Constance Balfour

Balfour was born Constance Lell Loucks in 1880 in Michigan. She grew up 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 December 25, 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 on January 28, 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]