May de Sousa: Fortune’s Plaything

The tale of stage star May De Sousa (1884-1948) is one of great unexpected success, followed by tragedy great enough to sap whatever savor there was of her triumphs. This is a common enough arc in the show business.

Hailing from Chicago, De Sousa was half Portuguese, half Irish (a wonderful combination, so is my sister-in-law!) Coincidentally, one of our most famous Portuguese-Americans, John Philip Sousa shares the birthday. It’s a big day for the birth of theatrical legends; also: Colley Cibber, Selena Royle, et al.

De Sousa’s story begins with Chicago political boss “Bathhouse John” Coughlin, a sometime poet and songwriter. He was seeking someone to perform his composition “Dear Midnight of Love” and Emma Calve refused. Eventually the assignment fell to the daughter of a Chicago police detective — De Sousa. She rapidly made a hit out of it in vaudeville and thus was the beginning of her career. This was in 1898. De Sousa obviously had some training as a singer, for she rapidly went on to make a success in musical comedy. In 1901 it was with the touring company of a show called The Chaperons. In 1902 a San Francisco show called The Storks. In 1904 she went into the Broadway company of The Wizard of Oz, replacing Bessie Wynn. This was followed by A Chinese Honeymoon (1904), and a revival of Babes in Toyland (1905). From here it was on to London, where she appeared in the pantomime Cinderella at Drury Lane, along with shows like The Geisha and The Girls of Gottenberg.

In late 1909 De Sousa returned to Broadway to appear in Joseph E. Howard’sThe Goddess of Liberty, and there begin her period of tumult. Shortly after that show closed, her mother was found dead in a gas-filled room. It was never known whether her death was a suicide or not. De Sousa soldiered on however, next appearing in A Skylark (1910) with Gertrude Vanderbilt and Clarice Vance a couple of months later. While this production was still on the boards, she met and married a stockbroker named Eaton Arthur Haines. When such marriages are made, actresses most commonly retire because they are fixed for life. We take note that De Sousa remained on the stage, appearing on Broadway in The Commuters (1910-11) and then heading to Daly’s Theatre in London for The Count of Luxembourg (1911). The husband, it emerges, was insolvent. Having misrepresented his wealth to her, he also proved abusive. De Sousa declared bankruptcy in 1913. The pair were divorced in late 1914.

Meanwhile, in the juncture between those two events, De Sousa had been performing in France when World War One broke out. She had barely escaped before the Germans invaded. Back in the States by 1915 she starred in Two is Company, her last Broadway show. She was touring Australia with a production of Goody Two Shows when she met and married local doctor William O’Hara in 1919. The pair moved to Shanghai, where they lived for two decades. Initially her life was pleasant, and she appeared in amateur theatricals. But in the ’30s the Japanese invaded and the couple was tapped there. O’Hara died in 1941 and De Sousa was placed in a Japanese prison camp. She managed to get out in 1943 and returned to Chicago.

By now, Sousa was 60 years old and had been off the professional stage for a quarter century. Her support network of friends and family were gone. Malnourished from her imprisonment, and penniless, she supported herself as a scrubwoman in the public schools for a time. But she was too weak and sickly to keep it up for long. She wound up a charity case, and died in care in 1948. She was buried in the family plot in an unmarked grave in Cook County’s Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery.

For more on vaudeville please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.