushed the fact aside. Since Alexander Lewis enrolled in the Marines in 1887, he was probably born before that marriage, and was either William’s illegitimate son or, more likely, given his self-described status as May’s “step-brother,” Rebecca’s son by a former marriage. Alexander was a ne’er-do-well as a Marine, imprisoned in the “brig” numerous times during his military service. In any case, Lewis’ attempt to reach out to May would not be the last time someone sought to establish kinship with her.
Another backstage matter also emerged later in the summer of 1888. The co-star of The Crystal Slipper, Ida Mulle, who played Cinderella, complained that May was being unfairly favored in the production. “Although to the spectators each night the Prince and Cinderella seemed to be the most devoted of lovers, they were really at swords’ points behind the scenes,” the press reported.27 Mulle claimed Yohe had had some of Cinderalla’s lines cut and that she suffered in duets because May did not have the singing range to support her part. Though a few concessions were made by the stage manager, May largely prevailed and the enmity continued.
All of this riled David Henderson, her manager. Despite his position and stature, he could neither control nor guarantee May’s behavior. Henderson dropped her. John Russell became May’s manager. He noted that he might not be able to get May good roles since they required her showing up for performances. Russell quipped that while she might be on stage in the evening, he “never knew where she would be by daylight the next morning.”28
On cue, just as May’s stage life was on the rise over the next year with her 1889 tours of The Crystal Slipper and Natural Gas, new reports about her love life surfaced in the press. May was rumored to have secretly married Jack Mason, an actor in the Boston Museum Company, and often touted as the handsomest man in America. May put aside the report, saying she’d never marry an actor—not “one of those jays!” “If I ever marry I shall want to make a splurge. Give me a nice little dude; soft blonde mustache, patent leather boots, plenty of boodle.”29 A follow-up article in the Boston Daily Globe supposedly based upon an interview with May contradicted this denial.
All this time I had been acting … I wanted to give Jack a good scare … I expected every moment to hear him say, “you little goose, quit your foolishness; come home and I’ll be a good boy.” If he had said it I believe I would have jumped right through the window into his arms. He would have said it too, I know he would, but just then a couple of girls came along. They threw sheep’s eyes at him, and one said to her companion: “Oh, Mame! that’s Jack Mason. Doesn’t he look sweet!” The cars began to move. He drew himself up to his full height, raised his derby and made me a most formal bow.
I, what did I do? Why, I fell back in my chair and broke out into tears, the most miserable girl in America. I had a good cry and then I felt relieved. My pride began to assert itself and I said, “I will never go back to him unless he comes after me.”30
Mason wasn’t the only one supposed to have married May. May barnstormed in the West, traveling with fellow show people, drinking, and learning to play poker and to gamble. She liked the risk, she said. She also “loved” Western men, those beyond the Rocky Mountains, for their chivalry and understated, though strong, sense of justice. “I wonder why God ever makes any other kind!” she opined.31 Apparently, she loved them a lot. A report from San Francisco claimed that May had taken up with and married Thomas H. Williams, a wealthy young sportsman known as the “Duke of Union Island.” Williams, the scion of a powerful political family, was so incensed at the Evening Post account of this affair that he battered the skull of the newspaper’s editor.
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