Mayme Gehrue (born c. 1880,
died after May 1929) was an American actress and dancer in musical theatre,
vaudeville, and silent film.
Early life
Gehrue was born in
Louisville, Kentucky. The date 1883 is often given for her birth, but is questionable, considering that she was touring in shows by the mid-1890s. She was in a touring dance act as a teen, with her sister Daisy Gehrue,
before Daisy married.
Career
Gehrue appeared on Broadway in ''
Little Red Riding Hood'' (1900), ''
The Casino Girl'' (1900), ''Nell-Go-In'' (1900), ''The Giddy Throng'' (1901), ''
The King's Carnival
''The King's Carnival'' is a musical burlesque in two acts with music by A. Baldwin Sloane and both book and lyrics by Sydney Rosenfeld.Bordman & Norton, p. 204 The musical also included one hit song by the songwriting team of Jean Schwartz an ...
'' (1901), ''Hoity Toity'' (1901–1902), ''Lovers and Lunatics'' (1906), ''The Deacon and the Lady'' (1910), and ''The Opera Ball'' (1912). She also toured with The Ford Dancers, as "the Yama-Yama Girl" in ''Three Twins'' (1910–1911), and in ''Topsy and Eva'' (1923), a musical comedy based on ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin''. She was frequently on the vaudeville stage well into the late 1920s, in the United States and abroad, including a tour in Australia; "to-day she is recognized as one of America's foremost dancing comediennes," noted a 1909 report.
Gehrue appeared in two silent films, ''The Fable of the Galloping Pilgrim Who Kept on Galloping'' (1915, short) and ''Above the Abyss'' (1915). She wrote the lyrics to several
World War I-era songs, including "I'm Leaving France for my Old Kentucky Home", "I Wish to Wed a Sammy", "Military Band", "The Man of the Hour", "Dear Little Jessamine", "Over in Spain", and "Back Down South", all with music by Victor Hammond.
Personal life
Gehrue recommended buttermilk, meat, and no corsets for a healthy physique. She married and divorced her vaudeville dance partner Johnny Ford (he later married and divorced vaudeville star
Eva Tanguay).
References
External links
*
*
A 1926 publicity photograph of Mayme Gehrue in the J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gehrue, Mayme
1880s births
Actresses from Louisville, Kentucky
American women in World War I
Year of death missing
20th-century American actresses
Dancers from Kentucky
American vaudeville performers
American musical theatre actresses
American silent film actresses