UPDATE!! CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS I FOUND OF CHANG OF PEKOE AT THIS LINK
This was an unexpected find in a 1912 newspaper, which was part of an ad for the WHITE SELF STARTING ROADSTER. Sitting pretty with a chow owned by Edward L. Pretorius of the St. Louis Times is vaudeville actress Grace La Rue!. Below I cropped in closer to show a bit more detail. A beautiful photo of the actress is also below the ad.
SOURCE WIKIPEDIA: Stella Grace La Rue was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1882 to Mrs. Lucy L. Parsons. La Rue was a stage name, more exotic than her original surname of Parsons.[1] She began her career as part of the team Burke and La Rue, with her first husband Charles Burke. One of their numbers was a minstrel piece entitled “Grace La Rue and her Inky Dinks”. She soon broke away from the act – and Burke – to appear in musical comedy.
La Rue performed in a number of productions on Broadway debuting in The Tourists in 1906. She also appeared in The Blue Moon (1906), Molly May (1910), Betsy (1911), and the 1907 and 1908 Ziegfeld Follies. In 1909, she married Byron (The Millionaire Kid) Chandler in Bennington, Vermont.[2] The marriage broke up in 1914 when La Rue left the relationship, alleging that Chandler was unfaithful and that he beat her
La Rue made her debut as a Vaudeville single act in November 1912 at Poli’s in Springfield, Missouri. As part of the act she sang an aria from Madame Butterfly, and a duet with a phonograph recording of Enrico Caruso. Variety gave her a good review commenting that the act gave La Rue the “opportunity to display her Parisian cultivated voice.”
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