Louie Pounds

Louisa Emma Amelia "Louie" Pounds (12 February 1872 – 6 September 1970) was an English singer and actress, known for her performances in musical comedies and in mezzo-soprano roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Originally intended for a secretarial career, Pounds joined the chorus of a George Edwardes show in 1890 and quickly achieved advancement to leading roles in burlesque and musical comedy. In 1899, she joined the D'Oyly Carte company, where she created several roles. She was the youngest of five siblings who appeared with D'Oyly Carte. Her older brother Courtice was a principal tenor with the company in the 1880s and '90s, and her three sisters, Lily, Nancy and Rosy, also appeared with the company. After four years with D'Oyly Carte, Pounds resumed her career in musical comedies and non-musical plays, later switching from juvenile to character parts. Her career continued into the 1930s.

Pounds was born in Brompton, Kensington, London. She originally studied to become a secretary, attending the Metropolitan School of Shorthand in Chancery Lane. In the early 1890s she suffered from the obsessional devotion of a man who had been at the shorthand school with her, and eventually he was imprisoned for threatening to kill her.

Pounds made her first professional stage appearance in 1890 as a chorus girl under the management of George Edwardes. After three months he gave her a small role in Joan of Arc at the Opera Comique in January 1891. The following year, she was in Blue-Eyed Susan, by F. Osmond Carr, as Daisy Meadows, in which she "had not much to do but wear smart costumes and look pretty, and so far succeeded". Later that year she played Lord Soho in the burlesque Cinder Ellen up too Late, with Edwardes's company, on tour and in London. In 1893 she appeared in Edwardes's musical, In Town, in London and on tour, and the following year she was one of the stars of the hit musical A Gaiety Girl. In 1895 she appeared with Marie Tempest, Leonora Braham and Sybil Grey in another Edwardes hit, An Artist's Model, in London, and appeared in the same show on a three-month tour in America. She next played in Gentleman Joe (The Hansom Cabby) on a provincial tour. In 1896–98 Pounds played Dorothy Travers in The French Maid in a pre-London tour and then in the West End. In 1897, at Terry's Theatre, she played in a series of special matinée performances of adaptations by Basil Hood and Walter Slaughter of Hans Andersen fairy stories. Her major West End role in 1898 was in the breeches role of Prince Rollo in Her Royal Highness.

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