Madcap May

by Richard Kurin

  The episodes made an unrecognizable hash of the history of the Hope diamond. May’s flighty fictionalizations obscured the series’ occasional historical facts. Nor did the film story bear even the slightest resemblance to the fantasies about the diamond perpetrated by The Times of London or the Cartier account.

  A scene with Boris Karloff, William Marion, and Harry Carter in The Hope Diamond Mystery. (photo credit 13.6)

  The newspaper series also fueled a book in 1921, unimaginatively titled The Mystery of the Hope Diamond and published by the unknown International Copyright Bureau. The book was written by H. L. Gates, who acknowledges on the title page that the story comes from the “personal narrative” of Lady Francis Hope. The book also has photographic images of stills from the movie, somewhat less extraneous material, and a lot more of May’s biography than the newspaper story.

  The book ends with a chapter called “I Escaped the Curse:”

  In every episode the Hope diamond has played its part … leading to tragedy, to tears, to terrors, and to heart-breaks.

  Does it retain its pagan curse? Does it sparkle only with reflected evil? Does it bring death, dishonor, disgrace?

  Is there any escape from the curse of this stone?

  The answer lies in the fact that I have.7

  A fanciful magazine illustration of May Yohe as Lady Francis holding the blue diamond with Lord Francis Hope, 1947. (photo credit 13.7)

  How does May escape? By divorcing Lord Francis, divorcing Strong, putting her jewels and life as Lady May behind her, and enjoying the poverty and humility of life with John Smuts—at least as of 1921. Though she is now free of the “pagan curse,” she expects the diamond to continue to exert its evil upon others.

  May Yohe’s fractured history was the most elaborate version of the tale of the supposed curse of the Hope diamond to date.

  In subsequent years, bits and pieces of her story found their way into magazines, books, and newspapers, including such legitimate news sources as the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, and, more recently, a variety of websites. May’s fantastic assertions and misinformation have been repeated over and over again until they have become part and parcel of the Hope diamond story. For example, decades later, the Washington Post falsely reported that “hundreds of years of legends surround the curse of the Hope diamond.”8 Life magazine, in a photo-essay featuring a Michelle Pfeiffer photo shoot with the gem at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, accepted May’s imaginative assertion that the Hope diamond came from the blazing eye of the statue of Ram Sita, and guide books for tourists repeat as fact May’s designation of a temple in Burma as the original home of the diamond.

  With the death of Vinson McLean, the publication of H.L. Gates’ version of May Yohe’s story, and the release of the film series, the curse of the Hope diamond became enshrined as a popular modern legend. It was then elaborated, spread, and touted by Evalyn McLean, who had a unique ability to keep the story before an interested public before she too died in 1947. Two years later, her estate had to sell the Hope diamond to pay off debts. Harry Winston bought it at a bargain price, and then in 1958 donated it to the Smithsonian.

  I was never so happy in my life.

  —May Yohe1

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Domestic Tranquility?

  MAY’S PUBLICITY PUSH ALMOST WORKED. The newspaper and film serial generated some interest. Variety reported that John MacArthur would sponsor, Ned Doyle would produce, and Paul Ash—the “Rajah of Jazz”—would musically direct a revival of Marrying Mary with May Yohe in the lead.2 That never came to be, and so, despite the Hope diamond productions, the Smuts still had their financial problems. They sold the farm for a $500 profit. May said she and her husband were going to return “home” to Singapore. But they didn’t have enough money to do so. They headed East. May had no real choice. She now had to try another comeback on stage, not so easy for a woman over fifty-five.

  May held an auction on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1921, earning $4,329 selling off a mat of rare feathers given to her by the President of Chile, a bronze clock given to her by the duchess of Marlborough, and an ancient gold-embossed Japanese mirror given to her by the British actor-theatrical producer Sir Henry Irving.

  She returned to the performing circuit in 1922, updating her old repertoire with jazzy newer music. The newspapers were kind this time around. “May Yohe is on the upgrade again,” said the Chicago Daily Tribune.3 May was singing “If I Were Only You” and “That Old Girl of Mine,” in their more traditional versions and then with the more spirited and syncopated arrangements of the “roaring 1920s.” “The years since her sensational escapades earned her the title of “Madcap May” have not deprived her of the colorful personality and engaging frankness that captivated English nobility, American Bohemia, and theater goers of both countries,” said the Tribune.4

  As she moved around the country, she was, of course, asked about her husbands. May was always laudatory about her first husband: “I can’t say anything too good about Lord Francis Hope,” she’d begin, “and I can’t say anything too bad about Putnam Bradlee Strong. But my present husband Captain John Smuts is a dear.”5 She was also asked about the Hope diamond and its infamous curse. Usually, she played up the melodrama of the story—her leaving Hope for Strong, Lord Francis’ money troubles, and her descent from fame and fortune. Sometimes she’d make light of it. Talking about her chicken farm, for example, she’d say, “I found out since that the man I sold it to struck oil on it. Isn’t that just my luck?”—and blame it on the diamond.6

  May was at the Bushwick Theatre in Brooklyn one week, the Colonial on Broadway the next, then it was off to B. F. Keith’s in Boston, returning to New York, then back to Bowdoin Square, Gordon’s, and Boston Theatres in Boston. Her new act was regarded as entertaining, setting “nerves a tingling.” A Boston Daily Globe review captured the spirit of her performance:

  An old-time gem in an ultra-modern setting, May Yohe linked up with the jazziest of jazz bands, is the unusual combination at B.F. Keith’s … May Yohe is the headliner this week of a bill that is good all the way through, with excellent dancing, snappy singing, and keen humor marking the various acts.7

  May still grabbed some headlines and good notices on the entertainment pages, though her show style was receding. The prominent names in live entertainment were the Ziegfeld Follies, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker. Interestingly enough, Florenz Ziegfeld, as a youth in Chicago, had been heavily influenced by the lavish David Henderson shows—such as The Arabian Nights and The Crystal Slipper—with none other than May Yohe in a lead role. But more than shows, it was the silent movies that were drawing audiences, and they, too, would soon give way to the “talkies.”

  John Smuts and May Yohe at the Blue Diamond Inn, 1922. (photo credit 14.1)

  May and Smuts opened a tea room in Manhattan’s theater district. The eatery closed within weeks, a total failure. In 1923, they opened an inn in Marlow, New Hampshire called “The Blue Diamond,” catering to tourists visiting the White Mountains. The place included a modest house for the couple and an inn on 600 acres of farmland wooded with sugar maples. Smuts did the cooking, offering South African dishes quite rarely sampled in the United States. May was the hostess and manager. But, as if to prove the bad luck of the Hope diamond, after which it was named, the inn burned down the following November. Arson was suspected; the fire was thought to have been set to cover up a burglary.

  Only two weeks later, the Boston police were called to the Smuts’ recently rented rooms at 129 West Concord Street. John Smuts had been shot in the chest. His condition was touch and go. A suicide note was found that read “I am going to shoot myself because I have been unkind to my wife.”8 It was signed with Smuts’ name, but the text and signature were in different handwriting.

  To the police it was obvious that Smuts could not have shot himself. Besides, the handwriting on the note clearly wasn’t his. When questioned at his City Hospital bedside, Smuts said
, “It makes no difference who shot me. If you make trouble for my wife I will maintain that I shot myself no matter what you may say. I’m a game fellow. I can stand this. I love my wife.”9

  Smuts claimed the shooting was an accident—he’d been cleaning the gun when it went off. The police couldn’t figure out how it happened and May claimed she’d found her husband stricken after the gun had fired. She also professed her love for her husband. The shooting was a mystery. Some newspaper stories implicated the curse of the Hope diamond. Smuts recovered and no charges were ever filed.

  May continued to perform in the Boston area and sometimes in New York through the 1920s. She also engaged in various charitable causes, including dressing and distributing dozens of dolls to orphaned and motherless girls for Christmas. She liked working with young women. As one newspaper reporter, Carl Warton, noted, May attracted their attention because, despite her age, she was “extremely youthful in spirit.” May offered some wisdom about her role:

  Advising young people, particularly young girls, is a rather precarious business, especially unless it is sought. The ideas of one generation are different than those of another.

  They don’t see things from the same slant, so you have to keep that in mind and be tactful if you expect to exert any influence. But even then there is a factor you can’t control. You may say ten words to one girl and it may change the whole course of her life for the better. To another, you can talk until you’re black in the face and it won’t mean a thing.

  Both of them may have the same ideas of life, the difference being that one has that something in her which tells her that there is much to be learned from older people, in other words that experience can’t be wholly discounted; the other believes that the past doesn’t solve any problems for us and that we must deal only with the present—taking things as we find them and acting accordingly. The latter seem to be in the majority today.10

  May Yohe and John Smuts, 1924. (photo credit 14.2)

  In August 1925, May appeared on the “Herald Headliner,” an evening radio show on WBZ out of Springfield, Massachusetts. It was relatively rare to hear a woman talking on the radio, as many people in the industry thought their vocal frequency was not suited to radio transmission. May, though, embraced the challenge. She spoke of her life, dramatized elements of the Hope diamond legend, and sang a bit of “Oh Honey, My Honey” accompanied by Elgard’s orchestra. Her performance was a huge hit. The orchestra and studio audience applauded. The station fielded numerous congratulatory telephone calls from listeners. Telegrams poured in, including cablegrams from Australia and South Africa where admirers had picked up the broadcast on short wave. For a moment, May again had thrilled a crowd and enjoyed their praise.

  Buoyed by her reception and offers for performances, May had facial surgery performed by Dr. H. B. Bernstein in Baltimore.11 She said she had it done it to appear younger and more vital in her performances. She may also have been concerned that the age difference with the younger Smuts was beginning to show.

  May continued to perform sporadically and to sell off her treasures to support herself and her husband, who worked for a cement company in Boston. She was also rumored to have gone into the hotel business with Consuelo Vanderbilt, a fellow American whose marriage to the duke of Marlborough had been long annulled.12

  May was still feisty. In 1927 she sued the Winter Garden Hotel in Lawrence, Massachusetts, after they failed to return promotional material she’d given them to market her performance there.

  Though she and Smuts always professed their love for each other, his shooting—probably by May—and a series of other mishaps raise some question about their relationship.

  In January 1935, May reportedly fell in her home and cracked a rib. It was not the first time she’d fallen. Years before she had injured her back so badly in a fall that she had to cancel a Carnegie Hall appearance.

  In June 1935 she suffered a broken arm, a fractured jaw, internal injuries, and possible brain damage, again from a reported fall in her home. Doctors sent her to the Boston State Hospital for observation. For several weeks many newspaper articles appeared reporting that May was thought to be near death and linking the calamity to the baleful influence of the Hope diamond. Despite the warnings by doctors that she might not survive, May managed to recover. Smuts then sent her to a nursing home in Maine, presumably to help her convalesce.

  Whether May’s frequent injurious falls were caused by her proclivity to faint—documented from the earliest days of her career—or something more nefarious is now impossible to tell. It is possible that Smuts had long been physically abusing May. He was an army man whose career was cut short in the early days of World War I. He only worked short-term jobs and depended upon May to be the breadwinner. May could be obstinate, rambunctious, and insultingly obnoxious. May probably shot Smuts in 1924, and it could have been in retaliation for his abuse. With Smuts essentially homebound in 1935, his frustration with himself and May could have again come to a head.

  Because of her diagnosed brain injury and erratic behavior, May was placed in the psychiatric ward. She escaped and went back home to Smuts. Neither incarceration, a possibly abusive husband, or a cursed diamond could keep her down.

  Preposterous … false … rubbish.

  —May Yohe, on hearing that someone claimed to be her son1

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mother?

  MAY YOHE WAS HIS MOTHER, claimed one very determined young man in 1935. Was it true—and did she have other children?

  One claim was a bald misstatement. In 1925 Warren Doble, vice-president of the Doble Steam Motor Company, announced his wedding to Audrie Hope. He claimed she was the daughter of Lord Francis Hope and May Yohe. He was misinformed about a lot of things—declaring, for example, that Putnam Bradlee Strong had died in Shanghai and that May was living in New Orleans. When May read the announcement, she quipped, “As I never had a daughter, I find this a most interesting story.”2

  Doble’s wife was the daughter neither of Francis and May nor of Francis and his second wife Muriel. Neither Dobie’s marriage nor his credibility seemed solid. The couple later divorced and his steam car company folded.

  A decade later, in July, 1935, another woman, Mrs. A. J. Streit of Waukegan, Illinois, whose maiden name was Hazel Potts, claimed she was the daughter of May and Lord Francis. “The adoption papers in the possession of my foster mother give my mother’s name as May Hope,” she said. Her foster mother, Rose Potts, told the press,

  We adopted our daughter, Hazel Potts, at a Catholic foundling home in Minneapolis 33 years ago. At the time we took her we were told her true name was Olive Hope. The sisters told us they could not reveal the parents’ names to us, but they did tell us that the baby’s father was a prominent Englishman and that the baby’s mother was a talented concert singer.3

  The father’s name was not filled out on the adoption papers. A friend of Hazel’s sent a telegram to Smuts and May, asking May if she was interested in knowing the fate of her daughter. Hazel herself told the press that she just wanted to see her mother.

  May and Smuts did not take Potts’ claim seriously, for it was the second claim that had popped up that week. The first claim, made by Robert Edgar Thomas, a bit player in Hollywood movies, was much more serious and was to result in a complicated and protracted legal battle.

  Thomas claimed he was born to May Yohe in Portland, Oregon, in 1908 while she was still legally married to Putnam Bradlee Strong. Thomas’ mother, Rosa, declared, “My late husband [Edward R. Thomas] and I adopted Robert in Multnomah County on May 5, 1909. Until the death of my husband eighteen months ago, Robert did not know Miss Yohe was his mother.” She continued,

  We were going through my husband’s papers and Robert came across a packet inscribed ‘Papers about my son.’ He found clippings and a picture of Miss Yohe which she had autographed to me.

  After Robert’s birth Miss Yohe did not plan to place him for adoption. I’m sure Mr. Thomas and I talked her out
of the baby, who was only 6 months old. She was a beautiful and fascinating woman.4

  The Thomases ran the drug store in the Perkins Hotel where May lived before she rented her own cottage in Portland from 1908 to 1909. May came into the store regularly to make purchases.

  Smuts responded that while they would like to hear from Robert Thomas, now twenty-six, the assertion that he was May’s son was “bosh.” Smuts opined, “This is obviously a publicity stunt, and it’s too silly to talk about.”5

  While Smuts may have honestly believed his statement, May must have known there was more to be told. Back in 1909, a Portland newspaper headlined a story, “Oft-Married Actress Becomes Mother” and asserted that May Yohe had given birth to a boy, placed him for adoption with an “Edward R. Thompson (sic)” and then “left town.” Variety had picked up the story, as did scores of other publications. The Los Angeles Times had written,

  May Yohe, one of the most notorious women of the stage, gave birth to a child in Portland Oregon. It has been adopted by a family in that city and will be reared as the son of Edward Thomas and wife.6

  Once again, in the twilight of her life, May was back in the news. Newspapers and magazines ran full-page features about Thomas’ claim. These stories recounted Madcap May’s life in the Naughty Nineties, her stage career, her escapades with Strong, and her association with the Hope diamond. In several, Rosa Thomas offered the reason why May had put her baby up for adoption. “She talked a great deal about the curse of the Hope diamond, saying that she feared it would descend on the newborn baby.”7