Constance Balfour

Balfour was born in Michigan and lived in Lincoln, Nebraska[1][2] and in Houston, Texas as a young woman.[3][4] She studied voice in Paris, Berlin, and London, and toured Italy, Germany, and South Africa as well, giving concerts.[5][6]

In 1909 and 1910, Balfour headed the Constance Balfour Concert Company, a small touring group.[7][8] She toured the East Coast of the United States in 1918-1919.[9] During that time, she appeared in the summer "Stadium concerts" in New York City.[10] During World War I she sang at a concert for sailors at Pelham Bay Naval Station,[11] for soldiers at Fort Totten on Long Island,[12] and at war relief concerts for Liberty Loans and the American Red Cross.[13][14]

She returned to California by the end of 1919.[15] On Christmas Day 1919, she sang at the first outdoor concert given by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra.[16] She sang for the Santa Monica Bay Woman's Club in 1920, accompanied by composer Charles T. Ferry,[17] and at the Easter sunrise service in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.[18][19] She sang a program of songs by Ralph Cox for the MacDowell Club in Los Angeles, with the composer accompanying her on piano.[20] She sang songs by women composers, including Grace Adele Freebey,[21] Helen Lukens Gant,[22] Gertrude Ross,[23] Josephine Johnston,[24] and Bessie Bartlett Frankel.[25] She also gave voice lessons, from a studio at Blanchard Hall in Los Angeles.[26]

Balfour sang on radio in 1923.[27] She toured Europe and studied in Italy and France from 1924 to 1927, while her teenaged daughter was there to study music and rest.[28][29] In 1931 she gave a concert series in Los Angeles.[30]

Constance Loucks was married to fellow singer Henry Balfour, also billed as Henri Le Bonti, when the couple appeared together in Los Angeles in 1907[31] and in 1910.[32] They were divorced, apparently amicably, by 1915, saying "“Why should we dislike each other? We sincerely admire one another as man and woman, as fellow beings and as artists".[33] She was married to Albert Hitchen later in life. She died in 1965, aged 84 years, at her home in San Luis Obispo, California.[34]

Her daughter Eveline Alberta Balfour (1907-1993), a pianist and singer, was in headlines as a teenager in 1924, when she went missing for a few days and was rumored to be kidnapped.[35][36][37] She was found in an altered mental state, "victim of adolescent breakdown," according to the Los Angeles Times.[38] Soon after, she and her mother went to Paris for a few years.[28] She married a French man, Andre Gaudet, in 1927;[39] she was later known as Yvonne Doray[40] and Yvonne Barishaw.[41]

• An informal photograph of Constance Balfour, from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives at UCLA.
• A photograph of Constance Balfour's daughter, Eveline, from about 1924, from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives at UCLA.