Jessie Smither, Duchess of Leinster, known by her stage name Denise Orme, was an English music hall singer, actress and musician who appeared regularly at the Alhambra and Gaiety Theatres in London in the early years of the 20th century.
Background
The daughter of Alfred John Smither and Jessicah Henrietta Pococke, she studied at the Royal Academy of Music (where she won the Wessely Violin Exhibition in 1899) and later the Royal College of Music where she was "discovered" as a singer by George Edwardes.
Education
Royal Academy of Music. Royal College of Music.
Career
Married, successively, to an English baron, a Danish millionaire, and an Irish duke, she was the maternal grandmother of Aga Khan IV. In the 1940s, Orme owned and operated the Beech Hill hotel at Rushlake Green in Sussex, England. Orme"s first stage appearance was in 1906 in the chorus of The Little Michus at Daly"s Theatre in London, later taking the role of Blanche Marie in that production. Later the same year, she appeared in the title role of See See at the Prince of Wales Theatre then appeared in The Merveilleuses into early 1907.
In 1906, she also participated in gramophone recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan"s The Mikado.
Theodore West. "Tito" Wessel (died 1948), a Danish millionaire and one-time Danish chargé d"affaires in Chile. Hugo Wessel (18 March 1930 – 22 February 2012), was a singer and actor and the first husband of Nina Van Pallandt.
Hugo Wessel"s son, Mark Wessel (born 1963), is a fashion photographer and former model. In the late 1930s, Orme had an affair with Esmé Ivo Bligh, 9th Earl of Darnley.
Maurice Nelson Hood, son and heir of the second Viscount Bridport (who was also the 5th Duke of Bronte).