Miss May Moore Duprez: ‘The Jolly Dutch Girl’
Miss May Moore Duprez is most probably not a name that will nowadays be widely known, except perhaps to music hall enthusiasts, but she was, for quite a long time, a ‘Top of the Bill’ artiste. She had success in vaudeville and in the British music halls and performed to appreciative audiences in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. She appeared on the same bill as artists such as Harry Lauder, Lily Langtry and Houdini, and played a Royal Command Performance in 1911.
Her defining act was as ‘The Jolly Dutch Girl’, amusing audiences with her dancing, singing and comic routines. She was not the only ‘Dutch Girl’ character to tread the boards between 1900 and 1925, but – together with Happy Fanny Fields [2] – she was the best known.
‘May Moore Duprez’ was, of course, her stage name. Her real name was Minnie May Harris and she was born on the 26th June 1880 in St Louis, Missouri. [3] Both her parents were English. Her father, Charles Harris, worked as a teamster, and her mother, Mary Ann Emma Harris, had been an actress. May was the third of five children – 3 boys and 2 girls. [4]
She gave her first performance in a Wild West Melodrama called ‘Little Frank Faithful’ in Denver, Colorado, when she was only three years old. It was in this melodrama that she played her first title role, that of a little child rescued from a burning building every night. She must have been frightened at the first sight of the fire around her, but soon became accustomed to it. Her weekly salary was a large box of chocolates that apparently fully compensated for all her trepidation.
In those early days she had no lines to speak and an older child played the main part of Little Frank in the later scenes. She did begin to recite, pose and sing at church entertainments and strawberry festivals from the age of five, however, and gradually started to learn lines from plays. From the age of seven onwards she joined her mother and older sister Rosa in a touring dramatic theatre company and played such parts as ‘Little Eva’ in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in which she had to die every night for two seasons. She also played ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ in the play of that name, and later ‘Paul’ in the ‘Octoroon’.