Bessie De Voie

Bessie De Voie, born Elizabeth Van Dorn in Bedford, Indiana, was an American actress and dancer whose career spanned vaudeville and the Broadway musical stage from the late 1890s through the mid-1910s. Her obituary, published in 1974, records her birth name and birthplace, and suggests a birthdate of 1888, though she was already touring as a dancer by 1899, pointing to an earlier birth year. Her parents, Robert Van Dorn and May Clark Van Dorn, married around 1883. Robert Van Dorn, a railroad engineer, died in a train accident in 1893. Press accounts of De Voie's origins varied widely during her lifetime, with different reports placing her hometown in Mount Clemens, Michigan; Virginia; Paducah, Kentucky; and Evansville, Indiana.

De Voie launched her performing career before 1900 as one half of Young and De Voie, an eccentric soft shoe dancing duo she formed with Frank C. Young. The pair toured in A Hole in the Ground during 1900 and 1901, followed by A Trip to Chinatown in 1901 and Hunting for Hawkins from 1901 into 1902. De Voie also took on soubrette roles during this period. Her transition to Broadway came in 1902 when actress Maxine Elliott discovered her and she replaced Paula Edwardes in The Show Girl. The following year she appeared in the musical Mr. Bluebeard in 1903, and was among the cast performing at Chicago's Iroquois Theatre on the night a fire broke out there, an event recorded as the deadliest single-building fire in American history. In 1904 she joined the large Rogers Brothers Company, sharing the cast with Fred Niblo, for The Rogers Brothers in Panama. She continued with the company for The Rogers Brothers in Ireland, which ran during 1905 and 1906. Her final Broadway credit of this period was The Dairymaids in 1907, bringing her documented Broadway appearances to a span of 1902 through 1907.

De Voie stepped away from the stage between 1908 and 1910, a period dominated by her legal and personal entanglement with financier Frank Jay Gould. She had been named in the 1908 divorce proceedings between Gould and his wife Helen Margaret Kelly. In 1909, De Voie filed suit against Gould for fraud and misrepresentation, seeking $250,000 in damages on the grounds that he had broken a promise to marry her. She released letters Gould had written to her, described as containing numerous expressions of affection, and the resulting scandal generated headlines across the country through 1909 and 1910. The lawsuit was ultimately settled with Gould paying De Voie $10,000. The National Tribune observed in 1910 that public curiosity about her had multiplied the size of audiences willing to pay to see her perform. Variety, however, reported that her 1910 vaudeville appearance, mounted to capitalize on that notoriety, failed to meet expectations.

Following her return to performing, De Voie appeared in Our Miss Gibbs and Three Twins, both in 1910, and in Louisiana Lou from 1912 into 1913, a production that also featured Sophie Tucker. In 1914 she was in The Doll Girl alongside Hattie Williams and Richard Carle. Her dance partners during this stretch included Al B. White in 1913, Dare Phillips in 1914, and Guy Livingston in 1915. In 1917 she performed in Pom Pom with Mitzi Hajos. After 1920, De Voie left the entertainment industry and worked as a saleswoman. She retired in 1962 and died on June 30, 1974, in a convalescent hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at approximately ninety years of age. She is buried in Mattoon, Illinois.