Fun #2 - Stella Mayhew / Otto, You Ought to Take Me in Your Auto

[Otto Puzzell]

Though I've never met this woman, it would almost seem she knows me.  

Know the story? For 1 point, please respond below to identify the lady pictured, and her connection to me, and to things automotive.    

Only complete answers will earn a point

If you haven't registered yet, you need to do so in order to reply.  You can do so by clicking here.

Also, please be sure to check out our other puzzles, and, please post a puzzle of your own

Thanks!

[Otto Puzzell]

Experts?

[Otto Puzzell]

Professionals?

[Ray B.]

I had been thinking Molly Brown, as yourself in one of my puzzles, since she looks unsinkable. But she doesn't really look like Molly.

[Otto Puzzell]

I'm sure she was quite, um, buoyant. But not Molly.

[Ray B.]

Let's get started: just a socialite, or known for a particular talent?

[Otto Puzzell]

The latter

[Ray B.]

A prima donna?

[Otto Puzzell]

A singer, but not (as far as I know) of opera

[Tom_I]

I've a feeling I may have only half an answer here, but the lady is vaudeville singer and comedienne Stella Mayhew.

As for the rest of the puzzle, I'm afraid I probably don't know Otto well enough to make the personal connection with her. But she was a keen motorist, seen below in her Palmer-Singer, circa 1910.

In a contemporary article in The New York Dramatic Mirror she is quoted as saying:

I think that automobiling is one of the finest recreations going, but like everything else it has its faults, and one of the greatest of these is the fact that the driver is liable to try to make the car do impossible stunts, as I once did when I nearly persuaded mine to climb a tree one dark night just outside the city limits.

Have you perhaps been involved in a similar "incident"?

[Otto Puzzell]

You're nibbling around the solution, Tom_I. Virtually every component of the solution is contained in your previous posts - now you just need to wrap them up and connect them.

Locked until your my next reply to your next guess.

[Ray B.]

 

[Tom_I]

Well, looking around at songs that Ms. Mayhew used to perform, there's one that fairly leaps out at you, by Verne Armstrong and Samuel Speck, published 1905, and called "Otto, You Ought to Take Me in Your Auto".

[Otto Puzzell]

That's it - nicely played!