She began her career as a vaudeville performer, pianist, and dancer, and was known for singing "dialect songs" and impersonating "every possible nationality.

[3] She appeared frequently in Thanhouser productions between 1914 and 1915, including A Dog's Love and Percy's First Holiday.

After leaving Thanhouser, Bourke worked as an actress for Arrow Film Corporation.

[1] In late 1915, Bourke took over a failing 500-seat movie theatre, The Princess, in New Rochelle, New York (where Thanhouser had its studio); she transformed it into a "votes for women" movie theatre, with a lobby decorated in women's suffrage banners.

She hired another former Thanhouser actress, Julia Miller, to play the piano at the theatre.