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.

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.

[5] Later that year she played Lord Soho in the burlesque Cinder Ellen up too Late, with Edwardes's company, on tour and in London.

[11] 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.

[13] In 1899, while Pounds was performing in a revue, A Dream of Whitaker's Almanack, at the Crystal Palace,[14] Sir Arthur Sullivan approached her about the forthcoming season at the Savoy Theatre.

[15] She also appeared as the title character in the companion piece Pretty Polly (libretto by Basil Hood, music by François Cellier that played with The Rose of Persia and later with the first revival of Patience).

Her reviews were enthusiastic: "Miss Louie Pounds so far carries off the honours … that she is allotted the sweetest airs, and does justice to them with her dulcet contralto voice.… Pretty of face and comely of figure, she makes the most winsome of colleens, and 'tis a lucky … Mr. Henry Lytton to be the accepted sweetheart of such a purty lassie.

[22] Following the latter's London run and subsequent provincial tour, Pounds left the D'Oyly Carte company, which vacated the Savoy Theatre at that time.