THE LIFE OF
DAVID BELASCO

VOLUME TWO

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DAVID BELASCO

“The natural successor of Lester Wallack, Edwin Booth and Augustin Daly, as the leading theatrical manager of America.”—W. W.

From a portrait made for this Memoir
by Arnold Genthe, New York.

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THE LIFE

OF

DAVID BELASCO

BY

WILLIAM WINTER

(1836-1917)

“He, being dead, yet speaketh.”


VOLUME TWO


New York
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1918
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Copyright, 1918, by
JEFFERSON WINTER

All Rights Reserved {vii}

CONTENTS

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ILLUSTRATIONS.

Volume One.

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THE LIFE OF DAVID BELASCO

“UNDER TWO FLAGS.”—BLANCHE BATES THE RISING STAR.

The London engagement of “Zaza” ended, Belasco, Mrs. Carter, and the members of the “Zaza” company returned to America, sailing from Southampton, on board the steamship New York, August 18, 1900. Mrs. Carter’s tour in that play began at the Criterion Theatre, New York, on October 1, and Belasco turned his attention to launching Blanche Bates as a star. The histrionic vehicle which he selected for this purpose was a revamped dramatization of Ouida’s “Under Two Flags.” He had hoped to obtain a drama on a fresh subject for her use and he had asked Charles Frohman to assist in finding such a one. But, after waiting a considerable time without any suitable play coming to light and it being essential to bring her forward in something, Belasco determined to turn to an old subject and revivify it. “I decided, in desperation,” he writes, “to revive ‘Under Two Flags,’ which I had long been familiar with, of which I had made at least two versions,{2} and which, in the old days, I had directed for Lotta. Her version of it, however, seemed very old-fashioned, and I employed Mr. Paul M. Potter to make a new adaptation of the book. I introduced a novel effect in that production in the sand-storm in the Fourth Act; it was simple in its mechanism, but it required much work to perfect it: it has since come into general use.”

Ouida’s novel is so well known to the public of the Library and, in one form or another, histrionic adaptations of it are so well known to the public of the Theatre, that the subject is, in every point of view, familiar, and minutely detailed consideration of it in this place would, therefore, be superfluous. The new theatrical epitome of that novel was made known, for the first time, at the Garden Theatre, New York, February 5, 1901. It was, in every detail, supervised and made practical by Belasco, and it owed its success to his ingenious and expert manipulation and to the embodiment of Cigarette given in it under his direction by Miss Bates. The story of that ardent, picturesque, adventurous girl is a story of amatory infatuation, brave exploits, and pathetic self-sacrifice, under romantic circumstances. The representative of Cigarette must be handsome, passionate, expeditious, magnanimous, resolute, full of resource, sparkling with energy,

Photograph by Sarony. Collection of Jefferson Winter.

BLANCHE BATES AS CIGARETTE, IN “UNDER TWO FLAGS{3}”

potent in fiery conflicts of feeling, and, above all, capable of covering grief with a smile. That is the essence of her character. Blanche Bates, possessing rare personal distinction and a temperament equally attuned to the extreme moods of mirth and grief, was easily proficient in the assumption of that personality and in the pictorial and effective exposition of it. Without the presence of that actress the play (if it had ever been produced at all) would have passed as a populous, tumultuous stage pageant,—a spectacle of Moorish scenery and military bustle. Animated by her power, sensibility, and spirited, various, incessant action, it was lifted to dramatic importance and Belasco’s “desperate” venture—as he calls it—proved brilliantly successful.

The employment of Cigarette is the salvation from various dangers of Bertie Cecil, a man whom she loves and whose love is bestowed on another woman, and her diligence in that employment is attended by risk and rewarded by ruin. Many persons appear to think that it is beatific to be loved by other persons and grievous not to be loved, and, accordingly, love-tales exemplary of the joy, on the one hand, and the sorrow, on the other, that are sequent from those antipodal conditions of experience are perennially popular. Pygmalion worships a stone; Titania caresses the ears of an{4} ass, and the populace is thrilled. Cigarette’s passion for Bertie Cecil is of the old, familiar kind, and, the scene being Algeria, her adventures are, theatrically, shown across a background of singular beauty,—because that country is remarkable for flowers, cedar forests, Oriental palms, Roman remains, stony deserts contrasted with smiling villages, and luxuriant gardens not distant from mountains covered with snow.

Taste, thought, ingenuity, and sedulous care were expended on every feature of the pageant by Belasco, and the result was a magnificent spectacle,—one of the richest and most impressive ever seen on our Stage. Had it been brought here by Henry Irving or Herbert Beerbohm-Tree, it would have been hailed as a transcendent exploit in stagecraft. Every scene was a picture, every picture was harmonious with the phase of the story to be illustrated, and in the transitions from the luxurious villa, with its prospect of the tranquil ocean faintly rippling beneath the moon, to the desolate, rocky, weird, and ominous mountain gorge a climax of solemn grandeur seemed to take shape, color, and charm, slowly rising out of a dream of romantic beauty. The drift of whirling mist over the darkening waves of sand on the bleak seacoast would have seemed the most consummate of illusions had it not{5} been excelled by the blinding terrors of a mountain tempest. Those effects were wrought by simple means, but they were not less splendid because of the simplicity of their management.

The dramatic victory was not won, however, by either the pageantry or the play. Mr. Potter’s variant version of “Under Two Flags” is hackneyed in expedients, abrupt in movement, drastic in method, coarse in character, shady in morals, florid in style, and it was made silly, in some of the colloquies, by the infusion of contemporary slang and reference. The listener heard of “rot” and also of “the Klondike,”—unknown in the period of the story. But the old novel had been made to yield telling situations, and the strong and splendid acting of Miss Bates vitalized them, brilliantly animated the whole structure, and vindicated Belasco’s faith in the ability of the actress. The revelation of jealousy working in an unsophisticated, half-savage nature, the elemental passion expressed in the fantastic dance, the prayer of the breaking heart for her lover’s fidelity, the supplication for his pardon, the agony when repulsed, the ecstasy when triumphant, the tremendous conflict of emotions in the wild ride for rescue,—they were all displayed with more of human nature and more of a competent artist’s power to control feelings and to shape{6} the effect of situation than had been seen on our Stage for many a long day.—This was the original cast of “Under Two Flags” at the Garden Theatre:

BELASCO AND DAVID WARFIELD:—THEIR FIRST MEETING.

“Under Two Flags” was acted at the Garden Theatre until June 3, 1901, when that house was closed for the season and Belasco turned his attention to preparations for the appearance of Mrs. Carter in a new play and for the bringing forward of David Warfield as a star in the legitimate

Photograph by Byron. Author’s Collection.

A SCENE IN BELASCO’S “UNDER TWO FLAGS{7}”

Theatre. That actor, then a popular variety hall performer and a member of the burlesque and travesty company maintained by Messrs. Weber & Fields at their theatre in New York,—in Broadway, between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets,—had negotiated with Belasco, about August-September, 1900, relative to acting under his management and on November 2, that year, they entered into a formal agreement whereby Belasco undertook the direction of Warfield’s professional career. Their contract was made to cover a first period of three years: it provided that Warfield should be presented as a star, beginning about September or October, 1901, and that he should be paid a weekly salary of $300 and should receive, further, 20 per cent. of the net profits of his professional exploitation during the first year, 25 per cent. during the second year, 30 per cent. during the third year, and 50 per cent. thereafter, if the contract should be renewed. This engagement also expressly required Belasco “personally to supervise the performances to be given” by Warfield as well as to provide a play for him to act in. The professional alliance thus begun between Belasco and Warfield has proved, for both parties to it, one of the most fortunate ever made in the Theatre. The personal friend{8}ship between them began many years earlier: Belasco has given the following glimpse of its beginning:

David Warfield was born in San Francisco on November 28, 1866. He began theatrical life as a programme boy, in the Standard Theatre of that city. Later he became an usher in the Bush Street Theatre there. His first professional appearance was made as a member of a travelling theatrical company at Napa, California, in 1888, as the specious, rascally Jew, Melter Moss, in “The Ticket-of-Leave Man.” That company was disbanded at the end of one week, and thereafter{9} Warfield appeared at several San Francisco variety halls, and in a piece called “About Town,” and gave imitations of actors whom he had seen,—among them Tommaso Salvini and Sarah Bernhardt,—and of “types” that he had observed in the streets of his native city. In 1890 he removed to New York and obtained professional employment, for a short time, in Paine’s Concert Hall, in Eighth Avenue. His next engagement was to act Hiram Joskins, in a play called “The Inspector,” produced by Mr. William A. Brady: that employment lasted two months. In March, 1891, he performed as Honora, in “O’Dowd’s Neighbors,” in a company led by Mark Murphy. In the season of 1891-’92 he acted with Russell’s Comedians, under the management of John H. Russell, appearing as John Smith, in “The City Directory.” In 1892-’93 he was seen as Washington Littlehales, in “A Nutmeg Match.” In September, 1895, he became associated with the New York Casino Theatre, where he remained for three years, acting in “About Town,” “The Merry Whirl,” “In Gay New York,” and “The Belle of New York,”—pieces which are correctly described as medleys of tinkling music and nonsense. In those “entertainments,” frivolous and often vulgar, Warfield presented several variations of substan{10}tially the same identity,—an expert semblance of the New York East Side Jew. In 1898 he joined the company of Messrs. Weber & Fields, and at their theatre, where he remained for three seasons, he appeared in various rough and commonplace travesties of contemporary theatrical successes, generally presenting, in different lights, his photographic copy of the huckstering, acquisitive, pusillanimous Jew of low life. One notable variation of that type was his assumption of The Old Man, in a burlesque of the offensive play of “Catherine.” Among the salient characteristics of his acting, in whatever parts he played, were fidelity to minute detail of appearance and demeanor and consistent and continuous preservation of the spirit of burlesque,—a spirit which combines imperturbable gravity of aspect with apparently profound sincerity in preposterous situations and while delivering extravagant, ludicrous speeches. True burlesque acting is a fine art and admirable as such, and Warfield was heartily approved in that field; but at the time when Belasco undertook to make him a star in the regular Theatre nobody, I believe, except the shrewd and prescient manager,—not even Warfield,—foresaw that within a few years he would have become one of the most popular serio-comic actors of the modern American Stage.{11}

WARFIELD AND “THE AUCTIONEER.”

The play in which Belasco elected to launch Warfield was entitled “The Auctioneer.” He had, at first, intended to write this play himself, calling it “The Only Levi.” But his time and energy were so preoccupied by labor in connection with the establishment of Miss Bates and the direction of Mrs. Carter’s career that he was unable to do so. He, therefore, employed a playwright known as Lee Arthur (Arthur Lee Kahn) to take his ideas and suggestions and weld them into dramatic form. The fabric which Arthur, in fulfilment of this employment, delivered to him was so wholly unfit for use (“an impossible thing, unworthy of production,” Belasco designated it) that he subsequently engaged the late Charles Klein to rewrite it in collaboration with Arthur, and, finally, was compelled himself to rehash and partly rectify it during rehearsals and early performances. It was first acted at the Hyperion Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, September 9, 1901. Warfield, testifying on the subject in court, several years later, made a statement,—which, surely, may be accepted as authoritative,—regarding this piece, as originally produced, which is terse and informing: “When we began to rehearse,” he said, “we had a{12} book filled with words. The play was a frost. It was the biggest failure you ever heard of, the opening night.... Mr. Belasco worked day and night upon the reconstruction of that play, from the time that he started with the rehearsals the week before we left New York [preliminary rehearsals had been conducted by Messrs. Klein and Arthur] until we came to New York and played, three weeks later.” The first performance of “The Auctioneer” in the metropolis occurred September 23, at the old Bijou Theatre, in Broadway, between Thirtieth and Thirty-first streets. The piece, as then made known, is a superficial, insubstantial one, which, however, contrives to illustrate some vicissitudes of fortune, and, in the main part, exemplifies the idea of a right philosophy in bearing them. That main part is a Jewish auctioneer, named Simon Levi, resident in Baxter Street, New York, and conducting an auction-room in the Five Points region. Levi, having inherited a modest but competent fortune, purchases a residence in a fashionable part of the city and invests the balance of his money in a Trust Company. Then, at a festival in celebration of the betrothal of his adopted daughter, a girl named Helga, he is apprized that his stock certificates in the Trust Company are bogus and that Richard Eagan, the affianced husband of

Photograph by Pach. Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID WARFIELD AS SIMON LEVI, IN “THE AUCTIONEER{13}”

Helga, for whom he has bought a partnership in a Wall Street brokerage firm, is to be arrested, charged with fraud in issuing them. Forced, with his dearly loved and cherished wife, to leave his new home in ignominious circumstances, Levi, though feeble in body and hurt in spirit, bravely begins anew the strife of living,—peddling toys in the streets. He discovers, ultimately, that the actual swindler who has ruined him is one Groode, the partner of his prospective son-in-law, from whom he recovers his wealth, delivering the culprit up to justice and relieving the distress of his own loved ones. This story, notwithstanding Belasco’s strenuous labor, lost little of its trite conventionality in its histrionic relation; but his capital stage management and the highly meritorious performance given by Warfield under his direction made of a flimsy, trivial play a notable and substantial success.

It was a shrewd device, when inducting Warfield into the regular Theatre, to do so not abruptly, but, as it were, by gentle actuation,—to provide for his first essay a character which was little more than an elaboration of his Jewish “specialty,” in which his early success had been gained, with an element of pathetic experience and feeling superadded to it. “I had been watching Warfield for years,” said Belasco, “and I felt sure that, if he{14} would only study, I could make a great character [sic—meaning “eccentric”] actor of him; I told him so, and when I thought he was ready I engaged him.” While I cannot altogether agree with Belasco in his opinion, often and warmly declared, that David Warfield is “a unique and great actor,”—not, that is, in the same sense that, for example, Henry Placide, William Warren, Joseph Jefferson and John Hare were great actors,—there is no question of his rare and fine talent nor of his steady growth in artistic stature. He has revealed in his acting an engaging personality, a genial disposition, a gentle manner, quick sympathy with right ideals, and capability of fervid emotion and simple pathos. Of all the many players, male and female, whom Belasco has guided and helped to develop none, in my judgment, owes more to his fostering care and assistance than Warfield does: it is extremely probable that, without Belasco’s aid, he would have remained to the end of his career a denizen of the music-halls, instead of becoming, as he has become, one of the most loved and admired actors of our Stage. As Simon Levi he presented a genuine, consistent impersonation in the vein of eccentric low comedy, at places touched with tender feeling and momentarily irradiated with pathos. His assumption of the physical attributes{15} of this particular Jew of low life,—the sallow complexion; the thin, wiry hair; the splayfooted, shambling gait; the voluble gestures, the singular dialect; the manner, now aggressive, now fawning,—was quite perfect; but his significant achievement was his success in denoting a steadfast, affectionate, patient nature beneath the mean outside of a petty huckster subjected to cruel disappointment and hardship.—This was the original cast of “The Auctioneer”:

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IN THE GRIP OF THE OCTOPUS.—ANCIENT METHODS IN MODERN BUSINESS.

“The Auctioneer” played at the Bijou Theatre until December 21,—105 consecutive performances being given there. On December 23 Warfield began a “road tour” in that play which lasted for twenty weeks, ending at the Illinois Theatre, Chicago, May 10, 1902. The net profit from this tour was $80,000,—certainly an amazing sum to be gained by presentation in the regular Theatre of an unknown star, fresh from the music halls, who, all told, had appeared in perhaps a score of productions! But Belasco’s actual profit from the fruits of his perspicacious judgment and enterprise was far less than that great sum. The reason of this seemingly strange fact is that in his professional exploitation of Warfield he had fallen into the ruthless grip of an iniquitous “booking-monopoly” which, practically, dominated for many years what are known as “the first-class theatres” of America and which is still perniciously active. Belasco’s conflict with that monopoly was long and bitter; thousands of columns have been devoted to it in the newspaper press of the country, and it has, at various times, occupied a prominent place in public attention. That conflict grew directly out

DAVID BELASCO

About 1885

Photograph by Falk.
Belasco’s Collection.

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of his undertaking the management of Warfield. Several actions at law have been incident to it. Testifying under oath in one of them, in 1905, Belasco gave an account of his experience in relation to “The Auctioneer” which I believe to be true in all essentials and of which I make the following abstract and brief chronicle:

After Belasco had undertaken to bring forward Warfield as a star he applied to Mr. Abraham Lincoln Erlanger, junior member of the firm of Klaw & Erlanger, theatrical managers and booking agents (i.e., “agents” who arbitrarily arranged tours by theatrical companies through American cities), for the purpose of making advantageous arrangements for Warfield to appear in New York and other cities. He applied to Mr. Erlanger because he was aware that it was, at the time, practically speaking, impossible for him to make such arrangements, except through the firm of Klaw & Erlanger, and that the junior member attended to such business for that firm. He called on Mr. Erlanger at his residence, No. 262 West Seventieth Street, New York, on Sunday, December 9, 1900, and stated his wish. Mr. Erlanger, in response, stated that “We [K. & E.] are not in this business for our health” and inquired “Where do we [K. & E.] come in?” Belasco replied that Klaw & Erlanger would{18} receive their customary commission, $300 to $400, for “booking” the play. To this Mr. Erlanger rejoined “Hell, about that: we got to get something more.” Belasco, after protesting that he was not, in any way, soliciting a favor; that he assumed all risk and liability in the venture, and that he felt it to be “a sort of blackmail” (and a very obvious sort, I should say!) to exact from him a share in whatever gains might accrue to him from presentation of Warfield, offered to surrender to Klaw & Erlanger 20 per cent. of such gains, in return for “a route.” This offer, swore Belasco, Mr. Erlanger rejected, demanding that, instead he (his firm) should receive 50 per cent. of any profits from the exploitation of Warfield. To Belasco’s inquiry as to why he should receive this unearned remuneration Mr. Erlanger rejoined “None of your damn’ business; I want half, and if I don’t get half out of Warfield you can’t have a route for him. I will crush you out; sit upon you; jump upon you, and push you out; crush you out of this theatrical business!” He further admonished Belasco thus: “Understand me, Belasco; hereafter, I want 50 per cent. of every damn’ thing you do!” Belasco, after taking several days to consider this extortionate proposal, decided that he could not avoid accepting it, if he was successfully to present{19} Warfield. He went, in company with his business manager, Benjamin F. Roeder, to Mr. Erlanger’s office and there communicated his decision to him, saying: “Mr. Erlanger, I can’t see any escape for me. I want it understood that you are compelling me to give up 50 per cent. I don’t think it is right, but, if you insist, there is nothing else for me to do.” The agreement was then made, the late Joseph Brooks, an associate of Klaw & Erlanger, being put forward, according to Belasco’s testimony, as a “dummy” in the written contract, in order that the partnership of Klaw & Erlanger might be concealed from their partners in the Theatrical Syndicate,—Messrs. Charles Frohman, Al. Hayman, Samuel F. Nirdlinger (known as S. F. Nixon) and J. Fred. Zimmermann,—this concealment being desired in order that Klaw & Erlanger, as booking agents, might be able to exact more profitable terms from their Syndicate partners than would be possible if that firm were generally known to possess “an interest” in the presentation of Warfield in “The Auctioneer.” Belasco, to substantiate his assertion that, actually, he was in partnership with Klaw & Erlanger, not with Brooks, in the said presentation, produced a number of paid cheques drawn to the order of that firm, to a total amount of more than $30,000,—which, he swore, repre{20}sented its 50 per cent. of profits from “The Auctioneer” during the period while that play was “booked” by Klaw & Erlanger,—a period which, from the record, seems to have ended on January 31, 1902, at Duluth, Minnesota. Brooks, by way of explaining those cheques, testified that he had directed Belasco’s business agent, Roeder, to make them payable to the order of Klaw & Erlanger because he, Brooks, was frequently absent from New York! Brooks admitted that he “made them [Klaw & Erlanger] a present of” two-thirds of the half-interest in presentation of “The Auctioneer” which he asserted was his.

TESTIMONY UNDER OATH:—BELASCO VERSUS ERLANGER.

If we accept Belasco’s sworn testimony as true, then it must appear that in the matter of arranging a tour for Warfield in “The Auctioneer” he was the victim of as brazen and shameful an instance of blackmail as has ever been perpetrated. It must, however, in justice be specified that Mr. Erlanger, also testifying under oath, flatly denied every material statement made by Belasco bearing on this matter: the effect of Mr. Erlanger’s sworn testimony, if it be accepted as true, must be to exhibit Belasco as a villain and a liar. The eminent{21} lawyer Samuel Untermyer, Esq., who appeared for Belasco in the legal actions from the records of which this conflictive testimony is cited, seems to have been strongly impressed by its mutually exclusive nature: in reading certain affidavits in the cases he remarked that they were “so contradictory that they reveal a most flagrant and rank perjury on one side or the other.” But every man’s testimony should receive the degree of respect and credence to which his known character and reputation entitle it. I have known Belasco for more than thirty years and, though he is (as I know and in this Memoir have shown) often inaccurate and heedless in regard to chronologic sequence, I know him to be trustworthy as to substance in the statement of material facts; in short, his known character and reputation are good. Erlanger, on the contrary, is a person whose public record, as known to me, is wholly consistent with Belasco’s account of his conduct,—a cowardly, hectoring bully, of violent temper and unsavory repute. Apart from this, since Erlanger has testified relative to certain affidavits made by him “The things I swear to I only look at casually” (!!!) I see no reason to believe that the things he “swears to,” derogatory of others, are worthy of any respect or credence. It would be pleasant to me to avoid any mention of this{22} person, his character and proceedings; but it is impossible to do so when writing an authentic account of the life of Belasco or of the American Stage since about 1896. “He [Erlanger],” Belasco has declared, “told me that if I refused his terms he would compel me to go into the streets and blacken my face to earn a living. He said that I spoiled the public instead of compelling them to take what the Trust chose to give, and that a man with ideals in the theatrical business wound up with a benefit within three years.” There is, therefore, I believe, ample ground for the feeling toward and opinion about Erlanger which Belasco expressed in his testimony: “I detest the man and his methods. I detest him to-day. I think he is the most abhorred man in the country, because he strikes hard bargains, and he makes people give up more than any other man in the country.”—The suits at law referred to in the foregoing passage (suits brought by Joseph Brooks against David Belasco and David Belasco Company, and by David Belasco Company against Marc Klaw, Abraham L. Erlanger and Joseph Brooks, the purposes of which were to establish whether Belasco and Brooks or Belasco and Klaw & Erlanger were partners in the presentation of David Warfield in “The Auctioneer” and to{23} secure an accounting under the partnership agreement) were tried before the Hon. James J. Fitzgerald, J., sitting in equity, at Special Session of Part V., Supreme Court, State of New York, April 6 to 26, 1905. The decision and judgment were against Belasco, and his case was carried on appeal to the Appellate Division, First Department, of the Supreme Court, April 20, 1906.

LAW VERSUS JUSTICE.

That adverse decision and judgment were based on a technicality,—on a point of law, not on a point of fact. The learned Justice who rendered decision and pronounced judgment did not find that Belasco had failed to prove his contention that, actually, he was in partnership with Klaw & Erlanger, not with Brooks, in presentation of “The Auctioneer.” He found that “parol evidence” could not be held to alter the effect of a written and sealed instrument of engagement. “The rule,” he declared, “allowing parol proof of an undisclosed principal is limited to simple contracts, for if the agreement be a sealed one, only the parties thereto subscribing can be held bound.” The question of prime public interest in this case (and it is of prime public interest, because the{24} veracity, reputation and standing of one of the most eminent and influential men in our Theatre are affected by it) is not whether Belasco could, in law, under a strict rule of evidence, enforce against Klaw & Erlanger the contract actually signed by Brooks: the question is whether or not that contract was, in fact, signed by Brooks as “a man of straw” for Klaw & Erlanger, and by Belasco under duress. I cannot conceive that any intelligent and judicious person could read the testimony adduced and reach any other conclusion but that Belasco had proved his allegations as to fact. And it seems clear to me that the learned Justice must have felt satisfied that Belasco had proved his case, as to fact,—otherwise he would not have been at such pains to argue in extenso the incompetency of such proof under the rule.

A FAITHFUL FRIEND:—WARFIELD FOR BELASCO. THE END OF “THE AUCTIONEER.”

Warfield’s second season in “The Auctioneer” began, September 8, 1902, at the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, and lasted for 39 weeks,—closing at the Victoria Theatre, New York, May 30, 1903. 315 performances were given and the net profits were $70,000. His third season began at the Harlem Opera House, New York, September 28. It was in{25} December, 1903, that Brooks applied to Judge David Leventritt for a receiver for “The Auctioneer.” Warfield, then acting in New Orleans, being apprised of this application, declared that he would “not play under the management of Klaw & Erlanger’s representative, a receiver, or any one but David Belasco.” That declaration, being published in the newspaper press, was construed by Judge Leventritt as an attempt on the part of Warfield to coerce the court in the matter of appointing a receiver and,—remarking that if it had not been for what he deemed to be an attempt at coercion he would have been inclined to appoint Belasco as the receiver,—he named W. M. K. Olcott. Warfield thereupon refused to continue acting, his tour was summarily closed, January 10, 1904,—two weeks’ salary being paid by Belasco to the members of the company, in lieu of notice,—and Warfield returned to New York. Before leaving New Orleans he published this statement:

After his arrival in New York, having read the remarks of the judge in appointing a receiver, Warfield made this further statement:

DAVID WARFIELD

Photograph by White.
Belasco’s Collection.

{27}

Brooks applied for a mandatory injunction to compel Warfield to continue acting in “The Auctioneer,” under the receivership direction of Mr. Olcott, and arguments supporting and opposing that application were heard before Justice Leventritt in the Supreme Court on January 26, 1904. Counsel for Warfield contended that while the court{28} might enjoin Warfield from acting for any persons outside of his contract, it had no jurisdiction to compel him to act if he declined to do so. Justice Leventritt agreed with that view of the matter and held that a mandatory injunction as prayed for could not issue. Warfield did not act again for eight months.

TEMPERAMENTAL SYMPATHY.—EARLY READING: “THE LOW SUN MAKES THE COLOR.”

In his youth Belasco was an omnivorous reader (as he continues to be), but his favorite reading was that of History, and among historical characters that specially enthralled his imagination was Mary, Queen o’ Scots. Indeed, he has, in conversation, given me the impression that, from an early age, his mind has been deeply interested in the study of those famous women of history whose conduct of life is shown to have been governed by their appetites and passions. That taste seems morbid, but it is readily explicable. Such women have been, are, and always will be a direct spring of tense, dramatic, romantic situations and tragic events, and sometimes their experience involves incidents and culminates in catastrophes which make a strong appeal to persons who possess, as Belasco does, a highly emotional{29} temperament. Queen Guinevere, in Tennyson’s pathetic “Idyl,” remarks that “the low sun makes the color.” Such women as Malcolm’s Queen Margaret of Scotland or Mme. Roland, probably, would be viewed by Belasco with merely languid respect or indifference. Such a woman as Navarre’s Marguerite de Valois, or Queen Catherine the Second of Russia, or the irresistible siren Barbara Villiers, or that all-conquering captivator Arabella Stuart,—whose image lives, perpetual, in sculpture and, as Brittania, on the coins of Great Britain,—would, on the contrary, provide for him an exceedingly interesting study. It is not, therefore, altogether surprising that when Belasco had established Mrs. Leslie Carter as a successful star it pleased him to select for public illustration in a drama one of the most depraved and dissolute feminine characters that hang on the fringes of history,—the shameless hussy who, about 145 years ago, was picked out of the streets of Paris, and under the auspices of the most notorious titled blackguard of his time wedded to a complaisant degenerate, in order that she might succeed Mme. Pompadour as the mistress of King Louis the Fifteenth of France. Marie Jeanne Becu (1746-1793), who began life in Paris as a milliner, became a courtesan, under the name of Mlle. Lange, was{30} later a lure for a gambling house, then, ennobled as the “Countess du Barry,” was installed as the mistress of the corrupt King Louis the Fifteenth,—whom practically she ruled for five years,—and finally was slaughtered in the Reign of Terror, is the theme of one of the most pictorial, popular, and successful of Belasco’s plays. His selection of a story of that remarkable female’s adventures for dramatic exploitation was not, however, wholly spontaneous. In 1899, aware that a successor to the torrid termagant of the Paris music-halls would presently be required for Mrs. Carter’s use, he began to cast about for a play with a central character suited to her personality and method. Not finding anything which he deemed satisfactory in the numerous dramas, old as well as new, by many authors, which he examined, he began, regretfully, to contemplate the necessity of writing one to fit his star,—regretfully, because he was weary and would have been glad to avoid adding the labor of authorship to that of business and stage management. His election had practically fallen on Queen Elizabeth as the central figure to be shown, when he abruptly determined to visit England, partly in faint hope of finding there a drama which would serve his end; more with intent to refresh his mind by change and travel and to stimulate himself to{31} his new task by visiting all the places associated with the life and reign of Elizabeth. He sailed from New York on June 14, 1899. Soon after he arrived in London an American playbroker, Miss Elisabeth Marbury, communicated to him that “she had a great idea for a part for Mrs. Carter.” Belasco, entertaining a high opinion of Miss Marbury’s judgment and rejoiced at the sudden prospect of escaping the labor of authorship, immediately went to see her, at Versailles, in France, and there was informed that the French poet M. Jean Richepin “proposed to write a play founded on the life of du Barry.” The appended account of what followed has been written by Belasco, and it provides explicit information on a subject that at one time was disputed with acrimony in the newspaper press and occupied much of the attention of the theatre-going public:

GENESIS OF BELASCO’S DU BARRY.—CHARACTER OF THE HISTORIC ORIGINAL.

Speaking of the character of “the little French milliner,” Belasco has said: “History paints du Barry as the most despised woman of her time. She is said to have been the most evil creature antedating the French Revolution. I had a vast number of books relating to du Barry, and ransacked them all for one redeeming trait in her character: not one kind word. Alas! Not one! For the first time in my life I found myself in the hands of a really bad woman. I had never met one before (bad men I have met, but women,—never!). I felt a desire to rush to her defence.... But—I need not have troubled myself to defend the lady, for, good or bad, from the first night until the close of the play three years later the public liked the French milliner and the houses were sold out.”

A little more careful ransacking of his vast du Barry library might have revealed some of the kind words about “the lady” which Belasco sought. Voltaire, in 1773, signified his appreciation of du{34} Barry’s charms in the following couplet, which certainly carries adulation to an extreme limit:

The following description of this handsome female explains, at least partially, the influence that she exerted. It was written by the Comte de Belleval, one of her many admirers:

A FANCIFUL FABRIC.—“DU BARRY” FIRST PRODUCED.

The play which Belasco fabricated and produced under the name of “Du Barry” is radically fanciful: its uses historic names, but it is not, in any sense, history. As in many precedent cases so in this one,

Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.

MRS. LESLIE CARTER AS DU BARRY

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authentic records were ignored and an arbitrary, gilt-edged, rosy ideal took the place of truth. Nell Gwynn, in the person of Miss Henrietta Crosman, had worn the halo but a little time before (Bijou Theatre, New York, October 9, 1900), and if Nell Gwynn could wear it, why not Marie Jeanne? This burnishing process, to be sure, is diffusive of vast and general misinformation, but for most persons that seems to be quite as useful as accurate knowledge, and, after all, if the Stage is to present imperial wantons in any fashion it may as well present them in a decent one. The gay du Barry as seen by the dramatist,—or, at least, as shown by him,—was abundantly frail, but she was also fond, and while she did not scruple to pick up the royal pocket-handkerchief she nevertheless, in her woman’s heart, remained true to her first love: that is the story of the play. The adventurous actual du Barry became the paramour of Cossé-Brissac, after King Louis the Fifteenth had died and after she had been exiled from the French Court. In the play the lady hides that lover in her bed (he has been wounded, and she persuades him to seek this retirement by pounding on his wounds with a heavy candlestick, until he becomes insensible), so that the jealous King, committing the blunder of Byron’s Don Alfonso, in “Don Juan,” cannot find him: she{36} also wields the convenient candlestick with which to smash the sconce of an interloping relative who otherwise would betray him; she defies, for his sake, the gracious Majesty of France and every appurtenance thereunto belonging; and, at the last, she goes pathetically to the guillotine, still loving him and still deploring her innocent, youthful past, when they were happy lovers together, when all was peace, joy, and hope,—because as the old poet Rogers prettily phrases it, “Life was new and the heart promised what the fancy drew.” As a matter of fact, the amiable countrymen of du Barry sent her to the guillotine, in the winter of 1793, because they had ascertained that she was too rich to be a patriot and also, probably, had entered on a secret correspondence with their enemies in England.

As an epigraph to his play the dramatist selected a remark by Oliver Wendell Holmes, that “not the great historical events but the personal incidents that call up sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle reach us more nearly.” That statement sounds well, but it labors under the disadvantage of not being true. The play, however, exemplifies it to the extent of showing its heroine chiefly in her “pang”—a condition which, seemingly, ensues upon her being a feather-brained fool, but which she loquaciously ascribes to Fate and a ruth{37}less appetite for “pretty things.” There is some lightness at the start, when Jeanne is a milliner, but the opening act proves to be practically needless, since the play does not actually begin till after the second curtain has been raised. Then the volatile girl is tempted by the offer of the King’s love, and in order that she may accept it her honest lover is made to misunderstand her, in an incredible manner, such as is possible only on the stage. In the Third Act she has become a great personage, almost a queen, and that act, which is interesting, various, and dramatic, terminates with a highly effective scene, possible in a play, but impossible in life,—when du Barry’s wounded lover, falling insensible on that lady’s bed and being carelessly covered with drapery, remains there, sufficiently visible to a crowd of eager and suspicious pursuers who are searching for him—but do not find him. The rest of the piece shows the King’s efforts to capture the fugitive and du Barry’s schemes and pleadings to save him, and it terminates with a pathetic farewell between the lovers as Jeanne, deserted and forlorn, is being conveyed to the guillotine.

Mrs. Carter, adept in coquetry, displayed, as du Barry, her abundant physical fascination, but if she had refrained from removing her shoes and{38} showing her feet at brief intervals during the performance she would have been considerably more pleasing in that easy vein of bewitchment:—they were not even pretty feet. In serious business the method of Mrs. Carter as du Barry was to work herself into a state of violent excitement, to weep, vociferate, shriek, rant, become hoarse with passion, and finally to flop and beat the floor. That method has many votaries and by them is thought to be “acting” and is much admired, but to judicious observers it is merely the facile expedient of transparent artifice and the ready resource of a febrile, unstable nature. An actor who loses self-control can never really control an audience. There were, nevertheless, executive force and skill in Mrs. Carter’s performance, after it had been often repeated under the guiding government of her sagacious and able manager.

Belasco’s “Du Barry” was first produced at the New National Theatre, Washington, D. C., December 12, 1901. The first performance of it in New York occurred December 25, that year, at the Criterion Theatre, where it was continuously acted till the close of the season, May 31, 1902, receiving 165 consecutive performances. The play is comprehended in five acts and eight scenes and it implicates fifty-five persons,—of whom five are{39} conspicuous characters by whom the burden of the action is sustained,—and a host of supernumeraries. It was set on the stage in a scenic investiture of extreme costliness and ostentation, being, indeed, almost overwhelmed in the profusion of its accessories of spectacle. Referring to this extreme opulence of environment and attire, Belasco has said: “I offered Charles Frohman a half-interest in my ‘Du Barry,’ but he declined to come in with me because of the immense expense. His judgment was logical, too. ‘Du Barry’ might easily have ruined any manager. The expenses of the production were such that there was little profit to be made. When the curtain rose it afforded the public an opportunity to see how a manager’s hands were forced by the very prodigality of the subject he had chosen. My production was lavish because the play was laid in a lavish time. The mere ‘suggestion’ of luxury would not do,—or so I thought. Were I to do it again, it would be from an entirely different standpoint.” I much doubt whether, if the venture were to be made anew, Belasco would make it in a different way. At any rate, the purpose he had in mind was fully accomplished: the immense prodigality of his presentment profoundly impressed and greatly delighted his audiences, and the Criterion was densely crowded at every performance. The{40} two most striking scenes were those of Act Three, which showed a room in the Palace of Versailles, and the Last Scene of Act Five, in front of a milliner’s shop. The latter portrayed a street in Paris, shadowed by strange, “high-shouldered” houses, through which the wretched du Barry, abject and terrified, was dragged to execution,—huddled in a tumbril, attended only by a priest, the Papal Nuncio, and followed by a fierce, hooting rabble, while other men and women appeared at various house-windows, to jeer and curse her. It was an afflictingly pathetic scene, conceived and executed with perfect sense of dramatic effect and perfect mastery of the means of creating it.

This was the original cast of “Du Barry”:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

CHARLES A. STEVENSON AS KING LOUIS THE FIFTEENTH, IN BELASCO’S “DU BARRY”

{41}

{42}

RICHEPIN AND THE “DU BARRY” LAWSUIT.

After Belasco had rejected Richepin’s play about du Barry, returned the manuscript of it to him, and announced that he would produce a play about that celebrated favorite of royalty, written by himself, there was much pother in theatrical circles and much newspaper parade of warnings and threats, by Richepin and various of his agents, of the dire consequences which would fall upon him for so doing. The once widely known firm of lawyers, Howe & Hummel, were the American representatives of the French Authors’ Society, which supported Richepin, and Mr. A. Hummel,—who, 1905, was convicted of subornation of perjury, imprisoned for one year on Blackwells Island, and debarred,—who was the active member of that firm, on January 25, 1902, brought suit against Belasco,

MRS. LESLIE CARTER AS DU BARRY

Photograph by Sarony.

{43}

on behalf of the French author, alleging, substantially, that Belasco’s “Du Barry” was, in fact, Richepin’s drama of similar name (“La du Barry”) and demanding an accounting for the receipts from representations of it. Belasco’s reply to the complaint in that suit was served on March 4, 1902, and it was explicit and conclusive. In that answer he specifies that on July 22, 1899, he entered into a contract with M. Richepin, which that author obtained “by false and fraudulent representations,” wherein he agreed to write for Belasco a “new and original” play about du Barry, which was to be “entirely satisfactory to this defendant [Belasco],”—failing which he was at liberty to reject the work and return it to Richepin. Belasco, “relying upon the said representations, statements, and promises, and not otherwise, and believing the same to be true, paid to the plaintiff, on the signing and execution of the agreement, the sum of $1,000”; and, on or about July 1, 1901, upon receiving from Richepin (in London, during the run of “Zaza”) the manuscript, in French, of “La du Barry,” he paid $1,500 more. Of his own play, “Du Barry,” Belasco swore that it is “wholly composed and originated by this defendant, without any aid or assistance whatever from the play alleged to have been written by” Richepin. The latter’s play, Belasco pointed out, was “not new{44} and original,” as required by the contract between them, but was “taken, plagiarized, pirated, and copied, by the plaintiff, from public sources and publications, common and open to the public, and that the said play was wholly unsatisfactory to him [Belasco], of which fact he notified the plaintiff, and that the said manuscript was thereafter returned to, and accepted by, the plaintiff.” A motion on behalf of Richepin to strike out these damaging clauses from Belasco’s answer was made and argued before Justice Freeman, in the Supreme Court, March 13,—Mr. Hummel maintaining that the allegations of fraud and plagiarism by Richepin were “irrelevant and redundant.” The motion was peremptorily denied,—after which the legal ardor of the French poet and his agents cooled and his suit languished: Richepin never proceeded in the case (which appears to have been an effort to extort money from Belasco), and it was formally discontinued in January, 1908.

Richepin’s play (called “Du Barri”) was produced by Mrs. Cora Urquhart Potter, March 18, 1905, at the Savoy Theatre, London, and it was a complete failure. “I had planned to take Mrs. Carter to London, in ‘Du Barry,’” Belasco has told me, “but Mrs. Potter’s failure was so decisive that I gave up all thought of attempting to do so.{45}” Writing about the “Du Barry” lawsuit, Belasco says: “Our quarrel was long and heated, but eventually all was ‘forgotten and forgiven,’ and I could once more read Richepin’s mellow poetry without tearing my hair, and Richepin said publicly, ‘The rest is silence,’ or something as nearly like it as the Frenchman can say,”—which, truly, was most generous on the part of “the Frenchman,” in view of the fact that, altogether, Belasco had paid him $8,500 in a venture toward making which he had, at most, contributed merely the suggestion of a subject.

A GRACIOUS TRIBUTE:—“REMEMBER THAT WE LOVED YOU.”

On the first day of the new year, 1902, Belasco was the recipient of a gracious tribute which, as he feelingly said to me, is one of his most cherished memories. The performance ended about half-past eleven on the night of December 31, 1901, and a little before midnight all the members of the company concerned in representation of his drama assembled on the stage about Belasco, Mrs. Carter, and Charles A. Stevenson, ostensibly to greet the new year. Just at midnight beautiful silver chimes slowly rang out the hour, and as Belasco turned to{46} wish the assembled company a happy New Year Mr. Stevenson stepped forward before he could speak and, uncovering a massive and beautiful loving-cup of silver set upon an ebony pedestal, presented it to Belasco “as a token of the great esteem and true affection with which, during the long and arduous preparation of ‘Du Barry,’ every member of your organization has learned to regard you.” Belasco, always warm-hearted and peculiarly susceptible to even casual acts of courtesy and kindness, was so much affected by the cordial feeling displayed by all about him in the conveyance of this rich gift that for several moments he was unable to make any acknowledgment. Then, speaking with difficulty and almost in a whisper, he said: “I—I thank you, all—all—from my heart. It is very lovely. You have worked so hard, with me and for me—all of you—so nobly and so unselfishly that I feel it is I who should give a loving-cup to you—to every member of the company. In all my experience I have not received a more generous, touching tribute—anything which I have appreciated more. I am poor in words—I can only say to all of you thank you, thank you, thank you—a thousand thousand times.”

As Belasco ceased speaking the orchestra began to play the air of “Maryland, My Maryland,” passing

Photograph by the Misses Selby. Belasco’s collection.

BELASCO, ABOUT 1902

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from that into other melodies associated with his successful plays and closing with a plaintive tune written specially for use in “Du Barry.”

On the “Du Barry” loving-cup there are three inscriptions. The first is

Washington, D. C.
December 12, 1901
Mrs Leslie Carter in David Belasco’s Play “Du Barry”

The second is

Presented to
Mr. David Belasco by the Members of His Company
New Year’s, 1902

The third is a line from the play of “Du Barry”:

“Remember that we loved you; we loved you
through it all”

THE THEATRIC RICHMOND “LOOKS PROUDLY O’ER THE CROWN.”

The upward progress which Belasco made in the Theatre within a period of six years is amazing. When the curtain was raised for the first performance of his “The Heart of Maryland,” at the Herald Square, in October, 1895, he possessed almost nothing except his reputation as one of the{48} most skilful of stage managers and a copious crop of debts. When the curtain fell on the last performance in 1901 of “Du Barry,” at the Criterion, he was, as dramatist, director, and theatrical manager, known, esteemed, and recognized throughout the English-speaking world: his debts were all discharged: he possessed a competent fortune, hosts of admirers, troops of friends: within less than three years he had made three memorably successful presentments in the British capital (where American ventures are supposed always to fail!): three of the most accomplished and popular actors of the American Stage, Mrs. Carter, Blanche Bates, and David Warfield, were under his direction and closely bound to him. The whirligig of Time had indeed brought striking changes. Lester Wallack, Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough—they were but names in theatrical management. Augustin Daly, the great representative manager of the Theatre in America, was dead. Albert M. Palmer, once Daly’s rival, was obscurely employed as a “business agent” for Richard Mansfield, while Mansfield’s own ambitious but ill-fated essay in theatre management (at the Garrick, New York, in 1895) was completely forgotten; Mansfield was definitely committed to the policy of a “travelling star,” and the Theatre in New York was Charles{49} Frohman’s much vaunted Department Store. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Grey Fiske, at the Manhattan, were indeed maintaining an admirable dramatic company and making an earnest endeavor in authentic theatrical management. But, in general, the mean spirit of the petty huckster and the sordid, selfish policy of trade monopoly dominated the American Stage; the chair of artistic managerial sovereignty was empty, “the sword unswayed, the empire unpossessed,” and Belasco, ambitiously emulative of great exemplars in his vocation, like a theatric Richmond, looked “proudly o’er the crown.” He was, unquestionably, the natural successor to Wallack, Booth, and Daly; but in order to seize their pre-eminence, to win and wear their laurel crown of leadership, he required to have what they had each possessed,—namely, a theatre of his own in the capital. There seemed no chance of his obtaining one: yet, without such a citadel, notwithstanding all his labor and achievement, he might easily be crushed: the oppressive hand of the Theatrical Syndicate (in his estimation veritably a “wretched, bloody, and usurping boar”) had already been laid heavily on Belasco: a half-interest in his presentment of Warfield in “The Auctioneer” had been extorted from him and an equal share in his exploitations of Mrs. Carter and Miss Bates had{50} been demanded, though not yielded up. What if he should be denied “routes” for those players? He had brought out Mrs. Carter in “Du Barry” at the Criterion not because he wished to do so,—that house, which accommodated only 932 persons, being far too small for an advantageous season,—but because it was the only theatre in New York which he could secure. Charles Frohman was its manager and Charles Frohman was a member of the Syndicate: the Criterion might be closed to him at the end of his current contract. If shut off from the “first class theatres” of the leading cities “on the road” and shut out of New York he would practically be ruined. These and similar considerations gave grounds for grave uneasiness to Belasco. On the afternoon of January 7, 1902, he was alone in his office, a little room in Carnegie Hall, as he had been every afternoon for more than a week, seeking to devise some means of obtaining control of a New York theatre for a term of years. Toward evening he was disturbed by a knocking at the office door. His visitor, when admitted, proved to be the theatrical manager Oscar Hammerstein, between whom and himself there existed merely a casual acquaintance. “Mr. Belasco,” said Hammerstein, without any preliminaries, “the Theatrical Syndicate is trying to crush me out of business. Valuable attrac{51}tions have been prevented from patronizing my houses this season. I must have attractions. You must have a New York theatre, or you will find yourself helpless. I have one in Forty-second Street, the Republic, which I am willing to turn over to you. I have come up here on an impulse, on the chance that you may be willing to take over control of the Republic.” Belasco instantly replied: “Mr. Hammerstein, I shall be very glad to take over your theatre.” In less than a week all details of agreement had been arranged between the two managers, and on January 14, in the office of Judge A. J. Dittenhoefer, they signed a contract whereby Belasco undertook the management of the Republic Theatre. That contract was for a period of five years, with an option of renewal by Belasco for another five years, and under it he assumed full government of the theatre,—engaging himself to pay to Hammerstein a rental of $30,000 a year and 10 per cent. of the gross receipts from all performances given there. It was also stipulated that neither Mrs. Carter, Blanche Bates, David Warfield, nor any other “star or attraction” under Belasco’s management should play at any other New York theatre, “except for one week each at the Harlem Opera House and the Grand Opera House.” “That lease,” Belasco has declared to me, “was a great{52} thing for Hammerstein,—but it was a greater thing for me, and I did not forget that afterward, when I was paying him from $60,000 to $72,000 a year for his theatre. When some of my friends used to say to me, ‘Don’t you realize that you are paying Hammerstein an unheard-of rent for his house?’ I used to answer, ‘And don’t you realize how very lucky I am to be in a position to pay him an unheard-of rent?’”

A DANGEROUS ACCIDENT.—ALTERING THE REPUBLIC.

A few weeks subsequent to signing the lease of the Republic Theatre with Hammerstein Belasco met with an accident which came near to putting an end to all his projects by causing his death. On the night of March 16 he witnessed a performance of his “Du Barry,” at the Criterion. While the setting was being placed for the last scene—a cumbrous, intricate setting, in which he took special interest—he left his box in the auditorium and went upon the stage to direct the work. As he did so a large and heavy cornice which was being swung into position high in air broke and fell, striking him full upon the head. Another piece of scenery, thrown out of balance by the falling cornice, collapsed, and{53} in a moment Belasco was buried beneath a mass of tangled wreckage. He was with difficulty extricated, unconscious and profusely bleeding. A physician was called, who, after a quarter of an hour, having stanched the bleeding, succeeded in restoring the injured manager to consciousness. It was at first feared that he had sustained a fracture of the skull, but happily he was found to be suffering only from shock and loss of blood due to a severe scalp wound. He was removed to his home and within a few days he had regained his usual health.

After carefully examining the interior of the Republic Theatre Belasco became convinced that it required to be altered for his use. “The stage was wrong, the house was wrong, and the colors set my teeth on edge,” he has told me. Hammerstein was willing that he should make any changes he desired. Belasco, accordingly, took possession of the theatre at about the end of March and, on April 19, 1902, the work of altering it so as to make it conform to his wishes was begun. He started that work intending to spend from $15,000 to $20,000 on improvements. When it was finished he had expended more than $150,000. The whole interior of the building was torn out, leaving nothing but four walls and part of the roof. Toward the front{54} of the property a space was blasted out of solid rock wherein, beneath the auditorium, were built a retiring-room for women and a smoking-room for men. A sub-stage chamber, more than twenty-five feet deep, was also blasted out of the rock,—incidental to which excavation a perpetual spring of water was tapped. Talking with me about his experience in remodelling the Republic Theatre, Belasco, in his characteristically cheery and philosophical way, said: “I remember your telling me about the trouble Edwin Booth got into, blasting out a ledge of rock when he was building his theatre [Booth’s Theatre, Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue, 1868-’69], but I don’t believe he had half as bad a time as we did when that spring broke loose! I was so crazy about having my own theatre I wanted to have a hand in everything and I used to go down and fire some of the blasts, in spite of the protests of my family and staff, who expected I’d blow myself to Kingdom Come. And it was I who fired the charge that started that spring! My boys in the theatre used to call me ‘Moses’ after that, for that I did smite the rock and there came water out of it. We damned it, heartily, I can tell you, but it was a long time before we could get it dammed, and it cost me a small fortune to have the stage cavity cemented in.”

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

BELASCO’S “STUDIO” IN THE FIRST BELASCO THEATRE

{55}

One day, during the work of alteration, a stranger presented himself to Belasco, demanding that he be permitted to inspect the property and explaining that he held a mortgage on it. “I had nothing to do with the mortgage,” Belasco told me; “that was Mr. Hammerstein’s business; but I let him come in. He surveyed the scene of devastation with horror, standing on a scaffold, high up, and gazing into the black pit. ‘God above me!’ he exclaimed, after a little while, ‘I’ve got a mortgage on four walls and a hole in the ground!’—and he fled. I never saw him again.”

THE FIRST BELASCO THEATRE.

The work of demolishing and rebuilding the Republic for Belasco was performed in five months. When it was completed he possessed one of the handsomest and best equipped playhouses in the world. “The theatre,” Belasco has often said, “is, first of all, a place for the acting of plays.” That simple statement might be deemed a platitude, were it not for the striking fact that its maker is the only theatrical manager of the present day who practically recognizes its truth: to the majority of other managers the theatre, it seems, is, primarily, a place for almost anything rather than acting,—is, in fact,{56} first of all, a place for the exploitation of their tedious conceit and the making of money by any means. The stage of the Belasco Theatre was designed and built with the purpose of obviating the disadvantages of restricted space and of affording every possible mechanical aid to the acting of plays. The entire “acting surface” of that stage—the entire surface, that is, which could be revealed to the view of the spectators,—was a mosaic of close-fitting trapdoors, so that on occasion it might be opened at any place desired. In the centre of the stage was “an elevator,”—that is, in fact, a movable platform,—fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long. Upon this platform, when it had been lowered into the cellar cavity, were placed the paraphernalia required in the setting of the scenes,—articles technically designated as “properties” (furniture, etc.), and “set pieces” (solid, heavy parts of scenic rooms, houses, etc.)—which were then raised to the stage level for use: when done with, these paraphernalia were sunk again into the cellarage, where the platform bearing them was shifted aside and another similar one, loaded with material for the next setting, replaced it and was in turn raised to the stage.

The drops (painted cloths), ceilings, etc., were all arranged for hoisting into the flies, as in most{57} modern theatres; but Belasco had the ropes by which these articles were raised from his stage so attached to counterweights and cranks that one man could, with ease, raise pieces which, in former times, it had required from three to six men to hoist.

The footlights were so arranged that the light from them was diffused upon the stage and players without the spectators, even those in the upper stage boxes, being able to perceive whence it came. The electric lamps in the footlights, borders, etc., were placed in small, individual compartments, so that no unintentional blending of lights could occur: but every necessary different color of lamp was provided and all the lamps in the house, whether upon the stage or in the auditorium, were connected “on resistance,”—that is, so connected with the electric current feed wires that the lights could be (as invariably they were) turned up or down, as required, gently, by degrees. In short, every arrangement that knowledge, experience, and prevision could suggest as necessary and that liberality, ingenuity, and care could devise was provided. “I have an even better electrical equipment in my present theatre than I had in my first house,” Belasco has said to me, “and I am proud of it. But in my first house I had the very best there{58} was in the world at the time. I had a plant that would have lit a palace: in fact, I very much doubt whether there was a palace anywhere in all the world as well equipped in the matter of lighting.”

Belasco’s first theatre contained seating accommodation for 950 persons,—300 in the gallery, 200 in the balcony, and 450 on the orchestra, or main, floor. No effort or expense was spared to make the house in every way comfortable and delightful to all who visited it. Outside, in front, a massive iron marquee-awning shadowed the main entrance, overhanging the street-walk out to the curb. The doors of the theatre were of heavy wrought iron and opened into a lobby which was, in fact, a sort of reception hall. The walls and ceilings of this lobby were sheathed in oak panelling of antique finish, and large, luxurious seats of heavy oak, upholstered in leather, were placed at each end of it. Across the rear of the auditorium, on the orchestra floor, close to the hindermost row of seats, extended a massive screen built of rosewood, with heavy crystal lights, to protect the audience within from drafts of air and to exclude street sounds. The colors of the decorations were reds, greens, and deep golden browns,—all used in warm, subdued shades. The rear and side walls were hung with rich tapestries, depicting an autumnal forest. The

Photograph by Byron. Author’s Collection.

BELASCO IN HIS STUDIO AT THE FIRST BELASCO THEATRE

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floors were covered with heavy, soft, dark-green velvet carpets. The seats were upholstered in silk tapestry of a complementary shade of silver-green color, and on the back of each of them was embroidered the semblance of a bee,—fit emblem of Belasco’s energetic, ceaseless toil. The ceiling and dome were handsomely decorated in dull gold, sparingly used, with soft grays and rose. There were two drop curtains,—one of heavy, rose-colored velvet; the other an old-fashioned one of plain green baize. Every detail of the architecture and decorations was delicate and harmonious, and the general effect was at once opulent and restful. The architects employed by Belasco were Messrs. Bigelow, Wallis & Cotton, of New York: the director was Mr. Rudolph Allen. But the active inspiration of all this beauty and luxury provided for the public enjoyment, the conglutinating and executive force which in the face of manifold dissensions and difficulties held all the associate laborers together and drove through to successful completion all the varied work of invention and reconstruction, was Belasco himself. At last he had carried bricks for himself to some lasting purpose! When he opened his playhouse it was in every detail as well as in every essential a new theatre, veritably the creation of his mind and will, and he very appro{60}priately dropped the name of the Republic and called it The Belasco Theatre.

“AFTER THIRTY YEARS OF LABOR.”—BELASCO IN HIS OWN THEATRE;—THE OPENING NIGHT.

The first Belasco Theatre was opened on Monday night, September 29, 1902, with a revival of “Du Barry.” The night was sultry, but the house was crowded, in every part, far beyond its normal capacity; the performance was one of remarkable fluency, vigor, and intensity, and it was received by the audience with well-nigh frantic manifestations of enthusiasm. After the Third Act there were more than twenty curtain calls, and finally, in response to vociferous crying for him by name, Belasco came upon the stage, dishevelled, pale, and weary, but very happy, and addressed the audience, saying:

DAVID BELASCO

Photograph by the Misses Selby.
Author’s Collection.

{61}

THE FIRST PROGRAMME.

The following is the programme, in detail, of the first performance given in Belasco’s Theatre on what was, in many ways, the happiest and proudest night of all his life:

BELASCO THEATRE

BROADWAY AND FORTY-SECOND STREET

Under the Sole Management of David Belasco

Evenings at 8 precisely Matinees Saturdays at 2

D A V I D   B E L A S C O

PRESENTS

M r s .   L e s l i e   C a r t e r

IN HIS NEW PLAY

“DU BARRY”

“Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call up single, sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle, reach us more nearly.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes. {63}

CAST

Guests of the Fête, Dancers from the Opera, King’s Guardsmen, Monks, Clowns, Pages, Milliners, Sentries, Lackeys, Footmen, King’s Secret Police, Sans-Culottes, a Mock King, a Mock Herald, a Drunken Patriot, a Cocoa Vender, Federals, National Guards, Tricoteuses.

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SYNOPSIS OF SCENES.

As an epigraph for the first performance given in his theatre, and also for a souvenir book then distributed,—a richly printed volume called “The Story of Du Barry,” written by James L. Ford and issued in a limited edition,—Belasco used, under the caption “Before the Curtain,” the appended fourteen lines from Francis Bret Harte’s versified address written for the dedication of the California Theatre, San Francisco, January 18, 1869, on which occasion (when Belasco was among the spectators) it was read by Lawrence Barrett:

A STUPID DISPARAGEMENT.—INCEPTION OF “THE DARLING OF THE GODS.”

Among the meanest and most stupid disparagements of Belasco which I have chanced to notice in recent years is one made by Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, the adulatory biographer of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain). In recording a conversation which he says he had with Clemens Mr. Paine writes: “‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘the literary man should have a collaborator with a genius for stage mechanism. John Luther Long’s exquisite plays would hardly have been successful without David Belasco to stage them. Belasco cannot write a play himself, but in the matter of acting construction his genius is supreme.’” (The italics are mine.—W. W.) Remembering that Belasco is, among many other things, the author of “May Blossom,” “The Heart of Maryland,” “The Girl of the Golden West,” “Peter Grimm,” and “Van der Decken,{68}” it seems to me that Mr. Paine has, in that sapient comment, provided for thoughtful persons a useful measure of his intelligence. Furthermore, his disparagement of Belasco as a writer of plays suggests that it is competent, in this Memoir, to inquire as to what, precisely, are the “exquisite plays” of John Luther Long, one of Belasco’s collaborators in authorship. Mr. Long is a fiction writer of talent, which has been widely and generously recognized. His name is associated with six plays and no more,—namely, “Madame Butterfly,” “The Darling of the Gods,” “Dolce,” “Adrea,” “The Dragon Fly,” and “Kassa.” “Madame Butterfly,” as a play, is, exclusively, the work of Belasco: it was written and produced before he and Long met. “Kassa” is a commonplace farrago of theatrical absurdity, rant, and miscellaneous trash, tangled into a mesh of sacerdotal trappings and fantastic, complex, and dubious Hungarian embellishments and is as devoid of literary merit as it is of dramatic vitality. It was produced by Mrs. Leslie Carter, in 1909, after she had ceased to act under the direction of Belasco, and it was a failure. “The Dragon Fly” was written by Long in association with Mr. E. C. Carpenter, was produced in Philadelphia, in 1905, and was a failure. “Dolce” has not been acted or published and I know nothing about it. As to{69} “The Darling of the Gods” and “Adrea,”—not only did Belasco “stage” those plays (that is, produce them), but he is at least as much their author as Mr. Long is; a fact which I venture to assume that Mr. Long would be the last to deny.

“The Darling of the Gods” owes its existence wholly to Belasco. When he had leased the Republic Theatre and while he was preparing to undertake its renovation he also began to plan his managerial campaign there. In a letter he writes:

Belasco had for several years prior to 1902 desired to present Mrs. Carter in a series of{70} Shakespearean and classical plays which, as he wrote to me in that year, “have long been in her repertory but in which I have never yet had the opportunity of bringing her out.” Mrs. Carter was then the principal player under his management: it was both justice to her and sound business judgment for him to open his new theatre with a performance in which she was the star. It would indeed have been a brilliant achievement for him to have opened it with a superb revival of one of Shakespeare’s great plays. But, on the other hand, theatrical management,—although, rightly understood, it entails, first of all, a moral and intellectual obligation to the public,—is a venturesome business, not an altruistic amusement: Belasco had invested more than $98,000 in making his presentment of “Du Barry”: it, plainly, was necessary to earn with that drama at least the cost of producing it before he could bring forth Mrs. Carter in another play. And it was obvious that while he could impressively open his new theatre with a sumptuous revival of that popular success it could not advantageously hold the stage there for more than a month or two and that he must have another striking dramatic novelty ready in hand with which to follow the revival. Among the many plays which Belasco wrote and rewrote during the strolling days of his{71} youth is a melodrama entitled “Il Carabiniere,” which he called “The Carbineer.” The scenes and characters of that old play are Italian. Belasco resolved to refashion it for the use of Blanche Bates. But the multifarious demands on his time and strength made it necessary for him to have assistance in performing this task, and remembering the success of Miss Bates in his Japanese tragedy of “Madame Butterfly” he altered his purpose and determined to base on the old Italian tale a romance of Japan, and he proposed to John Luther Long,—well versed in Japanese customs,—that he should help him in the work. This proposal was accepted; the manuscript of “The Carbineer” was turned over to Long, and, about February, 1902, the collaborators began their work on the play which afterward became famous under the name of “The Darling of the Gods.” That play is practically a new one, not an adaptation: the labor of writing it was finished in June, and it was produced for the first time anywhere, November 17, 1902, at the New National Theatre, Washington, D. C.: on December 3, following, it was acted for the first time in New York, at the Belasco Theatre, where it succeeded “Du Barry,” which had been acted there for the last time on November 29. This was the original cast of “The Darling of the Gods{72}”:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

A SCENE FROM “THE DARLING OF THE GODS”

“The Feast of a Thousand Welcomes”

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Gentlemen of Rank, Messrs. Redmund, Stevens, Dunton, Smith, Meehan, Richards, Shaw, Chamberlain and Shaw.

Geisha Girls, Misses Winard, Karle, Vista, Mardell, Coleman and Ellis.

Singing Girls, Misses Livingston, Mirien and Earle.

Heralds from the Emperor, maids-in-waiting to the Princess, screen bearers, Kago men, coolies, retainers, runners, servants, geisha, musume, priests, lantern bearers, banner bearers, incense bearers, gong bearers, jugglers, acrobats, torturers, carp flyers, Imperial soldiers and Zakkuri’s musket-men.

THE PLAY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF “THE DARLING OF THE GODS.”

The tragic drama of “The Darling of the Gods” is an excellent play, one of exceptional power and ethical significance. It is a unique fabric of fancy, wildly romantic, rich and strange with unusual characters, lively with incident, occasionally mystical{74} with implication of Japanese customs and religious beliefs, opulent with an Oriental splendor of atmosphere and detail, like that of Beckford’s romance of “Vathek,”—fragrant with sweetness,—like Moore’s “Lalla Rookh,”—busy with movement, effective by reason of situation, and communicative of a love story of enchaining interest and melancholy beauty. That story is told in continuous, cumulative action,—each successive dramatic event being stronger than its predecessors in the element of suspense; and at the climax there is a weird picture of supernatural environment, a thrilling suggestion of the eternity of spiritual life and personal identity,—a poetic symbolism, at once pathetic and sublime, of the glory and ecstasy, the supreme triumph, of faithful love.

The story of Yo-San, the heroine of that play, who is designated “the darling of the gods,” separated from all adjuncts and accessories, is simple. She is a princess in Japan, betrothed to a Japanese courtier whom she does not wish to wed. She has stipulated, as a preliminary condition of their marriage, that the courtier must prove his valor by capturing a certain formidable outlaw, Prince Kara, who, on being captured, will be put to death. She has been saved from fatal dishonor through the expeditious courage and promptitude of that outlaw{75} (unrecognized by her as such), and on seeing each other they become lovers. Kara pledges himself to appear at the palace of her father, at a “feast of a thousand welcomes” to be held in his honor, there to receive that parent’s thanks. Thither he comes, passing through the guards of Zakkuri, the dreaded War Minister of Japan, but sustaining a desperate hurt in doing so. Yo-San, when her lover, wounded and almost dying, has failed to make his escape from the precincts of the palace through a cordon of enemies, conceals him in her dwelling, and for many days she tends him, till his wounds are healed, and then, for a time, those lovers are happy in their secret love. The girl is, however, compromised by this indiscretion, and when presently her father, Prince Saigon, discovers her secret,—and, as he thinks, her dishonor,—she is declared an outcast; and her lover (taken prisoner while attempting to fight his way to freedom) is doomed to torture and death. She is compelled to gaze upon him as, stupefied with opium, he is led down into a chamber of infernal torment. Then she is apprised that she can secure his life and liberty by betraying the hiding place of her lover’s outlaw followers, and in desperate agony she does betray them: but she gains nothing by that action except an access of misery. Prince Kara, surprised with his band by soldiers{76} of the War Minister, having, with a few of his followers, fought his way through the lines of his enemies and discovered that the secret of their hiding place, confided by him to Yo-San, has been by her revealed, commits suicide in the honorable Japanese manner, and she is left alone, with only his forgiveness as a comfort, and with the hope that,—after a thousand years of loneliness and grief, in the underworld of shadows,—she will be again united with him in the eternal happiness of heaven. The play shows Yo-San as an innocent, confiding, pathetic figure, a child-woman, passing amid stormy vicissitude, cruel temptation, and afflicting trials to a forlorn and agonized death by suicide, and leaves her at the last, redeemed and transfigured, on the verge of Paradise, where Kara stretches out his arms to embrace her, and where there is neither trouble nor parting nor sorrow any more.

The experience of this Japanese girl is the old ordeal over again, of woman’s sacrifice and anguish, when giving all for love. Something of Shakespeare’s Juliet is in that heroine, something of Goethe’s Margaret, something of the many passionate, wayward, mournfully beautiful ideals of woman’s sacrifice that are immortal in story and song. She is a loving and sorrowing woman, true, tender, faithful forever, and celestial alike in her

BLANCHE BATES AS THE PRINCESS YO-SAN, IN “THE DARLING OF THE GODS”

Photograph by Livingston Platt.
Belasco’s Collection.

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love, her temptation, and her grief. The character of Yo-San combines some of the finest components of womanhood and, indeed, exemplifies virtues such as redeem the frailty of human nature—purity of heart and life, true love, endurance, heroism of conduct, and devoted integrity of spiritual faith. Blanche Bates gained the greatest success of her professional career by her impersonation of Yo-San. She was an entirely lovely image of ardent, innocent, ingenuous, noble womanhood—such an image as irresistibly allured by piquant simplicity, thrilled the imagination by an impartment of passionate vitality, and by its exemplification of eternal constancy in love,—the immortal fidelity of the spirit,—captured the heart. Her facility of action and fluency of expression were continuously spontaneous, and she was delightful both to see and to hear. Indeed, the acting of Miss Bates, which, from the first of her performances on the New York Stage, had shown a charming wildness and freedom, was, in the character of Yo-San, more unconventional than ever. Her appearance was beautiful, her action graceful, alert, vigorous, and free from all restraint of self-consciousness and finical prudery. The clear, keen, healthful north wind was suggested by it, the reckless dash of a mid-ocean wave, the happy sea-bird’s flight. There was no ostentation{78} about it, no parade, no assumption of the moral mentor. Her personation of Belasco’s Juliet of Japan came in a time of dreary “problems,” “sermons,” “lessons,” “arguments,” “symbols,” and the flatulent nonsense of siccorized novels and dirty farces, and it came as a relief and a blessing—the authentic representative of youth, health, strength, love, and hope.

There is one moment in “The Darling of the Gods” when suspense is wrought to a point of intense tension, and when the inherent, essential faculty of an actor, the power to reveal almost in a flash the feeling of the heart and the working of the mind, is imperatively required. It is when Kara, wounded, exhausted, desperate, has sought refuge in the dwelling of the Princess Yo-San and, by her, has been succored and concealed. Migaku, the Shadow, a spy of the terrible War Minister, Zakkuri, has traced him to that refuge, but a devoted guardian of Yo-San, Inu, a Corean giant, has detected the presence of the spy, has seized and slain him, and has hidden the body in a stream. Zakkuri and the father of Yo-San follow the spy, and come to the dwelling of Yo-San. Zakkuri wishes that it be searched, but he agrees to accept her oath, if she will give it, that she knows nothing of the whereabouts of Kara. The Princess is sum{79}moned and, denying the presence of Kara, is required by her father to swear that she has spoken the truth. Words can faintly indicate the beauty of the picture and action which follow, as the girl seeks to protect her lover. The time is night. The scene is a strange, fantastic, fairy-like garden of old Japan, a bower of flowers with twining wistaria wreathing the trees and houses, and, far, far off, visible in the silver moonlight, a great snow-capped volcano, the peak of which is touched with ruddy light. The father and the dreaded Minister of War stand before the door. Miss Bates, as Yo-San, stood a little above them, dressed in soft, flowing white garments, open at the throat, her black hair loose about her face and shoulders, her beautiful dark eyes suffused with a fascinating expression of innocence, tranquillity, and tenderness. Without a moment of hesitation, on being required to take the most solemn of oaths, she, with sweetly reverential dignity, raised a bowl of burning incense and, holding it before her, spoke, in a voice of perfect music: “Before Shaka, God of Life and Death,—to whom my word goes up on this incense,—I swear, hanging my life on the answer, I have not seen this Kara!” Then, as the discomfited searchers withdrew, she stood a moment, in the soft light streaming upon her from within the house,{80} and, gazing after them, added, looking upward, “It is better to lie a little than to be unhappy much!” If she had done nothing else,—though the remainder of her professional life should be barren,—that single moment stamped her as a great actress.

It is, in any time, a noble achievement—one too much praised in words, too little sought in deeds—to bring home and make vital to the human heart the sanctity and beauty of love. The actor who does this can do no more. Pictorial art upon the stage attains to a marvellous height when it presents such a scene as that of the River of Souls and the reunion of long-sundered souls, in this romantic, imaginative, and beautiful play. Such an achievement in the dramatic art as the setting before the public of such a play and such a performance as Blanche Bates gave of its heroine vindicate the beneficent utility of the Theatre, because it cheers and ennobles, and thus practically helps society, through the ministration of beauty. This is a hard world. Almost everybody in it struggles beneath burdens of care and sorrow. Multitudes of human beings dwell in trouble and suffering. An imperative need of our race is the strength of patience and the light of hope. Dramatic art, or any art, which satisfies that need, or even remotely helps to sat{81}isfy it, is a blessing. The rest is little, if at all, better than a curse.

There was fine acting in “The Darling of the Gods” besides that of Miss Bates. The part of Zakkuri, the War Minister,—a callous, remorseless, cold villain, of the Duke of Alva type,—is the main source of action in the drama, and it is elaborately and vividly drawn. It was played by George Arliss, who gave in it a thrilling incarnation of dangerous force and inveterate wickedness, almost humorous in its icy depravity: he had an exceptional success, even for an actor who always acts well.

And there are many splendid imaginative and dramatic passages in this play besides those which have been particularly examined. As set upon the stage by Belasco it was a spectacle of superb opulence, surpassing all its predecessors in wealth of color and beauty of detail. In the Scene of the Night Watch at the gates; in that of the stealthy, nocturnal search for Kara, outside the lodge of the Princess, and in that of Yo-San’s supplication for her lover’s life there is the very poetry of terror. Some of the expedients employed had been used in earlier dramas,—such as “Patrie” and “Tosca,”—but they were so freshly handled that they were made newly terrible with an atmosphere of grisly dread. Belasco, in short, offered to his public in this produc{82}tion a true dramatic work of novelty, variety, and scenic splendor, extraordinarily rich in the element of histrionic art; an offering that was symmetrical and magnificent, prompting a memory of the old days of “Pizarro,” “The Ganges,” and “The Bronze Horse,” but proving that his day also was golden and that Aladdin’s Lamp had not been lost.

THE CREATION OF DRAMATIC EFFECTS.—DIFFICULTIES WITH THE RIVER OF SOULS.

Supreme dramatic effects are, as a rule, produced in the Theatre as results of patient, prescient labor, using known, definite means to definite foreordained ends,—as, for example, in such perfect histrionic epitomes as Shylock’s return through the lonely midnight streets to his deserted dwelling, as arranged by Irving; the momentary shuddering horror of Mansfield’s King Richard the Third, when, alone, in the dusk, seated upon the throne to which he has made his way by murder, he sees his hand bathed blood-red in a seemingly chance-thrown beam of light; the exquisitely poetic and lovely scene of the serenade, in “Twelfth Night,” invented by Daly, in which the theme of the comedy is pictured without a word; or the long, dreary vigil of Madame Butterfly, waiting

Photograph by Livingston Platt. Belasco’s Collection.

GEORGE ARLISS AS ZAKKURI, THE MINISTER OF WAR, IN “THE DARLING OF THE GODS”

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through the night for her recreant lover, devised by Belasco. Sometimes, however, even the most resourceful of stage managers, though possessed of perfectly clear purpose, find themselves baffled and balked in every endeavor to embody a picture in action and create a designed effect: it is with them as it is with a painter who, while knowing exactly what he desires to depict and, theoretically, exactly how to paint it, nevertheless fails again and again in his attempts to do so, until, as sometimes happens, chance seems to point a way to achievement. Such an experience came to Belasco, in his execution of the imaginative and lovely scene of the River of Souls, in this Oriental tragedy. Writing of it, he records the following interesting recollection:

“The Darling of the Gods” was one of the most costly and least profitable of all Belasco’s many{85} lavish productions: the original investment exceeded $78,000 and the expenses of presentment were so great that, notwithstanding it was acted to immense audiences, at the end of two years he had gained with it only $5,000.

AN OPERATIC PROJECT.—PETTY PERSECUTIONS.—AN ARREST FOR LIBEL.

While demolition of the Republic Theatre and construction of its successor were in progress Belasco made an unsuccessful attempt to fulfil a purpose which he had cherished for several years,—the purpose, namely, to cause the writing of, and to produce, a series of true comic operas, American in theme but similar in character to the brilliant and delightful combinations of satire, melody, and fun which made famous the names of Gilbert and Sullivan. “I hoped,” he said, “to find a pair of American authors that could be developed into at least something like such a team as Gilbert and Sullivan, and for a while I thought I should succeed,—but it was too much to hope for.” As part of his plan for this operatic enterprise Belasco engaged the well-known singer Miss Lillian Russell, for whose talents he entertained high respect: “I know,” he has said to me, “that Lillian Russell could have done far{86} finer things than ever she has done—and I wanted her to do them under my management.” Inability to obtain any musical play for Miss Russell’s use which was satisfactory to him finally compelled Belasco to release her from engagement and to abandon a project which, adequately performed, would have been of great benefit to our Stage.

From the time when it became publicly known that Belasco had assumed the management of a theatre of his own, in New York, until 1909, when self-interest at last reopened to him the long closed theatres dominated by the Theatrical Syndicate, he was made the object of an almost continuous series of attacks, annoyances, and persecutions, often merely petty, sometimes extremely serious, the origin of which is not always demonstrable but the motive of which, unmistakably, was to defame, hamper, and injure him in his professional vocation. Thus, a few days before the opening of his new theatre he was accused in several newspaper diatribes of having “stolen” the services of three prominent actors,—namely Lillian Russell, Blanche Bates, and David Warfield,—then under engagement to him, from other theatrical managers, regardless of prior contracts. The dispute on this subject has been top-loftically described as a tempest in a teapot, but as the accusation is, in fact, one of most{87} dishonorable and illegal conduct the entire refutation of it should be recorded. Miss Russell wrote about the matter as follows:

From Miss Bates came a letter in which she said:

And Mr. Warfield sent to Belasco by telegraph from Boston this request and statement:

{88}

A week before the first presentment of “The Darling of the Gods” in New York an allegation even more injurious was made against Belasco when several newspapers of the metropolis published affirmations by a female author, known as Onoto Watanna, to the effect that characters and incidents from two stories by her, “The Wooing of Wistaria” and “A Japanese Nightingale,” had been appropriated by Belasco and incorporated in “The Darling of the Gods” and that two acts of that play were pirated from a dramatization of one of those stories.

To these aspersions Belasco made prompt rejoinder by institution of a suit against Mrs. Bertrand W. Babcock, asking $20,000 damages for malicious libel. Mrs. Babcock was arrested, December 3, 1902, on a warrant issued in this action and held in $500 bail. At the time of her arrest Belasco made a statement as to his motives and feelings in bringing suit in which he said:

{90}

On February 6, 1903, at a hearing in this libel suit of Belasco’s, before Justice Leventritt, of the Supreme Court, Mrs. Babcock, in effect, withdrew the libel complained of (denying that she had made the defamatory allegations ascribed to her), and the order of arrest previously issued against her was, in consequence, vacated. The purpose of the aspersions made was, undoubtedly, that stated by Belasco.—A dramatization of Mrs. Babcock’s story of “A Japanese Nightingale” was produced by Klaw & Erlanger, at Daly’s Theatre, New York, November 19, 1903, with Miss Margaret Illington as Yuki, its chief female personage: the production of that play, it was generally understood in theatrical circles at the time when it was made, was designed to exhibit the authentic investiture and interpretation of a tragedy of Japan and thus to display the artistic and managerial superiority of Messrs. Klaw and Erlanger to Belasco: it was acted at Daly’s forty-four times and then withdrawn.

On May 30, 1903, the 186th performance of “The Darling of the Gods” occurred at Belasco’s Theatre, which was then closed for the season. On June 6, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, Belasco brought to an end a tour by Mrs. Leslie Carter and a theatrical company of 147 other players, presenting his “Du Barry,” which began at Brooklyn, New York,

DAVID BELASCO

About 1889-’90

Photograph by the Misses Selby.
Author’s Collection.

{91}

December 2, 1902, which comprehended forty-two cities (extending as far south as Galveston, Texas, and as far west as San Francisco), and which involved travel of more than 10,000 miles, during most of which the company was luxuriously transported on special trains.

SECOND SEASON AT THE BELASCO.—A CONTEMPTIBLE OUTRAGE.

The Belasco Theatre was reopened for its second season, that of 1903-’04, September 16, with a revival of “The Darling of the Gods,”—acted by the original company,—which held the stage there until November 14, sixty-four performances being given. On November 16 Mrs. Carter emerged there in “Zaza,” which was acted for one week and was followed, on the 23rd, by “Du Barry,” of which sixteen performances were given. A peculiarly contemptible outrage, incidental to the protracted campaign of persecution waged against Belasco, was perpetrated on the first night of the “Zaza,” revival when a process server, employed and instructed by the disreputable Abraham Hummel, leaped upon the stage during the performance and served upon Mrs. Carter (who had nothing to do with the matter) notice of an action at law brought by Miss{92} Eugenie Blair and Mr. Henry Gressit against Belasco, in which, alleging rights of ownership in the play by Charles Frohman (who at the time was also represented by Hummel), they prayed for an injunction to stop his presenting “Zaza” in New York. “Few things,” Belasco has said, “could have distressed me more than the thought that Charles Frohman could be in any way a party to such conduct.” Among the many miscellaneous papers which Belasco has permitted me to examine, in compiling material for this Memoir, is a hurried note from Frohman which indeed reads strangely in the light of this incident:

(Charles Frohman To David Belasco.)

The great success of “Shenandoah,” which made possible the career of Charles Frohman, was in large part due to the sagacious and practical help of{93} Belasco, given in response to this appeal,—and the latter manager, it seems to me, changing a single word, might well have exclaimed with the betrayed monarch in Wills’s play about the Martyred King, “Charles Murray, hast thou waited all these years to pay me—thus!” Frohman, Belasco has informed me, assured him, long afterward, when Gentle Peace had enfolded all their contentions, that he was not priorly cognizant of Hummel’s outrageous instructions: well,—perhaps he was not: but, if he was not, it is a pity he did not so declare at the time of his quondam friend’s persecution and so shield himself from contempt. Belasco’s lawyer, the Hon. A. J. Dittenhoefer, commenting on this needless and shameful interruption of a public performance, observed that “The case has remarkable features. As Mr. [Charles] Frohman is half-owner of the play with Mr. Belasco, he is really being served with papers by his own lawyers; moreover, Mrs. Carter is not named in the papers, and it is against all precedent and decency to serve them on her in such a way. They should have been served on Mr. Belasco, or on the box-office, which stood open. There has been plenty of time and ample opportunity for that.” Of course there had been “plenty of time and ample opportunity”!—but such orderly and decent service would not have annoyed and{94} distressed a nervous, impulsive, sensitive man, whom it was desired to harass and injure.—The injunction asked for was denied by Justice Scott, December 11, 1903.

HENRIETTA CROSMAN AND “SWEET KITTY BELLAIRS.”

On June 15, 1900, Belasco entered into an agreement with the English fiction writer Egerton Castle by which he obtained optional rights of producing dramatizations of five novels by that author and his wife and collaborator, Agnes Castle. He relinquished his rights in four of those novels, “Young April,” “The Pride of Jennico,” “The Star Dreamer,” and “The Secret Orchard,” but he exercised them with regard to a fifth, “The Bath Comedy,” upon which he based a play. His purpose, originally, was to bring forth Blanche Bates in its central character, when “The Darling of the Gods” should have ceased to hold public interest. Many reasons, however,—chief among them desire to please Mr. Castle by an early production,—caused him to change his plan. He, accordingly, in January, 1903, engaged the accomplished actress Miss Henrietta Crosman to assume the principal part in the play which he had founded on Mr. Castle’s story, and, on November 23, of the same year,{95} at the Lafayette Square Opera House, Washington, D. C., he produced it for the first time, under the title of “Sweet Kitty Bellairs.” Pursuant of what was, I am convinced, a deliberate plan to harass Belasco and hinder him in his managerial enterprises, the lawsuit instituted by Joseph Brooks (incidents of which have already been recounted) was brought almost in the moment of that first performance. Belasco, however, had grown accustomed to persecution and remained unperturbed by it. On being notified, November 24, of Brooks’s allegation in the matter and asked for a statement, he dismissed the subject in two sentences: “It is,” he said, “a pack of lies, and I am too busy with this production [“Bellairs”] to make any answer to these persons [meaning Brooks and his associates] now. When I am disengaged I will make a reply.”

Belasco’s presentment of his “Sweet Kitty Bellairs,”—made for the first time in New York, December 9, 1903, at the Belasco Theatre,—revealed a comedy as well as a spectacle, because, while it satiated the vision with luxuriance of ornament and color, it set a truthful and piquant picture of manners in the jewelled framework of a story generally credible and always romantic as well as at once humorous and tender, merry and grave. The central purpose of it is the display of a study in{96} womanhood, an exceptional female character, a peculiar and fascinating type; and the predominant attribute of it, accordingly, is sexuality. The dashing coquette of old English fiction lives again in his Kitty Bellairs,—not precisely Lady Froth, Lady Bellaston, Mrs. Rackett or Mrs. Delmaine, but a purified, glorified ideal of those gay, tantalizing, roguish dames, a creature of sensuous beauty and reckless behavior, whose whole occupation in life is the bewitchment of man; and, in a silver fabric of gossamer comedy, this siren and all her associates are engaged in adjusting their amatory relations. In other words, this is a play of intrigue.

“The Bath Comedy” is an extravagant and flimsy novel, and the dramatist derived but little material from it,—that little, however, comprising the jealous, peppery, belligerent, irrational husband; the silly, pretty wife, with her saccharine endearments and ever-ready tears; the ingenuous young nobleman, Lord Verney, so readily dazzled; and the burly, genial, blundering ardent Irish soldier, O’Hara, so fond and faithful, so rich in desert, and, at the last, so completely forlorn. Expert use is made, likewise, of the diverted love-letter, inclosing the tress of red hair. No spectacle, indeed, could, intrinsically, be funnier than that presented by the enraged, suspicious, tumultuous husband, intent on fighting{97} with every red-haired man in Bath, in order to be avenged on the unknown epistolary suitor of his absolutely innocent wife. Taking this bull-headed mistake as a pretext for action, and taking as a basis Kitty’s wicked scheme for the relief of Lady Standish,—who has temporarily wearied her husband by her dulness and who will be taught to win and hold him by gay indifference and the piquant allurement of coquetry,—Belasco built a structure of story and action practically original and certainly brilliant. Writing on this subject, he modestly says: “The dramatization was not easy: I was obliged to add to the plot, but I used the atmosphere and characters of the book,”—and, it may be added, contrived to fashion a charming and effective comedy where, perhaps, any other dramatist of the time would have failed.

After an insipid Prologue, in crude rhyme, the old English city of Bath is shown, in a beautiful picture, and therein is displayed a populous, animated scene, constructed to exhibit as a background the raiment, manners, morals, and pursuits of Bath society, in the butterfly days that Smollett and Sheridan have made immortal. Then the story,—slender and frail but amply adequate for its light purpose,—is rapidly disclosed. Kitty Bellairs will help Lady Standish to bewitch her indifferent hus{98}band by making him jealous; and when, through Kitty’s artful roguery, his dangerous wrath is directed against Lord Verney, whom she would like to have for her own sweetheart, she will intervene to prevent the impending duel and will implicate herself in a most disastrous and distressing tangle of comic trouble. Two situations ensue that are essentially dramatic and that also involve affecting and enjoyable elements of pathos and humor. Kitty and Lady Standish, having proceeded to Lord Verney’s lodging, in hope to avert a catastrophe that their mischief has invoked, are in peril of compromising discovery there, and at the climax Kitty takes upon herself the apparent disgrace and shame by coming forward to shield her friend. Later, in the thronged assembly-room,—in a pageant of almost unprecedented magnificence,—the brilliant Bellairs, ostracized by the ladies of Bath, appeals to Lady Standish for vindication and finds that spineless comrade too weak and too timid to speak the truth. The latter incident provides the supreme moment of the comedy, and, however much its probability may be questioned, no spectator of it, adequately acted, will for an instant doubt its theatrical effect. The preparations for it are made with extraordinary skill. The scenic adjuncts to it provided by Belasco were of royal opulence. It is{99} fraught with emotional suspense; it is a sharp surprise, and it has the decisive potentiality of a dramatic act. Later the scene shifts to a Bristol tavern, where Lady Betty makes a tardy explanation, retrieving the wrong, while Verney and O’Hara and the rest of the soldiers march away,—in a storm, most deftly managed (as Belasco showed it), of wind and pouring rain,—and Sweet Kitty Bellairs is left in possession of the field, a little rueful, perhaps, but rehabilitated and triumphant. This close seemed somewhat tame, as a sequel to the ballroom effulgence, but it was inevitable: after the clock has struck twelve it must necessarily strike one. There is no thirteen.

The antique moralist, while gazing on that gorgeous spectacle,—“the teacup time of hood and hoop, or when the patch was worn,”—might, perhaps, be moved to inquire whether women, in their traffic with the impulses of love, the caprices of their own sex and the follies of the other, do really think and act as they are made to think and act in this play of Belasco’s: but, as the antique moralist knows nothing whatever about women, he would only bewilder himself by such interrogatory. Enough to know, in gazing on that spectacle, that it dazzles his vision and that the story pleases his fancy. He sees a woman to whom humdrum conventionality is intol{100}erable; a woman who is fearless alike of vindictive feminine spite and insolent masculine tolerance; a woman who can be magnanimous; a woman who is nothing if not brilliant: and all this ought to content even a cynic. The dramatist has made Kitty Bellairs much more of a woman and Lord Verney much more of a man than they were in the Castle novel,—where, indeed, Bellairs is unprincipled and heartless and Verney foolish: a coarse flirt and a callow milksop. Evil influence may be incarnate, without evil deed. In the play this heroine is a thoroughly noble, gentle, and tender woman, underneath her panoply of mirth and mischief, and she acts from a good heart, and not from mere vanity and sensuous caprice. Miss Crosman entered into this character with absolute sympathy, and, as to the glittering side of it, so embodied it as to create a cogent effect of nature. There is an appeal made by Kitty to her Irish and other military friends, when they behold her in apparent disgrace, that strikes the true note of pathos, and, in the speaking of this, Miss Crosman eloquently and nobly expressed the dignity of conscious virtue, while in the denotement of tenderness she much exceeded expectation,—because tenderness is not characteristic of her acting in general, the drift of her temperament and style setting toward pert assurance, skittish

HENRIETTA CROSMAN AS MISTRESS KITTY BELLAIRS, IN “SWEET KITTY BELLAIRS”

Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.

{101}

sport, sparkling raillery, and sprightly banter. Kitty’s attitude, during most of the comedy, is that of a maker of innocent mischief,—with a spice of wickedness in it,—and she complicates everything from pure love of drollery. This Miss Crosman made perfectly and delightfully clear. The dilemma in Act Second, when Kitty and Lady Betty are surprised in the bedroom at Verney’s, and the exaction of an hysterical outburst at the end of Act Third a little overtaxed the strength of the actress; but her impersonation of Kitty Bellairs lives in memory and is treasured for unity of purpose and consistency of method, blithe spirit and buoyant action, sentiment sweetly denoted beneath arch pleasantry and many winning graces of manner, inflection, and playful prettiness. Belasco gained a new and lasting laurel of success with this production, in which all points had been well considered and nothing left to chance. The first performance in New York was given in the presence of a brilliant and delighted multitude. The final curtain did not fall till after midnight,—but

This is the original cast of “Sweet Kitty Bellairs”: {102}

IN THE PROLOGUE.

IN THE PLAY.

{103}

SIDE-LIGHT AND COMMENTARY ON “SWEET KITTY.”

“Sweet Kitty Bellairs” was acted at the Belasco Theatre until June 4, 1904, when the season ended and that house was closed. It was revived there in the fall, September 3, and, with Miss Crosman in its chief part, was subsequently acted in many other cities. In the season of 1905-’06, Miss Crosman having retired from Belasco’s management, it was again revived, with Miss Bertha Galland as Kitty, and on October 5, 1907, with Miss Eva Moore in that part, it was played at the Haymarket Thea{104}tre, London. On February 3, 1904, while this comedy was in the full tide of its first success, one of the many groundless suits against Belasco, accusing him of plagiarism, was brought by Grace B. Hughes, otherwise known as Mary Montagu, who asserted that Belasco’s play was an infringement of one by her, entitled “Sweet Jasmine,” and applied for an injunction to stop him from further presentment of it. Her application was argued before Justice E. Henry Lacombe, March 18, and on March 26 was denied. One of the most vicious propensities of newspaper journalism was sharply illustrated in connection with Miss Montagu’s wanton aspersion on Belasco’s honesty: when it was made, her charge of plagiarism was generally and conspicuously published by the press; when it was disproved, it ceased to be “live news” and merely curt and, in general, obscure record was made of the issue. Minor “resemblances” between the two plays, adduced by the complainant in this action by way of substantiating her charge of literary theft, were such as the facts that in both a military band played music; in both “green” is mentioned as the color of grass, and in both a lover states the nature of his feeling toward the woman he loves. Yet, without any possibility of redress, Belasco was compelled to expend energy, time, and money on making{105} a serious defence against the preposterous accusations of irresponsible frivolity! To oppose and defeat the suit of Miss Montagu cost him a large sum. There is no reasonable doubt that, in the majority of cases, such accusations of plagiarism as those which have been brought against Belasco are made in hope that the person accused will buy off the accuser as the quickest and cheapest way of ending annoyance. Belasco, however, has never gratified such hope; and he assured me: “I never will—for I prefer to lose a thousand dollars in money and ten thousand in time and trouble rather than to submit to blackmail.” In denying the writ applied for by this impudent defamer the court declared that “No direct evidence of copying, either of language or dramatic situation, is shown. A comparison of the two plays shows that they are wholly dissimilar in plot, in characters, in text, and in dramatic situations. The climax of one act in each piece was principally relied upon in argument—where the unexpected discovery of the leading character in a place where she should not be makes a dramatic situation.... This is an old device; it was common property to all playwrights since Sheridan used it in ‘The School for Scandal’ [And since long before that time!—W. W.]. Analyzing the details of the situations as presented in these{106} two plays, the points of essential difference so far outnumber the points of similarity that it is difficult to understand how anyone could persuade himself that one was taken from the other.”—The following letters provide an interesting side-light and commentary on the history of “Bellairs”:

(David Belasco to Egerton Castle, in London.)

“THE DARLING” IN LONDON.—A HEARTY TRIBUTE.

On December 28, 1903, the English actor and manager Herbert Beerbohm-Tree produced “The Darling of the Gods,” with notable success, at His Majesty’s Theatre, London,—himself appearing in it as Zakkuri, with Miss Marie Löhr as Yo-San and George Relph as Kara. A characteristic instance of journalistic meanness was then provided by “The London Times,” which ascribed the beauty and perfection of Japanese detail in the production to the influence of Mme. Sada Yaco,—a Japanese eccentricity who had appeared on the stage in London and profoundly agitated the esthetic circle of “souls” resident in that city. As Tree’s presentment of the tragedy of Japan was made in faithful adherence to Belasco’s prompt book thereof and as Belasco never saw the Japanese actress, either on the stage or off, it would be interesting to learn in what manner her “influence” was exerted on him or his work. It is pleasant to turn from such paltry carping to read the hearty tribute paid by Tree,{110} speaking from the stage of his theatre, in grateful acknowledgment of public approval:

“Tree was always most generous to me,” Belasco has said; “and his ‘Darling’ speech made me very{111} happy. I like appreciation and encouragement when I have worked hard and tried to deserve it. Always after doing my ‘Darling’ Tree used to address me as ‘Sir David,’ and several times in public speeches he said that if they had me in England they would knight me—which was very kind and lovely, but plain ‘Mister Dave’ is good enough for me!”

[Just before leaving this country for the last time Tree read Belasco’s striking play about the spiritual survival of man, “The Return of Peter Grimm,” and arranged to produce it in London,—an arrangement which was abrogated by his sudden and untimely death, July 2, 1917.—J. W.]

A STRENUOUS YEAR.

The year 1904 was one of peculiar perplexity and vexation for Belasco—of incessant strenuous labor and (as I deem) of most malicious harassment which might well have broken both his health and his spirit had he not been sustained by vital enthusiasm and a steadfast, invincible will. In that year he had not only to bear the heavy expense of producing “Sweet Kitty Bellairs,” together with the loss and anxieties incident to theatrical manage{112}ment amid generally disturbed business conditions and the distraction and annoyance of Miss Montagu’s monstrous lawsuit, but, also, he had to provide new plays and new productions for Mrs. Carter and for Warfield, to make his plans for the future of Blanche Bates, and to encounter at last the open and unrestricted animosity of the Theatrical Syndicate. “I am,” Belasco has truly said about himself (1903), “a patient and peaceful man: I don’t want to fight with anybody. I want to attend to my business in my own way—to do my work unmolested and to interfere with nobody. But neither will I permit anybody to interfere with me, or to dictate to me, if I am able to resist.” And speaking of Belasco’s course in theatrical management, his general representative, B. F. Roeder, publicly declared at about the same time (June, 1903): “Mr. Belasco’s policy will remain exactly what it has always been. He will be independent of all factions and [will] place his companies wherever he can get the best terms and time.” Such a policy, indisputably right as it is, was not one which the Theatrical Syndicate would brook, and it soon brought that oppressive monopoly into direct and open conflict with Belasco in the conduct of his business. Foreseeing an immense popular interest in the World’s Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition){113} at St. Louis, in 1904, Belasco resolved that his superb production of “The Darling of the Gods” should concurrently be presented there. He felt great and wholly natural and frank pride in that production: he knew that he could not much longer hold together the company acting in it, and he desired that as many persons as possible should see his tragedy to the best advantage. When, however, he applied to the Syndicate booking agency, presided over by Mr. A. L. Erlanger, to arrange for an engagement in St. Louis, during “the Fair,” he was informed that it could not be done. He thereupon instructed his own booking agent, an experienced manager, William G. Smyth, to arrange for presentment of “The Darling of the Gods” at an independent theatre there, the Imperial, and his order was at once obeyed. It is not worth while to relate in detail the story of the attempt to coerce Belasco into cancelling that engagement: it is enough to state that (as he told me at the time) when it had proved impossible to intimidate him the uncouth Erlanger destroyed the contracts previously executed through his agency, between Belasco and theatre managers in various cities,—and, in profane and insulting language, sent him notice that he could not thereafter present his productions in any Syndicate theatre.{114}

WARFIELD IN “THE MUSIC MASTER.”—AN ANIMATED SPEECH.

Once committed to “open war” with the Trust and having got the St. Louis engagement of Miss Bates securely arranged, Belasco turned to completion of the plays for Warfield and Mrs. Carter. He had, at first, intended to write the Warfield piece unaided, but the demands on his time and strength had rendered that impossible and he had employed the late Charles Klein (1867-1915) to work with him. “I had,” he said, “given much thought to the subject of the play I needed for Warfield, but with all my other responsibilities and cares I found that I must get somebody else to do much of the actual writing. One night while having supper in a restaurant with Roeder, after the play, I told him that I was going to ask Klein to undertake it. ‘Well,’ Roeder said, ‘this is a good time to ask him—here he comes,’ and Klein, who had just come in, walked over to our table and told me he had been thinking for some time about writing a play for Warfield! I told him what I had in mind, and before we separated we had agreed to do the piece together.”

The outcome of that agreement was the play of “The Music Master,” which was produced for the

Photograph by Sarony. The Albert Davis Collection.

DAVID WARFIELD AS HERR ANTON VON BARWIG, IN “THE MUSIC MASTER{115}”

first time at the Young’s Pier Theatre, Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 12, 1904. “The Music Master” is not remarkable for either originality of design or felicity of construction, but it is pure in spirit, interesting in story, picturesque in setting, and healthful in influence, and it was apparent from the first that it would have a long and abundantly prosperous career. There has been on our Stage such excessive exposition of vice and degradation, of the possible depravity of human conduct and wickedness of human motive, that it was an active benefaction to place such a play before the public, a positive blessing to receive the privilege of mental contact with its pure and noble ideal of humanity. It was announced, without qualification, as having been written by Charles Klein: that was an injustice. It is, in fact, a patchwork,—in the form in which Klein first shaped it being based to some extent on a play by Felix Morris (1847-1900) called “The Old Musician,” and then made over by Belasco, with a distinctively perceptible interfusion of dramatic expedients from that fine old drama “Belphégor; or, The Mountebank.” The central person, Herr Anton von Barwig, the Music Master, is a German musician, of a familiar type,—peculiar but attractive; impassioned but gentle; droll but piteous;{116} fervid but patient: an image of moral dignity and self-sacrifice,—and the posture of situations and incidents that have been utilized for his presentment shows him as a loving father, occupied, under conditions of almost sordid adversity, in a quest for his daughter, whom an unworthy wife and mother has taken from him, flying, with a paramour, from Germany to the United States, whither he has followed them. That daughter, at last, he finds and, in circumstances cruel to himself, practically befriends by keeping the secret of her paternity. The conspicuous attributes of this person,—attributes blended and interwoven beneath a serio-comic surface of foreign manner and broken English,—are, intrinsically (of course with variant investiture), those that have long endeared such characters as Michonnet, Triplet, Mr. Peggotty, Caleb Plummer, and Doctor Primrose: attributes, namely, of love, charity, fidelity, fortitude, patience, humor, simplicity, spontaneous goodness, and an unconscious grace equally of conduct, manner, and thought. The purpose, manifestly, was to place an eccentric, gentle, affectionate, humorous, and somewhat forlorn elderly man in a predicament of sad circumstance, and in that way to arouse pity and stimulate the promptings of charitable impulse. That purpose was accomplished; and therefore, aside from all con{117}sideration of its inspiration and while the play is neither novel with invention, potent with strong dramatic effect, nor brilliant with polished dialogue, it possesses the solid worth of fidelity to simple life, the charm of diversified character, and the beauty of deep, tender, human feeling.

It was a wise choice to combine those attributes into a stage figure, and David Warfield,—finding himself liberated, mind and heart, into a congenial character,—gained in embodying it the most substantial success of his professional career,—making of that figure a vital emblem of heroism that is never flamboyant and virtue that is never insipid; an image of paternal affection that typifies innate dignity of character and the sweet, gentle, lovely patience of pure self-abnegation. In earlier performances this comedian was almost exclusively photographic; but time, thought, and practice,—the forces that constitute experience,—gradually expanded and ripened his art, and in his performance of this part (when repetition had eliminated excessive nervous trepidation and made it “a property of easiness” to him) he showed intuitive insight and was deeply pathetic. That is true success; because the higher purpose of acting a play is not proclamation of the talents of an actor, but liberation and enforcement of the utmost of beneficial{118} influence upon an audience that a play contains. Warfield in “The Music Master” conquered by the two great virtues of simplicity and sincerity. The principal artistic defects in the personation—defects conspicuous in all Warfield’s acting and to the elimination of which he seems to be curiously indifferent—were a hard, metallic voice and a poor method of elocution. The best dramatic expedient in the play is that by which the father’s dubious, inchoate recognition of the daughter is confirmed. At that point and in the sequent situation (“lifted” from “Belphégor”) the actor evinced sympathetic delicacy and tempestuous fervor. The closing scenes of the play are marred by episodes of irrelevant incident and by prolixity, obscurity and artifice, in the long-drawn passage of parental and filial recognition,—which, indeed, requires but a glance.

Belasco has written the following reminiscence of the production of “The Music Master,” in which he shows just appreciation of the destructive result of those excessive expedients of stage “realism” which, in some of his earlier productions, impaired precisely the effect they were designed to create:

“The Music Master,” when first acted in New York,—at the original Belasco Theatre, September 26, 1904,—was cast as follows:

{121}

After the Second Act Belasco was many times called before the curtain and finally, responding to insistent requests, addressed the audience in an exceptionally animated way, saying:

The appended letter, written by Belasco during the toil and strain of preparing his “Music Master” and “Adrea” productions, indicates his strenuous{122} labor to make the former a success and his almost diffident estimate of his practically invaluable contributions to it as a playwright:

(David Belasco to Charles Klein, at Merriewold Park, N. Y.)

CONCERNING WARFIELD, JEFFERSON, THE ELDER SOTHERN, AND THE “ONE-PART”
CUSTOM.—AN AMAZING RECORD.

In commenting on Warfield’s great, indeed phenomenal, success and popularity in “The Music Master,” Belasco writes: “I have no doubt that he{123} could become a one-part actor and appear as von Barwig perennially, just as Jefferson played Rip Van Winkle and Sothern Lord Dundreary. However, neither he nor I approve of this plan.” It is singular, indeed, what a strange, delusive, ineradicable effect the parrot-like repetition of words sometimes creates. Belasco,—like the majority of other persons who mention the subject,—has got it firmly established in his mind that Jefferson and Sothern were what he designates as “one-part actors” (actors who, as he expressly states, follow a professional course of which he does not approve), and he will, I suppose, go to his grave serene in the conviction that such was the case and unconscious of the injustice he does both those great actors. Yet Sothern gave hundreds of performances in “Sam,” “David Garrick,” “The Crushed Tragedian,” “Home,” and “An English Gentleman” after his great success in “Lord Dundreary”; while Jefferson’s repertory embraced well over 100 parts; for every five performances he gave of Rip he gave about three of Bob Acres, in “The Rivals,” and,—to the delight of audiences throughout our country,—he acted, hundreds of times, as Dr. Pangloss, in “The Heir-at-Law”; Caleb Plummer, in “The Cricket on the Hearth”; Mr. Golightly, in “Lend Me Five Shillings” (which, by the way, was the last part he ever played); Dr.{124} Ollapod, in “The Poor Gentleman”; Hugh de Brass, in “A Regular Fix,” and Mr. Woodcock, in “Woodcock’s Little Game.” Every exceptionally successful actor is more popular in some one part than he is in any other, and as it was with Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle and Sothern in Dundreary so also is it with Warfield in von Barwig. Yet Warfield certainly is not a one-part actor,—though for every part he has played in the regular Theatre, aside from that one (exactly four, that is), Jefferson and Sothern each played anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five parts. Warfield, since his initial triumph as von Barwig, thirteen years ago [1917], has acted in a revival of “The Auctioneer,” and in “A Grand Army Man,” “The Return of Peter Grimm,” and “Van Der Decken.” Yet, time and again, wisely and rightly, Belasco has revived for him “The Music Master,” and always the public,—whether in the greatest cities of the country or the smallest “one-night stand” which he has visited,—has hailed him in that piece with joy and flocked in crowds to witness his touching and lovely performance. During the season of 1906-’07, when he fulfilled engagements in that play, of four weeks each, at the Majestic Theatre, Boston, and the Academy of Music, New York, the respective managers of those houses caused to be prepared, attested under oath,{125} and delivered as souvenirs to Belasco statements which show that in eight weeks $171,179.25 was paid for the privilege of seeing Warfield’s impersonation of von Barwig. That is an amazing record, surpassing any similar and fairly comparable one known to me, and, therefore, I here transcribe the items of receipt:

MAJESTIC THEATRE, BOSTON.

ACADEMY OF MUSIC, NEW YORK.

During the engagement at the Academy of Music, in 1907, the highest price charged for a seat was $1.50.{126}

[Perhaps nothing more conclusively manifests the unbreakable hold of Warfield on the affections of the American public, in this play, than the facts that in the present season (1917-’18), notwithstanding the stress of war and that the character he portrays is a German, his audiences everywhere have, seemingly, been limited only by the capacity of the theatres in which he has appeared and that, as Mr. Belasco kindly informs me, his average gross receipts have been well over $14,000 a week.—J.W.]

The first engagement of “The Music Master” at the Belasco Theatre lasted until January 7, 1905, when it was withdrawn to make way for Mrs. Carter in “Adrea.” On January 9 it was acted at the old Bijou Theatre, and remained there until June 3.

Belasco was subjected to a peculiarly impudent and contemptible persecution when Joseph Brooks (the factotum of Klaw & Erlanger and, as asserted by Belasco, a mere “dummy” for that firm) attempted to maintain a claim of partnership with him in the production and presentment of “The Music Master.” The contract signed by Brooks and by Belasco, in 1901, providing for professional exploitation of David Warfield, assigned the contract made in November, 1900, between Belasco and Warfield, to the Belasco-Brooks “partnership”; and

Photograph in Belasco’s Collection.

SCENE IN FRONT OF THE BELASCO THEATRE, PITTSBURGH, PA.

Ten o’clock in the morning, December 6, 1906: Opening of the sale of tickets for David Warfield’s engagement in “The Music Master”

{127}

the Belasco-Warfield contract, which covered the seasons of 1901-’02-’03, provided for a renewal at the end of that term. Brooks, accordingly, after “The Music Master” had been written on Belasco’s instigation and in large part by him and after it had been produced solely at his expense and risk, claimed a one-half interest in that prosperous venture and sought an injunction to prevent the play from being presented except under management of “Brooks & Belasco.” His claim was flatly disallowed in a decision of the New York Supreme Court, rendered by Justice Leventritt on October 31, 1904, in the course of which the court said:

Belasco’s feeling about “The Music Master” and his esteem of and loyalty to his friend Warfield are pleasantly shown in a declaration which he made about them several years ago:

A SHEAF OF OLD LETTERS: IN THE MATTER OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE.

All of the following letters by Belasco were written during the first year of “The Music Master,” and they well characterize the purposes of the Theatrical Syndicate and well indicate Belasco’s lively opposition to that oppressive monopoly. The second of them is addressed to his cousin, the son of the famous English actor David James, and it refers{129} to a proposal made by the younger actor so named that he should be brought to America, to act in some of his father’s parts, under the management of Belasco.

(David Belasco to Blanche Bates.)

(David Belasco to David James, Jr., in London.)

(David Belasco to Peter Robertson, San Francisco.)

(Peter Robertson to David Belasco, in New York.)

Belasco, I surmise, must have smiled a little grimly at this airy admonition “not to work himself up” about the active antagonism of the Syndicate: the cheery advice to the weaker party in a conflict, “Go in and win,” is doubtless excellent, but often, unhappily, it is somewhat more difficult to follow than it is to give. Viewed from the secluded tranquillity of the old Bohemian Club—that genial harbor of congenial spirits—a struggle with the Syndicate may have seemed like a fight with a phantom. For Belasco it was, and for many years remained, a hard reality, and had it not been for his wary vigilance and indomitable resolution he would certainly have been defeated, overwhelmed, and ruined.—Poor Robertson never realized his “hope of better fortune”: for several years after 1904 he continued to be the dramatic critic of “The San Francisco Chronicle”: then, the whole duty of the managing editor (as defined by my old friend, the journalist William Seaver—“first, to wring your brains dry; second, to{134} throw you away”) having been performed, he was dismissed from his employment and, after two or three years of anxious, dispirited, lonely waiting, he died—and, save by a few old friends, he is thought of no more.

METHOD OF COLLABORATION.

The tragedy of “Adrea,” begun in 1903, was completed before September, 1904, and it was put into rehearsal, at the Belasco Theatre, in October of the latter year. The following letters which passed between Belasco and his friend and associate John Luther Long afford an informing glimpse of their methods of collaboration in authorship, which Belasco has described in these words: “Before the actual writing of ‘Adrea’ we had the story [worked out] to the smallest detail. He lived in Philadelphia, but spent the latter part of each week with me. After the plot was finished we adopted a new system of collaboration. Mr. Long and I worked on the scenes apart, then met and joined them together. Then he revised the result and then I revised the result, and so on, until the sixth or seventh version found the scene in very good condition.{135}”

(John Luther Long, in Philadelphia, to David Belasco, in New York.)

(David Belasco to John Luther Long, in Philadelphia.)

DAVID BELASCO

Inscription:

“God bless you, dear friend!
Faithfully,
David Belasco.”

“To William Winter, Esqre.”

Photograph by the Misses Selby.
Author’s Collection.

{137}

(John Luther Long to David Belasco.)

MRS. CARTER AND THE TRAGEDY OF “ADREA.”

The tragedy of “Adrea,” by Belasco and Long, is a composition of exceptional imaginative scope and of great dramatic power. Its scene is a royal court of a conjectural kingdom, situated on an imaginary island in, perhaps, the Adriatic Sea. Its time is named as about the fifth century of the Christian era,—a time well chosen for poetic and romantic purposes; for the vast Roman Empire had then become extinguished in Western Europe and was slowly crumbling to pieces in the East, and minor monarchies can credibly be supposed to have flourished in such an era of transition and a martial chieftain out of Noricum to have dallied with the daughters of a Roman Prince. It is a play without historic basis; an authentic creation of the inventive brain; a vigorous and splendid work of art, moving freely in a broad field. It deals with great themes,—great passions, crimes, and sorrows; great and terrible punishments of sin, and the spectacle of great character made sublime by grief.{139} Much of its movement proceeds in the open air: some of it beneath the vault of night; and its web involves the terrors of tempest and the mystery and dread of spectres from the realm of death. The form and color of it are modern,—a form and color of rosy amplitude and voluptuous luxuriance; but the feeling that pervades it is the ominous feeling of the old Greek tragedies of fate and doom. Its defect is excess—an excess of persons, objects, pictures, emotions, and words; the superflux that proceeds from intensely passionate feeling in the conception of the story and especially in the conception and development of its central character. An affluence of fancy is, however, more grateful than the frigid sense of want. This is a synopsis of it:

The action begins in a spacious scene, in front of the royal palace of the monarchs of the island kingdom. The Princess Adrea is the blind daughter of Menethus, King of the Adrean Isles. She is older than her sister, the Princess Julia, and on the death of her father she would succeed to the throne, if she were not blind: for the law of Menethus has ordained that “No sovereign shall wear the crown who is not, both in mind and body, sound.” The play opens on the hundredth day after the death of Menethus. The King is dead, and the hour has come for the crowning of his successor. The Princess Julia, long{140} known as “the imperial wanton,” with a company of her kind, is holding a festival. Kaeso, born a barbarian, but later a pretorian tribune, having come to Adrea, with his troops, intent on usurping the throne of Menethus, sees a readier way of conquest, in a marriage with the Princess Julia, soon to be Queen. He has been made her favorite, and marriage with him is to follow her coronation.

In the course of the revel the blind princess, Adrea, passes, led by an Egyptian named Garda, on her way to the temple, in which she is to be secluded, so that her presence at court may not trouble her sister Julia, whom the people of the kingdom detest. It is premised that in Arcady, where Adrea had dwelt with her father, she had known and loved Kaeso, then one of the King’s martial chieftains, and that he had sworn to marry her, but had proved faithless. Now, at the Princess Julia’s festival, Kaeso and Adrea meet again, and Kaeso kindly greets the blind girl. This enrages the Princess Julia, who thereupon commands him to declare to Adrea that he does not love her, but loves her sister Julia. This cruelty he must commit, as the price of the kingdom. He submits; the imperious Julia leads her train away; and he is left alone with Adrea, to whom he discloses himself, and who receives him with the deepest tenderness of{141} faithful love. To her his presence can mean only that he has come to keep his oath by marrying her. Kaeso forgets Julia, his ambitions—everything but the woman who has come into his arms. The watchful Princess Julia, apprised by a spy, the Court Fool,—Mimus, the Echo,—returns to see the lovers in their ecstasy of reconciliation, and she at once determines on a terrible revenge. Kaeso, seeing Julia, starts away from Adrea, and Mimus, who madly loves the blind princess, takes his place. This Mimus happens to be in an armor like that of Kaeso, which he has put on in a frolic; and when Adrea reaches to find Kaeso her hands touch Mimus, and she eagerly claims him, believing him to be her plighted lover. “And you shall marry him!” says the Princess Julia; grimly adding, as a response to Kaeso’s look of horror: “It is the price of Adrea!”

A lapse of five hours is supposed. The scene is the same. The time is near dawn. Soldiers are on guard. Challenges pass. Rumors have been heard of ill to the beloved Princess Adrea. Kaeso’s lieutenant, Arkissus, devoted to Adrea, has heard these rumors, and he demands an explanation of them from the now drunken and frenzied Kaeso. They quarrel, and are about to fight, when a fearful cry is heard and they halt. Then, staggering down the{142} palace steps, moaning in agony, comes the Princess Adrea, alone. Her prayer, like that of Ajax, is for light. She beseeches the gods to grant her one moment of sight, so that she may see the man to whom she has been given. The Fool enters, to drag her away,—for the Princess Julia, now Queen, has decreed banishment of Adrea and the Fool, and they must leave her kingdom before the dawn. There is an ominous roll of thunder. The Fool seizes Adrea. Suddenly the heavens seem to answer her agonized supplication. A bolt of lightning shatters the statue of her father, to which she has been clinging, and there is an instant of darkness. When the light is restored, a chaos stands revealed, in which Princess and Fool are prostrated. Adrea revives, and, with a wild cry, realizes that she can see. Soon she remembers, and gazing down upon a “painted, hideous, gibbering thing, in red and white,” she knows him for the Fool, who has been described to her. She lifts his limp body and stares at his vacant eyes: then she drops it and whispers, in horror: “Gods! You!”

The action now shifts to a structure called “The Tower of Forgetfulness.” To this Adrea goes, not thinking to take her throne, but only wishing to die, and thus bury her shame. The Tower of Forgetfulness is an obelisk of great antiquity, built{143} half on the land and half on the sea. Its door is never closed. Here the wretch who is weary of life can drink “the cup of oblivion,” and, through “the door of release,” sink into the sea, and be at rest. It is Adrea’s purpose to die. Then suddenly she hears the royal trumpets, the marriage song, and Kaeso’s song of battle. At the same moment her father’s ghost appears and enjoins her to reign, for vengeance. Looking down upon the ocean, she beholds Kaeso and Julia, who are returning to the palace, after their marriage. They are in her father’s royal galley, with his effigy at the prow. “Stop them!” commands Adrea. “Bring my father’s galley here! Say that Queen Adrea, rides to her coronation!” Arkissus appears with his legions, and executes her will.

The coronation of Adrea ensues. Kaeso is brought before her, in order that he may sue for pardon—which the heart of the injured Queen is ready to grant. But Kaeso is haughty, and the Queen dismisses her court, that she may judge him alone. She is temperate, lenient, and fond. She pours out all her heart; but it is only to be dazed by Kaeso’s declaration that his regret is solely for his lost ambition. He tells her that he knew of her spoliation, and allowed it. The Queen recalls her court. “Set him upon a horse of state,” she says,{144} “drest in a robe of gold. Strew his way with roses! Let heralds go before him and cry ‘Conqueror!’ ‘Imperator!’ Let maidens chant songs! And when he has reached my gates, and his men and galleys are in sight,—whip him! Whip him to his empty camp, and hold him captive there till the manner of his death is decided.”

The scene changes to the Queen’s Cabinet. Kaeso is brought in on the way to execution. It is the supreme moment of Adrea’s life. The man she loves is on the way to death. In spite of all her wrongs she will look upon his face again, before it is mangled by wild horses’ hoofs. Her heart still cries out for him. Even now she would save him, if she could. But frenzied multitudes surround the palace, maddened with knowledge of the outrages that the Queen has suffered; and she is powerless to save. Queen Adrea must tell Kaeso the manner of his death. Kaeso had thought to die as a soldier should—upon his sword, but his death is to be that of a beast, trampled beneath the iron hoofs of horses. This fate she proclaims, but, when the first shock of horror is past, Kaeso confesses that he deserves his doom, and declares that he will die well: and then he says that he has always loved Adrea, but has put his love aside, for the sake of his ambition. Again the Queen relents. She will, at least, save him from a{145} death of ignominy. She offers him the sword of Menethus, with which to kill himself. But his hands are chained. “You!” he begs. The thought is unendurable. She turns away. But suddenly, turning back, she cries out, “Yes!” and drives the blade through her lover’s heart.

The scene changes to Arcady. Eight years have passed. Queen Adrea has come to Arcady, and there she would remain at rest. But her people call her back to Adrea. The stanch Arkissus,—who has always loved her, whose one thought is of duty, and whose duty is to obey,—brings the prayer of her subjects that she will return and rule over them. But here are green fields, summer skies, and the shepherds and their pastoral music: it is a halcyon place and time; and she would remain, and linger, and die here, and rest beneath the sod that she and her first lover once trod together. A trumpet sounds, and a captive youth is brought into her presence. He is the son of Kaeso and Julia, and he has sought the throne of Adrea. He is vanquished, and his mother, Julia, has been slain. But there are tears in Queen Adrea’s eyes, as she looks upon him, and her arms open to him—for he has the port and lineaments of Kaeso. The Queen and the captive play a game,—“the Game of Being King.” Adrea places the youth on her throne, sets her crown{146} on his head, puts her sceptre into his hands, throws her ermine on his shoulders, and bids him “Reign in love.” “Open the casement,” cries the captive boy, “Let in the sun, if you play fair and set no trap for me!” “At the King’s command,” she answers; and in those words ordains her fate, for Adrea cannot again look upon the sun without loss of her vision. She flings the casement wide open, and, in the sudden blaze of light, goes blind: then, when the agony is past and night has come again, she staggers to the throne and cries, “Long live the King!” For still the law of succession is inexorable,—and so Prince Vasha reigns, and Adrea is once more only Adrea of Arcady.

No student of Roman history needs to be told that among the women of Rome (and at one time all Italy was circumscribed within the capital) there were females illustrious for almost celestial virtues and females portentous for the monstrosity of their hideous crimes. The authors of “Adrea” neither distorted nature nor exaggerated fact in their portraiture of the two princesses, Adrea and Julia, who are opposed and contrasted in this remarkable drama of love, crime, frenzy, retribution, atonement, and peace. Adrea is not nobler or more virtuous than Valentinian’s Eudoxia, nor is Julia more malignant, treacherous, and cruel than Justinian’s Theo{147}dora. In this tragedy the purpose, obviously, was to present, amid regal accessories and in all the paraphernalia of semi-barbaric splendor, a woman of lofty mind, potent character, and impetuous passions, and, by making her the victim not alone of blighted affection but of deadly outrage, to involve her in a complex tangle of torment; to make her terrible in the delirium of exasperated feeling; to display her emotional perturbation and fierce and ferocious conduct in a vortex of tempestuous struggle; and, finally, to depict her noble expiatory conquest of herself, and to leave her, in her lonely majesty, a sublime image of triumphant virtue, gentle fortitude, and patient grief. That purpose has been superbly accomplished. To superficial observers, indeed, the presentment of “Adrea” appealed chiefly by reason of its implication of theatrical situation, its startling effects of climax, and its gorgeous scenic investiture. To thoughtful minds it came home as an illuminative and significant exposition of human nature, artfully made through the medium of a wonderful picture of human life in the antique world,—and in that it reached much further than merely to the fulfilment of any immediate theatrical need. Like the more classic dramatists of the Garrick era, its authors drew their inspiration from the great fountain of{148} historic antiquity—adjusting, rearranging, and emphasizing old types and old examples to exhibit actually (and not by any dubious method of old symbolism) what is in our own hearts and of what fibre we are all made. Their play is an honor to them, and it is a rich and permanent addition to the literature of the Stage.

Mrs. Carter impersonated Adrea, and finding in it a part into which she could entirely liberate all her emotional power, without losing control of it, she rose to the occasion. She had hitherto acted in comedy, “sensation,” or sentimental, drama. The character of Adrea is wholly tragic. Through the wide range of conflicting emotions implicated in her experience—the misery of blindness and loss of royal inheritance, the ignominy of desertion by her idolized lover and of betrayal into the lewd embraces of an odious menial, the paroxysm of anguish when, to save her lover from a death of horror and shame decreed by herself, she strikes him dead, and the humility of surrender when, after years of bleak remembrance, she invites again the black eclipse and forlorn disablement of blindness and delivers her kingdom to the rule of her slaughtered lover’s son—Mrs. Carter moved firmly, steadily, triumphantly,—commanding every situation and rising to every climax. No denotement in Mrs. Carter’s acting of{149} Du Barry had even remotely indicated such depth of tragical feeling and such power of dramatic expression as she revealed in the scenes of the tempest, in pronouncing Kaeso’s doom, and, above all, in the terrible, piteous, tragic self-conflict through which the Woman became the incarnation of Fate and the Minister of Death. Mrs. Carter had long been known for her exceptional facility of feminine blandishment, her command of the enticing wiles of coquetry and the soft allurement of sensuous grace,—known, likewise, and rightly admired for the clarity and purity of her English speech, always delightful to hear: but observers studious to see and willing to be convinced had not supposed her to be an actor of tragedy. It took a long time for Belasco to bring her to a really great victory, but she gained it in Adrea. The impersonation possessed many attributes of beauty: symmetry, for the eye; melody, for the ear; unity, continuity, sincerity, and sustainment, for the critical sense; poetic atmosphere, for the imagination; but it possessed one supreme attribute of terror,—absolute knowledge of human misery. “Look into your heart, and write,” is an old poetic precept. “Look into your heart, and act” ought to be joined with it: but God pity the heart into which the true poet and the true actor must sometimes look!{150}

“Adrea” was first performed in Washington, D. C., on December 26, 1904, and in New York on January 11, 1905,—at the first Belasco Theatre. The following is the original cast of that play:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

BELASCO’S “ADREA” CURTAINS

{151}

Coincident with his production of “Adrea” Belasco’s fight for freedom in the conduct of his business reached a climax that attracted nation-wide and wondering attention and enlisted the sympathetic assistance of eminent members of the national legislature. Whenever possible, subsequent to his successful presentment of “The Heart of Maryland” in Washington (October, 1895), Belasco has elected to bring out his new plays in that city. There he desired to launch what was in some ways the most ambitious venture of his career,—and there, accordingly, after overcoming every obstacle that could be thrown in his way, he first made known the tragedy of “Adrea.” But before narrating the manner in which that production was effected it is desirable here to make somewhat particular exposition of the antagonism he was compelled to encounter and to record the significance of his long and costly conflict with it.{152}

BELASCO AND THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE.

JUSTICE AND THEATRICAL ACHIEVEMENT.

David Belasco has served the Public and the Theatre, ably and brilliantly, in several fields and for many years, but his achievements as at once theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, instructor, and “producer,” splendid and admirable as incontestably they have been and are, have been equalled by other American managers, of earlier date. In writing Biography it is prudent to remember that “there were heroes before Agamemnon.” Much was accomplished on the American Stage long before the advent of either David Belasco or any other theatrical administrator of recent times, and when we review the history of the drama in America for more than a hundred years, and consider the managers by whom it has been fostered, conserved, and directed, we should recall and honor the names,—among others,—of William Dunlap, the elder Warren, William Wood, Francis Courtney Wemyss, James H. Caldwell, Noah Ludlow, Edmund Simpson, Charles Gilfert, the elder Hackett, the elder Wallack, William Evans{153} Burton, and Thomas Barry,—each of whom, in his day, deserved theatrical eminence and gained it, and all of whom seem now to be forgotten. Lester Wallack, who long preceded Belasco, and who also was theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, and actor,—and as actor with no superior and scarce an equal in his peculiar realm,—gained laurels which will long endure. John T. Ford, Boucicault, Barrett, McCullough, Edwin Booth, and John S. Clarke,—all were accomplished and highly successful and distinguished in every branch of theatrical management; and, although Belasco has written his name imperishably on the honorable scroll of dramatic renown, he has not eclipsed those eminent predecessors.

BELASCO’S UNIQUE SERVICE TO THE THEATRE.

In one service, however, that Belasco has rendered to the Theatre and the Public he is peculiarly a benefactor, and in doing that service he has encountered an antagonism and prevailed in adverse circumstances with which the elder theatrical managers never had to contend. It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of his intrepid opposition to the tyrannical monopoly known as “The Theatrical Syndicate.” His conflict with that arrogant, oppressive,{154} pernicious organization, sustained through a period of about twelve years, and finally victorious, required unfaltering courage, tenacious purpose, skilful and prompt action, and tireless persistence. It exacted from him prodigious labor; it entailed upon him great expense and loss, and it compelled an expenditure of time and strength which, if he had been left free to devote it to his artistic labor, would have been productive of lasting benefit to the Drama. But the sacrifice was well made, because the Theatre and the Public profited by it,—as, earlier, and concurrently, they profited by the resolute contest against the Syndicate (a valiant and gallant fight for freedom and justice) waged by Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske. It should be noted that Augustin Daly, Belasco’s immediate predecessor in the primacy of theatrical management in America,—who, also, was theatre manager, stage manager, playwriter, and “producer,” and who was consummate as an executive,—being assailed by the Syndicate (as he several times declared to me), became one of its active opponents and resisted its aggressions: but Daly, who died before its despotic power had become matured, had long been an established, powerful manager before it was formed, so that it could not do him much harm. Belasco, on the contrary, was constrained to fight his way to independ{155}ence and influence against its active, relentless opposition and inveterate hostility, from almost the beginning of his career in theatrical management.

WHAT ARE WE DISCUSSING?

In the period of about sixteen years preceding 1912 the newspaper press of America published many thousands of columns, often critical, at times strongly censorious, about the “Trust” or monopoly which commonly is known as “The Theatrical Syndicate.” Bitter fights likewise have been waged not only in the press but in the courts relative to that organization. The public has, from time to time, manifested interest in the subject,—as, for example, relative to Mrs. Fiske’s appearance in all sorts of unsuitable places, because the Syndicate had “barred” her from the regular and (as they are technically styled) “first-class” theatres, and to Mme. Bernhardt’s enforced performances in a circus tent, for the same reason, and, especially, to Belasco’s almost preterhuman efforts to present his plays in Washington (from which city strenuous efforts were made by the Syndicate to exclude him). Yet I believe that the public knowledge of the Syndicate,—its origin, aims, character, policy, conduct, and effect,—has never been more than superficial.{156}

THE SYNDICATE-INCUBUS DEFINED.

What is “The Theatrical Syndicate,” and why should it rightfully be denounced and opposed as a pernicious institution?

The Theatrical Syndicate, primarily, was a partnership of six men, all speculative theatrical managers, formed for the purpose of dominating, for the pecuniary profit, advantage, and personal aggrandizement of its members, the theatrical business of America, and of doing this by methods some of which, in their practical operation, are morally iniquitous, and should be, if they are not, legally preventable, in the public interest.

Those six men were: Al. (Albert) Hayman (deceased 1916), Charles Frohman (deceased 1915), Marc Klaw, and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger, all of New York; and Samuel F. Nirdlinger (known as Nixon) and J. Frederick Zimmermann, both of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The contract under which those persons formed their copartnership and carried on their syndicate business was made in August, 1896, and it was renewed, in substance, in April, 1900.{157}

SPECIOUS PRETENSIONS TO JUSTIFY THE INCUBUS.

The founders of the Theatrical Syndicate have, with much fulsome commendation of themselves and their purposes, directly or by implication, sought to justify the position they have assumed by specious assurances substantially to this effect:

That the theatrical business of America was disorganized, unstable, and, in general, so conducted as to entail loss on many or most persons engaged in it, by reason of competition, poor judgment, and lack of discrimination in its transactions; that the prevalent administration of it was not favorable to the development of actors and the promotion of the art of the Theatre; that their combination was made to cure, and that it did cure, the defects of theatrical business, stabilize it and render it reputable and responsible,—placing it, in this respect, on a level with other business; and that, incidentally, it would, and did, tend to prosper the means whereby the Theatre must live—namely, Acting and the exhibition of Acting. A. L. Erlanger, executive of the Booking Department of this organization (that is, of the firm of Klaw & Erlanger, the particular business of which was, and is, to “book,” i.e., to arrange, the tours of theatrical companies), has thus stated a part of his{158} views relative to the character and doings of the Syndicate:

In support of those views and in advocacy of the Syndicate of which he was an active member the late Charles Frohman wrote (“The New York Herald,” March 13, 1910): “Several men united to systematize the conduct of the Theatre, put the actor’s profession on a self-respecting footing, guard the playwright against piracy, protect the managers of theatrical companies against unfair competition [i.e., competition not profitable to the members of the Syndicate.—W. W.], at the same time obliging them to keep faith with managers of theatres.{159}”

A third voucher for the exalted integrity and far-reaching beneficence of the methods exemplified in the operations of the Syndicate was furnished by Charles Burnham, at that time manager of Wallack’s Theatre, not himself a member of the benign brotherhood, but obviously congenial with it, and President of “The Theatrical Managers’ Association,” a society which the Syndicate practically dominated:

TENDENCY TO COMBINATION IN MODERN BUSINESS.

An honest, just, equitable organization of business is always right, and no one but a fool or a knave would ever question the legality or propriety of it. The drift of the present age, in commercial affairs, is, and for a considerable time has been, toward combination, organization—in a word, efficiency. Business men of the United States, little by little, have awakened to the imperative necessity of conservation of energy and resources, systematic{160} labor, economy; the sensible use of every force that tends to the advancement of civilization, the increase of public prosperity, and the diffusion of intelligence. One of those forces is the Theatre, and it is one of prodigious influence. No intelligent observer acquainted with its history would maintain that its condition, particularly as a business institution, has ever been perfect or is perfect now. It is certain, however, that its commercial condition has, within the last half-century, very considerably improved, because not only have the ban of the Church and the stigma of Society been, to a large extent, removed from it, but great wealth has been bestowed on its enhancement, and expert executive talent has sometimes been enlisted in the management of its affairs.

CAUSES OF THEATRICAL PROGRESS.

It was not a commercial manager of the Syndicate type who first urged the efficient management of the Theatre; it was an idealistic critic and a great poet. Many years ago that ripe scholar and accomplished man-of-letters Matthew Arnold exclaimed, in one of his Essays, “The Theatre is irresistible—organize the Theatre!” Arnold, as a youth, had been entranced by the acting of Mlle. Rachel, and as a man had naturally been charmed by the acting and{161} greatly influenced by the propulsive reformatory and constructive theatrical administration of that great actor and theatrical manager Henry Irving. It is from such sources of thought and of intellectual energy as Arnold and Irving, in England, and as Wallack, Booth, and Daly, in America,[1] that the impulse properly to organize the Theatre has proceeded; not from the mere money-grubbing schemes of monopolistic cliques or speculators in public amusement. Members of such cliques,—of which the Theatrical Syndicate is one,—are, at times, frank enough to admit that (as they are fond of expressing it) they are not engaged in theatrical business “for their health,” and undoubtedly they are within their rights when they seek, by fair means, to make their business profitable. So much is understood and conceded: who would deny it? Monopolies, however, frequently pose as public benefactors, and such, as already shown, is the pose assumed by the Theatrical Syndicate. Many persons have, in one way or another, been deceived by it, or brought to approve it. In 1898, beginning to be conscious, in my critical and editorial work on “The New York{162} Tribune,” of an oppugnant influence emanant, apparently, from that source, I determined to have a clear understanding with the late Donald G. Nicholson, then the editor of that paper, and I formally asked him whether “The Tribune” favored or opposed the Syndicate. In reply I received from him the assurance that “of course ‘The Tribune’ opposed it,” and also I received a printed list of newspapers which, Mr. Nicholson informed me, had explicitly declared their opposition to the Syndicate as being an unjust organization, hurtful to the Theatre and adverse to the public interest. That list contained the names of most of the leading journals of our country. But—“There are no birds in last year’s nest.” Most of the opposers of the Syndicate seem, like the Witches in “Macbeth,” to have “made themselves air, into which they vanished.” Active opposition to that incubus in the press is, at present, conspicuous chiefly by its absence.

The pretensions of the Syndicate are one thing: its proceedings are quite another. Equitable conduct has not been the spring of its prosperity. Not by fair means has it become rich and powerful. Aside from having somewhat facilitated the making possible of economically practical routes over the country for travelling companies and the transaction{163} of business between resident theatrical managers and representatives of travelling companies, it has done, literally, nothing for the good of the Theatre; but it has done everything for the good of itself. It is not to be supposed, for example, that because the making of economical routes is feasible through the booking agency of the Syndicate, once such routes have been booked they are inviolate. “Dates” are cancelled and “routes” are changed, when such change is requisite to the advantage of the Syndicate, with total disregard of any other consideration. “Where,” exclaimed Gladstone, “can you lay a finger on the map of Europe and say, ‘Here Austria did good’?” Where can you lay a finger on the map of progress in the Theatre in America and truthfully say, “Here the Syndicate did good”?

THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.

That the Theatre, to exist, must be self-sustaining; that its administration “must show a profit,” is a proposition so elementary in its truth and so universally conceded that it would be folly to restate it, if there were not so much stupidity in the generally attempted exposition of Commercialism in Art. But as a matter of right and duty (and this is what, apparently, the Syndicate and congenial managers{164} cannot comprehend), theatrical managers are under distinct obligation to consider the public good before they consider their individual prosperity. In other words, when a man assumes to make use of one of the fine arts as a means of “doing business,” he assumes to wield an indirect educational power; he undertakes,—whether he knows it or not, whether he means to do so or not,—to affect the public taste, the public thought, and the public morals. Therein, accordingly, he assumes a responsibility much broader and much more important than that which is incurred in an ordinary “business” pursuit; and, as it happens, he assumes it under less restriction, by law, as to the possible effect of his conduct than is imposed on the speculator in almost any other “business.”

THE OBLIGATION OF INTELLECT.

Obligation of honesty and honor rests with equal force on all workers in all branches of industry: but it is one thing to sell boots or pickles, and another thing to disseminate thoughts and emotions. The more a man ascends in the scale of labor the more exacting becomes his duty to Society. A writer of novels, for example,—a Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a Cooper, or a Collins,—might, perhaps, find{165} the largest amount of personal emolument in writing stories calculated to vitiate taste, injure public thought and public morals, and thus debase the community, but, if he wrote such books, he would be a criminal, and it would be no defence for him to say that he made money by his crime, or to allege that because he made money the public approved of his actions. Intellectual men have no right to make money by misusing their powers. The same sense of rectitude,—but broader, higher, finer,—that bids an honest tradesman sell nothing that will injure the buyer enjoins upon the worker in the arts that he should consider not merely the payment he is to receive for his work, but the effect of that work upon the lives and destinies of the human beings to whom it is addressed and whom it is likely to influence. Theatrical managers stand in that position toward the public. Thoughts and feelings are the wares in which they deal, and, much as they are bound to consider financial profit (because they have heavy burdens of expense to carry), they are also solemnly bound, first and most of all, to consider the taste, the morals, and the intellectual advancement of the community. The manager who aims at monetary gain as the first and dominant object of his ambition and endeavor, to the exclusion of all higher purpose, is a disgrace to his profession and{166} an enemy to social welfare. To him, as to the Weird Sisters, “fair is foul and foul is fair.”

There are many vocations in which little is to be considered above the till. No person is compelled to assume the management of a theatre or the direction,—invariably of potent force,—of an educational, influential art. If he deliberately chooses such occupation and does assume it, he assumes it with all its inherent responsibilities,—and the greatest of these is moral and intellectual duty. No mistake more foolish or more culpable could be made than to regard this standard of conduct and responsibility as visionary, impracticable, or what this deplorably slang-ridden community flippantly mentions as “highbrow stuff.” No strenuosity of asseveration from theatrical janitors, “Great Moguls,” “Napoleons of the Theatre,” bullies or gamblers, flatulent with the wind of self-complacency and conceit, that conduct of the Theatre justifies itself by mere financial gain can vindicate a theatrical administration which benefits a few individuals at the expense of the public good and by the oppression of honest competitors; and that, practically, is the administration of the Theatre which is provided by the Theatrical Syndicate.

The covenant made by the six members of the Syndicate contains much of that verbiage which{167} customarily encumbers legal documents. Some facts, however, as to the results of its operation are apparent. Under the contract, covering “different cities of the United States and Canada,” independent theatrical companies, seeking to compete for public favor and support, “were not permitted to play against” “other companies of the same or different class,” owned, operated, controlled, or directed, by the Syndicate. According to that covenant, “No attraction [i.e., no company presenting a theatrical entertainment or performance] shall be booked in any of the said theatres or places of amusement [i.e., theatres or places of amusement owned or controlled by the Syndicate] which will [sic] insist on playing in opposition theatres or places of amusement in any of the cities” named in the Syndicate agreement, unless by written permission of a Syndicate member, controlling a theatre or theatres in such or such specific places where an independent manager desired to present his company in an independent theatre. By this arrangement the Syndicate, in effect, could say, and has said, to managers of theatres outside its ownership or direct control: If you wish to “play” any of our “attractions,” at any time, you must play all the attractions we book in your theatre when we book them and on the terms which we specify,—otherwise you cannot{168} have any of the attractions which we book. To persons, whether star actors or managers directing theatrical companies on tours through the country, desirous to secure “bookings” in certain cities in which first-class theatres are controlled by the Syndicate that organization could say, and has said, in effect: If you wish to play in any theatre owned or controlled by us, you must play in every theatre, whenever and wherever we choose to direct you to play, on whatever terms we choose to make for you. If that is not, in effect, blackmail and extortion, compelling the transaction of business under duress, what is it? The theatres owned, leased, controlled by members of the Syndicate are their theatres, and they assert the right to conduct those theatres to suit themselves. Owners of property certainly are entitled to use it for their advantage; but would any well-informed and fair-minded person maintain that the members of the Theatrical Syndicate, using their property in the way I have described, use it according to the dictates of justice? When that kindred beneficence the Standard Oil Company desires to drive a small, independent dealer out of business how does it go about the task? It sets up a contiguous, superbly managed competing oil shop and undersells the independent dealer, till he, lacking money to maintain a hopeless struggle for his

THE MEMBERS OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE

Al. Hayman Charles Frohman
Copyright by Charles Frohman, Inc.

º Marc Klaw

Abraham L. Erlanger
Copyright, Rockwood

Samuel F. Nixon (Nirdlinger) J. Fred. Zimmermann, Sr.

“It is often true, as old King Duncan declares, that ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.’ Nevertheless, study of the faces of the men who compose that sacred institution of beneficence, The Theatrical Syndicate, is worth making. Such study renders it easier to understand the condition of the Theatre in America to-day.”—W. W.

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livelihood, is forced to sell his business and desist from competition. Then the benevolent national octopus gradually advances the price of oil until at last the public in the neighborhood has paid the cost of driving the small competitor out of business, the field is occupied solely by the Standard Company, and it sells oil to the people for “all the traffic will bear.” That method may be as lawful in selling “theatricals” as in selling oil, but—is it right?

If Belasco desired to present one of his “attractions,” in thirty cities under the Syndicate domination (acceding to the terms imposed upon him), but could, in one other city, present that “attraction” for ten weeks, at an independent theatre, receiving eighty per cent. of the gross receipts, while in the same city the Syndicate would “book” his “attraction” at one of its theatres and graciously exact fifty per cent, of the gross receipts, then Belasco would be necessitated to submit to that predatory dictation, or else lose his “bookings” in the thirty other cities,—in all other cities,—in which the Syndicate controlled the “first-class” theatres.

“THOSE SHALL TAKE WHO HAVE THE POWER.”

Perhaps that may seem an extreme case. Yet that is exactly what happened to him. In 1902{170} Belasco produced “The Darling of the Gods,” Miss Blanche Bates appearing in it as a star, in association with an exceptionally fine and expensive company. That was a very costly production: after two years of presentation of it Belasco had gained a net profit of only $5,000,—while, had he chosen to do so, he could have gained that profit in a fortnight with many an inferior vehicle. He was, naturally, proud of his achievement. He desired that the play should be represented within reach of the multitude assembled to view the World’s Exposition, which was opened at St. Louis, in 1904, and he arranged to present “The Darling of the Gods” at the Imperial Theatre, in that city. As soon as this fact became known he was notified by Mr. Erlanger, on behalf of the Syndicate, that he would not be permitted to do so,—the reason being that the Syndicate would not tolerate the presentment there of Belasco’s play in any but a Syndicate house, though the Syndicate could not, or would not, provide him a theatre there for as long a term as he could secure the Imperial. Belasco’s reply was that he would certainly produce “The Darling of the Gods” in St. Louis, whereupon Mr. Erlanger, in the presence of Belasco’s representative, destroyed and threw into a waste basket a number of contracts, signed and executed, providing for the presentation of that and other{171} Belasco “attractions” in theatres under Syndicate control in various cities of the Union and Canada. This peremptory repudiative action, accompanied by much violent expletive, no doubt was one of Mr. Erlanger’s genial ways of illustrating the conduct of business on those “firm lines” he had prescribed as so essential to theatrical regeneration, and of illuminating the Syndicate’s righteous purpose, as stated by the late Mr. Charles Frohman, to compel the managers of theatrical companies “to keep faith with managers of theatres.” It clearly was a conclusive example of the Syndicate’s beneficent methods.

“Thus bad begins and worse remains behind”: if the general policy which I have specified is iniquitous, how shall certain other proceedings, conducted by the executive of the Syndicate, in the development of the business of the Theatre, be characterized? Let the reader assume that he wishes to bring out a new star or a new play, in New York, and does so: his venture is successful: he plays for a considerable term in the capital: he wishes to “book” his “attraction” on the road. The charges made for such booking service are, I understand, reasonable,—somewhere from about $250 to $300 for a season’s tour. But does the reader suppose he can get his play booked and his tour{172} arranged as simply as by paying an agent’s commission? Let him try: perhaps he will succeed: “circumstances alter cases”: his play may have proved so popular in New York that theatre managers throughout the country clamor to have it exhibited in their theatres, in which case the Syndicate might become placable; but such good fortune is dubious. It is far more probable that, in order to obtain a desirable route through the first-class theatres of the country, he will find it obligatory to make “a free gift” of an interest of from one-third to one-half of his successful venture (in which he has done all the original work and borne all the expense and risk) to the benevolent and protective firm of Messrs. Klaw & Erlanger,—as, for example, it appears from his sworn testimony (see ante, pp. 18-19) that Belasco was forced to do when presenting David Warfield in “The Auctioneer.”

DIVERGENT VIEWS OF THE SYNDICATE: GROUNDS FOR REASONABLE BELIEF.

It is not feasible to include in this Memoir a complete History of the Theatrical Syndicate, examining every detail of its organization, conduct, influence, and effect,—though such a history{173} is a necessary part of the annals of our Stage. In the absence of such exhaustive record the partially informed reader may be confused, perhaps misled, by dissentaneous views of the Syndicate—about which, be it observed, I write as an uncompromising opponent. On the one side that Syndicate is found portrayed by its advocates as an institution of light, leading, and beneficence. On the other side, it is found represented as an arrogant, ruthless, grasping monopoly,—exerting an actively injurious influence on the Drama and the Art of Acting,—and as being composed of ignorant, avaricious, vulgar men, unfit to dominate any art—and in particular the quasi-educational art of the Theatre,—and regardless not only of the public welfare as affected by the Stage but, at least in some instances, regardless even of the public safety. The disparity of sentiment is diametrical. But though a whole history of the Syndicate is not here practical, is it not possible briefly to present essential information bearing on the subject in such a way that the reader may disregard the discordant and disputatious views of advocates and opponents and form an independent opinion based merely on facts of record? I think that it is. First, then, as to disregard of the public safety by some members of the Theatrical Syndicate:

Soon after the burning of the Iroquois Theatre,{174} in Chicago, December 30, 1903, during a performance there of “Mr. Bluebeard,”—a disaster in which 602 persons horribly perished,—the New York weekly journal “Life” published a cartoon portraying the exit of a theatre, with the door padlocked and with smoke streaming through it, while women and children were shown struggling to force it open and escape. A symbolic figure of Death was shown standing beside that portal, and beneath the picture was a caption reading: “Messrs. Klaw & Erlanger Present Mr. Bluebeard.” The implication of that cartoon was, unquestionably, an accusation of wholesale manslaughter. Messrs. Klaw & Erlanger, claiming that the publication of it was a libel upon them, instituted a suit against “Life” for $100,000 damages. That suit was tried in the United States Circuit Court, New York, January 3 to 6, 1905, before Justice William J. Wallace and a jury. The publication complained of was, in fact, beyond question a libel. Under the law publication of libellous matter is justified if it be true and if it be made without malice, in the way of legitimate comment or criticism. The issue in this case, therefore, was perfectly clear. The jury decided in favor of “Life” after deliberating less than five minutes—thus, in effect, certifying to the truth and legitimacy of comment which amounted{175} to an accusation against Klaw & Erlanger of wholesale manslaughter through negligence.

Second, as to the characters and reputations of the men composing the Syndicate and the question of their fitness to dominate the Theatre:

“The New York Dramatic Mirror,” on October 30 and November 13, 1897, published articles, written by its editor, then Harrison Grey Fiske, which stigmatized the members of the Theatrical Syndicate as a “band of adventurers, who imagined that they could manipulate the amusement business for their sole gain”; as men actuated by “clannish greed and selfishness”; as “mercenaries” who threatened “the welfare of the Stage”; as persons who, in their business, were guilty of maintaining a “system of double-dealing, of false pretences, and of misrepresentation”; as “illiterate managers”; as an “insolent and mischievous clique of theatrical middlemen”; as “insolent jobbers,” “theatrical throttlers,” “crooked entrepreneurs” and “an un-American and intolerable combination of greedy, narrow-minded tricksters.”

The several members of the Syndicate, resentful of these explicit strictures, instituted suit against Fiske, asserting that in making and circulating the statements about them just quoted he had uttered a “false, defamatory, scandalous, and malicious libel” which had “injured the complainants in their good{176} name, fame, and reputation,” and otherwise damaged them, all in the sum total of $100,000. The complaint in this action was filed on November 19, 1897.

Fiske answered, in effect, that his charges against the Syndicate were “made in behalf of the public and [of] those engaged in the theatrical line or profession in the United States” and were set forth as “a fair and true statement of the object and purpose of the Syndicate”; that his articles complained of were true and not malicious, denying that they constitute a “false, defamatory, scandalous, and malicious libel”; asserted that “Al. Hayman was not a person of good name, fame, and reputation,” but “that he [Hayman] with his co-complainants did by a system of double-dealing and false pretences and misrepresentations to the public and those engaged in the theatrical business unite and band together by wrongful and improper expedients” to mislead and defraud the public; “that the said J. Fred Zimmermann is not a person of good name, fame, and reputation”; that A. L. “Erlanger is not a person of good name, fame, and reputation, but that, on the contrary, the said A. L. Erlanger has been arrested and convicted of crime in the State of Pennsylvania,” and that “the name, fame, and reputation” of the plaintiffs had been “truly set forth in the said articles mentioned in the plaintiffs’ complaint.{177}”

Of course, to make such damaging accusations is not to prove them,—whether they be made in a newspaper or in a legal instrument: the noblest and best men and women the world has ever seen, or ever will see, all are liable to traduction and attack. But the members of the Syndicate, after taking cognizance of these accusations, after declaring under oath that they had been damaged by the making of them in the amount of $100,000, and after the braggart spokesman for the group had asserted in print that “we mean to make Mr. Fiske prove his allegations or publicly acknowledge his mistake,” dallied and delayed in the case for two and one-half years (during all of which time Mr. Fiske, as he personally and repeatedly assured me, was not only willing but eager to go to trial on the facts),—and then, April 18, 1900, discontinued their action. Commenting on this proceeding, Fiske said, in “The Mirror”:

Judicious readers will, I believe, agree that the course of the members of the Syndicate amounts,{178} practically, to a confession of the truth of Fiske’s charges; and surely, in the circumstances, they can neither wonder nor complain because those charges have been generally believed.—As to the power exerted by A. L. Erlanger over Belasco and the quality of the Theatrical Syndicate as a monopoly, I consider the arraignment made by Samuel Untermyer, before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, to be perhaps the best and most entirely just that I have ever read:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

THE CROWNING ROOM,—BELASCO’S PRODUCTION OF “ADREA”

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CONVERTING CONVENTION HALL:—“ADREA” IN WASHINGTON.

Using the despotory power alluded to by Mr. Untermyer, the Syndicate closed all the theatres of Washington against Belasco when he attempted to arrange for the presentment of his tragedy. “My penchant for giving the first performances of my plays before the Washington public, because I got the real start of my independent career there,” Belasco remarked to me, “may be, as some{180} unfriendly critics have declared it, a ‘sentimental folly,’ but it pleases me to do so, and it seems to me to be a matter for me to decide. The less likely it became that I could get into Washington with ‘Adrea’ the more determined I became to do so.” The result of his determination was that Belasco suddenly and privately hired Convention Hall, a vast, barn-like place in Washington, inconvenient of access, situated over a market, with seating capacity for more than 5,000 persons. It contained no stage and was in every way unfit for theatrical use: in brief, what Belasco did was, first, to hire a roofed space, and then build a theatre beneath it,—incidentally complying with all the mysteriously sudden and preternaturally exacting requirements of various administrative departments of the District of Columbia. “In all my experience,” he remarked to me, “I never knew such vigilance to be exercised about a theatrical performance, and I should never have been able to meet the almost incessant and sometimes most unreasonable demands upon me if it had not been for the kindly advice, guidance, and assistance of Senator Gallinger and of Speaker Cannon, who had been interested in my fight by a protégé of his, Mr. Sidney Bieber; but, one way or another, every demand was met.” About one-third of the hall was partitioned from the rest of it by a temporary wall{181} and a proscenium arch. Behind this a commodious stage was erected,—all the labor of building being performed by a company of mechanics brought by Belasco from his New York theatre. The iron girders supporting the roof and also the exposed parts of the ceiling were draped and covered with fire-proof cloth and gauze, dark green in color. Several carloads of rich hangings and furniture which Belasco had originally purchased for use in “Du Barry” and “The Darling of the Gods” were taken to Washington and used to decorate the interior of this improvised theatre. Seats were arranged, the aisles were carpeted, “boxes” were built, a gallery was erected at the rear; a chill and barren loft was converted into a spacious, warm, and handsome playhouse, and on Christmas Eve all seemed to be in readiness for the opening—and then the Fire Department condemned the electric-lighting system. “For a little while,” said Belasco, in relating the story of this enterprise, “I thought they had me beaten, and after I had spent thousands of dollars. But I put my case before the Edison Electric Company—and between Saturday and the following Monday evening the Edison people tore out the condemned system of wiring, put in a new one, laid a special main for the supply of current, got it all inspected and passed, and we opened as advertised{182} on Monday night! I wanted to get out on the footlights and crow! As to safety—everything had been done and we had, for an audience of 1,400, the spaces, exits, and stairways previously considered safe for crowds of from 5,000 to 6,000.”

Belasco’s conversion of Convention Hall into a theatre, for the production of “Adrea,” and the difficulties encountered by him in doing so caused much comment in the newspapers of the capital, and shortly before the first performance he published the following letter in “The Washington Post”:

The representation of “Adrea” was received with extraordinary enthusiasm by a large and brilliant audience, not a single member of which left before the close of the performance, long after midnight. During the Fourth Act a violent rainfall, beating on the iron roof of the hall, rendered much of the dialogue inaudible, and soon, the roof leaking in many places, water poured down through the cloth and gauze hangings, deluging the audience with green rain. “I saw Admiral Dewey, in one of the boxes,” said Belasco, “holding an umbrella over a lady whose beautiful white gown was ruined with green blotches; and in another Secretary Morton and Admiral Schley with the green water splashing down on them. But, even though they had to sit under umbrellas or be soaked, my audience stayed to the very end! Is it any wonder I love the Washington public?{184}”

In the local newspapers, on Christmas Day, Belasco published the following notice “To the Washington Public”:

When called upon the stage during the opening performance of “Adrea” Belasco made a brief speech of thanks, the first sentence of which brought an outburst of applause that lasted for more than two minutes:

Belasco gave seven performances of “Adrea” during his week in Washington, the gross receipts from which were more than $15,000. And when that engagement was over and the accounts had all been made up and paid he had suffered a loss of a little more than $25,000.—On the first night in New York he made a significant speech in which he said:

EXIT MRS. CARTER.

“Adrea” was the last new play in which Mrs. Leslie Carter appeared under the direction of Belasco. Her first season in that tragedy closed at the Belasco Theatre, May 4, 1905; the second (in the course of which she acted Du Barry and Zaza

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

MRS. LESLIE CARTER AS ADREA, IN THE TRAGEDY OF THAT NAME

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as well as Adrea) began there, September 20, that year, and lasted until June 23, 1906, when it was ended at Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Differences of opinion and divergence of interests had been growing for some time between the manager and the actress who owed so much,—everything, in fact,—to his sagacity and guidance. On July 13, 1906, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Mrs. Carter was married to William Louis Payne, and withdrew from the direction of Belasco,—Mr. Payne assuming the care of her affairs. In Adrea she touched the highest point of all her greatness and, thereafter, may fairly be said to have hastened to her setting. At the time of her withdrawal from Belasco’s management he was at work on a new play for her, dealing with the experience of an Hungarian immigrant. It was to be called “Repka Stroon”: although it has been finished it has not yet been acted. Mrs. Carter has done nothing of lasting importance since her personation of Adrea. Her acting, at its best, was far stronger in the emotions than it was in the intellect; but, in Adrea, she met and endured the test of tremendous situations involving conflict of various passions, and in that respect she proved her possession of tragic power. In fact, the defects of her performance of that part were wholly in the superficial texture of the method, and{188} it came home to the heart with an exceeding effect of pathos because of the sad knowledge with which it was freighted,—the knowledge of affliction and of grief.

SIGNIFICANT MESSAGES.

The following telegrams, sent by Belasco and his general manager, Roeder, are significantly indicative of the consideration shown by the former toward the players in his employ, as well as of the character of his mind, and for that reason they are printed here: the actor referred to, Mr. Benrimo, who played the Fool in “Adrea,” might properly enough have been transferred to Mrs. Carter’s company, without discussion:

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VARIOUS LETTERS AND INCIDENTS OF 1905.

In June, 1905, Belasco, accompanied by Mr. Roeder, sailed for England, his purpose being to purchase, if possible, or else to arrange to build, a theatre for his own use in London,—as Daly had done many years before. This ambitious project, however, proved impracticable of execution and, though he has never finally abandoned it, he found himself forced by circumstances to set it aside and he soon returned to America. While he was in{191} England the subject of his fight against the dominion of the Syndicate was discussed in various newspapers: in one of them I find the following letter:

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Soon after his return to New York Belasco received a message from the great singer Mme. Ernestine Schumann-Heink, who had been much impressed by his presentment of Warfield in “The Music Master,” who desired to adventure on the dramatic stage, and who proposed that Belasco should undertake her management and write a play for her use. This he gladly agreed to do, and the play, which was to have been a sort of sister piece to “The Music Master” and was to have been called “The Opera Singer,” was planned and in part written; but the demands on Belasco’s energies and time were more than any one person could meet and he was regretfully forced to relinquish that project. “It hurt me to let go,” he said: “I had a good story. Mme. Schumann-Heink had great natural talent for acting, and I believe that if I could have carried it through, working in a tremendous scene for her, as a singer on the opera stage, we should have set the country wild. But—there is a limit, and I was pretty near to mine, so that little scheme went up in smoke!”

The following letters all are characteristic of Belasco in varying moods:

{194}

Photograph by William Crooke, Edinburgh. Author’s Collection.

HENRY IRVING IN THE LAST YEAR OF HIS LIFE—1904-’05

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TRIBUTE TO IRVING.

While Belasco was in Washington, with his new play “The Girl of the Golden West,” there befell one of the saddest bereavements and one of the greatest losses the Stage has ever known,—the sudden, pathetic death of that great actor and manager and even greater man Henry Irving, which occurred at Bradford, England, October 13, 1905, immediately after the close of his performance in “Becket.” Belasco, always one of his disciples and most ardent admirers, when informed of his death, paid him this tribute:

BLANCHE BATES AND “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST.”

Belasco’s stirring play of “The Girl of the Golden West” was first produced at the new Belasco Theatre, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 3, 1905. It is a fabric of situations contrived for the advantageous display of that old, familiar, everlasting, always effective theatrical personage, the Rough Diamond. The Girl was beautiful, intrepid, passionate, vivacious; the soul of innocence; the incarnation of virtue; the blooming rose of vigorous health; and she could swear fluently, play cards, and shoot to kill. She kept a drinking shop, she was adored by all “the boys”; and the fame of her probity and her many fascinations filled the countryside of California, in the halycon days of ’49. That fortunate State, according to the testimony of novelists and bards, was densely populated at that time by girls of this enchanting order; but this particular Girl{198} seems to have transcended all rivals. She was beloved by a picturesque and expeditious outlaw, Dick Johnson, known as Ramirez, who had gained brilliant renown by means of highway robbery, and likewise she was beloved by the local Sheriff, Jack Rance, a grim, obnoxious officer, self-dedicated to the wicked business of causing that outlaw’s arrest and death. Both those lovers were ardent, and, between those two fires, her situation was difficult; but she always rose to the occasion, and when her outlaw was entrapped by his pursuer the ingenuity of her love and the dexterity of her stratagem delivered him from bondage, and, upon his promise of reformation and integrity, launched him upon a new and better career. The most conspicuous display of her passionate devotion and adroit skill occurred on a night when he was captured in her dwelling. The circumstances were essentially dramatic,—because the Girl and her favored swain were storm-bound in a mountain cabin, whither the Sheriff had tracked his prey; and the robber had been shot and wounded, so that there seemed to be no method of escape for him, till the Girl proposed a game of poker with his foe, staking herself against the liberty of her sweetheart, and won it by successful emulation of the Heathen Chinee,—substituting “an ace full” for an empty hand, at the decisive moment.

Photograph by Otto Sarony. Collection of Jefferson Winter.

BLANCHE BATES AS THE GIRL, IN “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST”

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There came a time, however, when even Love could do no more; but at that crisis Fate interposed, in the shape of Public Opinion,—that is to say, the friendship of “the boys,”—and the Girl and her lover were united.

The condition of California in 1849 was, to say the least of it, turbulent. Some parts of that State are in a turbulent condition now. Groups of “the boys” can still be discovered. They are not paragons, though, and they never were. The existence of good impulses in uncouth persons does not make them less uncouth. Fine qualities can, and do, exist in beings who are unfamiliar with soap and the toothbrush; but it would seem that the study of human nature can be pursued, more agreeably than elsewhere, among saponaceous branches of the race. It is more pleasant to read about “the boys” than it is to see them. But, broadly speaking, in Belasco’s drama the Girl is the play, and with Miss Bates as the Girl there was little more to be desired. Shorn of all extraneous fringes—variously impious, improper, vulgar, and offensive interjections of profanity and violent expletive—the play is the image of a lovely, impetuous woman’s devotion to her lover,—a devotion that is shown in a series of actions by her to save him from danger and ruin and to make him happy. Feminine heroism is{200} the theme, and the Girl selected to exemplify it is meant to be “a child of nature,” simple, direct, and true—and Belasco was entirely accurate when he wrote that the part fitted the actress for whom he made it from her head to her feet. Given the specified ideal to interpret, Miss Bates placed her reliance on Acting, and there were moments in her performance,—as, for example, in the First Act, as the Girl speaks of the protective instinct in the heart of woman,—when the soul that showed itself in her face was beatific. She gave, throughout, a personation of extraordinary variety and strength. In the situations devised for the heroine,—situations, which, while not radically new, are ingeniously contrived and are fraught with the dominant spell of suspense,—the actress had to express the growth of love; the blissful sense of being loved; the bitter pangs of jealousy; the passionate resentment of a heart that thinks itself betrayed and wronged by the object of its love; the conflict of anger with affection; the apprehension of deadly peril, and the nobility of self-conquest. The exaction of the part is tremendous, equally upon physical resource and nervous vitality, but, at every point, it was met and satisfied. The play exemplifies its author’s remarkable faculty of continuation in the making of characteristic dialogue, together with{201} ample felicity of invention, and it is overlaid with profusion of details. The midnight tryst of the Girl and the Road Agent is not altogether a credible device, but, once assumed and arranged, that situation,—comprehending the outlaw’s detection, as such, by the Girl, the awakening of furious jealousy, her turning him out into the storm, her subsequent harboring of him, and the game of cards with the outlaw’s life and liberty staked against the Girl’s whole future,—is handled with consummate skill and moulded to splendid results, and there the acting of Miss Bates rose to a magnificent climax of emotion, fully expressed and yet artistically controlled and directed,—a triumph of intellectual purpose.

This was the original cast of “The Girl of the Golden West”:

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A THRILLING STORY—AND A TRUE ONE.

One of the most tense and effective passages in contemporary drama is that contrived by Belasco, in this play, when the Sheriff detects the concealment of the Road Agent, Johnson, in the Girl’s home. Through the swirling snow he has caught a glimpse of a man’s figure near to the cabin of the Girl, has shot at it, and has, in fact, hit and grievously wounded Johnson, who has then been given refuge in the cabin and concealed by the Girl in a low loft. Rance, having come to the cabin and been assured that nobody is concealed there, is about to leave. He goes toward the door, he is about to open it and step out, but turns to speak to{203} the Girl, holding a white handkerchief with which he has wiped the snow from his face; as he does so, a drop of blood falls from the helpless wounded man above him upon the handkerchief, then another,—and Rance, watching the little crimson stain grow, instantly comprehends. Belasco, referring to this device, which, obviously, is as simple and as possible as it is effective but which was somewhat censured by captious fault-finders, writes this interesting account of its origin:

A MASTERPIECE OF STAGECRAFT: THE STORM IN “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST.”

Considered technically, Belasco’s production of “The Girl of the Golden West” was a genuine masterpiece of stagecraft, and it is specially memorable for the perfect example it exhibited of the right use of “realism” in the Theatre,—the use, in this instance, of an artfully created and perfect semblance of Nature in one of her wildest, most terrible moods as a background,—always felt, yet never obtruded,—for dramatic action the effect of which it steadily augmented and enforced. Nothing of the kind which I have ever seen in the Theatre has fully equalled in verisimilitude the blizzard on Cloudy Mountain as depicted by Belasco in the{206} Second Act of this fine melodrama—such a bitter and cruel storm of wind-driven snow and ice as he had often suffered under in the strolling days of his nomadic youth. When the scene, the interior of the Girl’s log-cabin, was disclosed the spectators perceived, dimly, through windows at the back, a far vista of rugged, snow-clad mountains which gradually faded from vision as the fall of snow increased and the casements became obscured by sleet. Then, throughout the progress of the action, intensifying the sense of desolation, dread, and terror, the audience heard the wild moaning and shrill whistle of the gale, and at moments, as the tempest rose to a climax of fury, could see the fine-powdered snow driven in tiny sprays and eddies through every crevice of the walls and the very fabric of the cabin quiver and rock beneath the impact of terrific blasts of wind,—long-shrieking down the mountain sides before they struck,—while in every fitful pause was audible the sharp click-click-click of freezing snow driving on wall and window.

The means by which this effect of storm was produced could easily be specified and described; in themselves they are as simple as those employed by Belasco to make the almost equally impressive tempest in “Under Two Flags”: but it is a capital mistake to take the public behind the scenes of{207} the Theatre and thus uncover the very heart of the players’ mystery and destroy illusion. In this instance it is enough to say, as revealing Belasco’s liberality, thoroughness, and care in placing his plays before the public, that operation of the necessary mechanical contrivances required a force of thirty-two trained artisans,—a sort of mechanical orchestra, directed by a centrally placed conductor who was visible from the special station of every worker. And it will, perhaps, be usefully suggestive to misguided exponents of literal “spontaneity” in Acting to mention that the perfectly harmonious effect of this remarkable imitation of a storm necessitated that at every performance exactly the same thing should be done on the stage at, to the second, exactly the prearranged instant.

A pleasing device utilized by Belasco in the investiture of this melodrama was a variant of the long familiar panorama which, moving from bottom to top of the stage, instead of across it from one side to the other, showed, first, a beautiful and romantic view of Cloudy Mountain and of the Girl’s cabin, perched, like an eyrie, high upon a canyon’s side; next, a winding mountain path leading down to a settlement and ending outside her saloon, the Polka: then, in a fleeting instant of darkness, the scene was changed to the interior of that saloon, where{208} the action of the play begins. In this production, also, Belasco banished the usual orchestra and substituted for it a band of homely instruments,—the concertina, the banjo, and “the bones” of the old-time minstrels,—which discoursed such old, once familiar but now long-forgotten, airs as “Coal Oil Tommy,” “Campdown Races,” “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and “Old Dog Tray.”

THE PARTING OF BLANCHE BATES AND BELASCO.—“THE FIGHTING HOPE” AND “NOBODY’S WIDOW.”

“The Girl of the Golden West” proved to be as successful as its author had expected: also, greatly to the disadvantage of the public, it proved to be the last important production in which, down to the present day (1917), Blanche Bates has appeared,—although she continued to act under the management of Belasco for about seven years. Three of those years were devoted to “The Girl,” which was presented throughout the country. Then, September 7, 1908, at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, Miss Bates was brought out in a new play by Mr. William J. Hurlbut, entitled “The Fighting Hope,” which was acted in New York, September 22, at the Stuyvesant Theatre. It held the stage there{209} until January 16, 1909; was transferred to the Belasco Theatre, January 18, and remained visible there until April 10. This was the cast:

“The Fighting Hope” served as a professional vehicle for Miss Bates during two seasons. On October 24, 1910, at the Euclid Avenue Opera House, Cleveland, Ohio, Belasco presented her in “Nobody’s Widow,” by Mr. Avery Hopwood: that play was first acted in New York, November 14, that year, at the Hudson Theatre, with the following cast:

Both those plays, though they enjoyed profitable careers, were, in fact, stop-gaps: they had never{210} been produced but that “the strong necessity of the times enforced”: “Blanche wanted to appear in ‘drawing-room’ drama,” Belasco has said to me; “I was hard pressed and I took what I could get.” Both those plays owed their profitable careers entirely to Belasco,—to his unremitting and unacknowledged diligence in the labor of revising them and making them feasible for stage use and to the perfection of detail with which he invested their production and caused them to be acted. A whimsical remark which he once made to me, in conversation about another play, applies with force to both these ventures: “I have,” he said, “first and last, paid many authors handsome royalties for the privilege of working like a slave on their plays, without credit and generally without thanks, and making them into popular successes. Each time I have solemnly sworn I’ll never do it again—yet, somehow, I do! But I live in hope that some day somebody will bring me a finished play that only needs production.”

“The Fighting Hope,” even as rectified and notwithstanding its measure of popular success, was but a flimsy fabric,—crude in construction and improbable in plot, though at times theatrically effective. In it is displayed an experience of a loyal wife, Anna Granger, who clings to “the fighting hope{211}” of vindicating her husband and rescuing him from the consequences of crime. That husband, a peculiarly contemptible scoundrel, has been detected in a forgery; has been tried, convicted, and imprisoned. His wife, believing him to be innocent and the victim of Burton Temple, president of a fiduciary institution, obtains employment in the service of that person and becomes his confidential secretary. In that capacity, after discovering and shamefully destroying a letter which establishes the guilt of her husband, she discovers, also, that she is beloved by Temple and that a reciprocal sentiment is developing in her own bosom. And then, having confessed her identity, her wrong conduct, and her regard, she is relieved from a distressing dilemma by the convenient taking off of her husband,—who, having escaped from the State Prison at Sing Sing, is overtaken, shot, and killed by officers of the law who pursue him. In the hands of any other manager than Belasco, instead of enduring for two years, this piece—if it had ever been produced at all—would have been relegated to the regions of tall timber and high grass within a fortnight.

“Nobody’s Widow” is an ephemeral farce, the central idea of which is denial of an established relationship in circumstances which might cause absurd perplexities and ridiculous consequences,{212}—such, in general character, as ensue when Charles Courtly, in “London Assurance,” on being introduced to his father, Sir Harcourt, blandly greets him as a new acquaintance. The chief female character, Roxana, acted by Miss Bates, has, in Europe, met and married a “Mr. Clayton,” who, actually, is an English nobleman, the Duke of Moreland; but having, on their wedding-day, found him in the embrace of a former mistress, Roxana has repudiated and left him,—privately instituting proceedings for divorce, and presently apprising her friends in America that her husband, of whom they have heard, but only by his assumed name of Clayton, is dead, and that she, accordingly, is a widow. Later she visits some of those friends at Palm Beach, Florida, and there she is, by chance, confronted by her husband, then a visitor to the same hostess, but bearing his right name. Roxana’s husband endeavors to reinstate himself in her affections, but, persistently and with alternate pleasantry and sarcasm, he is treated by her as an accidental acquaintance. Roxana assures him that, as “Mr. Clayton” he is “dead”; that she has never seen him before; that to her he is, as the Duke of Moreland, nobody; that she is nobody’s widow. That attitude she maintains until apprised of her divorce, when she becomes conscious of a sudden access of tenderness for him;

Photograph by Mishkin Studio. Belasco’s Collection.

TO DAVID BELASCO

A souvenir of the production of the opera, “The Girl of the Golden West,” by Giacomo Puccini

G. Gatti-Casazza David Belasco A. Toscanini Giacomo Puccini

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and, eventually,—though not until after various trips and stumbles on the track of reconciliation,—she first allows herself to be again married to him, and then allows herself to be convinced of his honest intentions and the sincerity of his love. A farce is well enough in its way: but to record industry of such a manager as Belasco and such an actress as Blanche Bates in such stuff as “Nobody’s Widow” is only to record wasted opportunity and disappointed expectation. In conversation with me Belasco has once or twice intimated some thought of proposing the resumption of Miss Bates’ management: it might be greatly to the public gain if that actress should return to his direction; but, while I earnestly hope it may come about, I do not believe it ever will:

A GREAT NIGHT.—BELASCO AT THE METROPOLITAN.—A GENEROUS ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

During the season of 1906-’07 Belasco’s friend the Italian musical composer Puccini, who desired to write an opera on a characteristically American subject, made a visit to our country for the purpose of selecting one. While in New York, in January, 1907, he attended performances by Miss{214} Frances Starr in “The Rose of the Rancho” and by Miss Bates in “The Girl,”—at the Academy of Music. After considerable cogitation his choice fell upon the latter, and while travelling to his home in Italy he wrote the following letter to Belasco:

Puccini’s wish was immediately complied with, and upon the basis of Belasco’s melodrama he wrote his opera of “La Fanciulla del West,”—which was sung, in Italian, “for the first time on any stage,” December 10, 1910, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York: the libretto was “arranged” by

In Remembrance

PUCCINI’S OPERA “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST”

Giacomo Puccini		Arturo Toscanini
(P. by Dupont)		(P. by Dupont)
Belasco (P. by Abbe)
G. Gatti-Casazza		Otto H. Kahn
(P. by Dupont)		(P. by Pach)
Emmy Destinn (P. by White)
Pasquale Amato		Enrico Caruso
(P. by White)		(P. by White)

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Signori G. Zangarini and C. Civinni: it is, substantially, a translation, until the last act, when a scene is introduced showing the imminent lynching of Johnson by “the boys” in a convenient grove of redwood trees and his rescue by the Girl. This scene, as I understand, was originally planned by Belasco for use in his play but was by him discarded. “La Fanciulla del West” was sung for the first time by an extraordinary cast, which should be recorded. This is it:

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Belasco felt profound interest in the production of his friend’s opera and directed many of the rehearsals, intent, as he has declared, “to make the artists act as well as sing.” That, doubtless, was a laudable ambition,—but, practically, it is, in the very nature of things, impossible of fulfilment, whether by Belasco or another. Opera singers may be, indeed, frequently are, dramatic in temperament: they are not and can not simultaneously be excellent as actors and as singers. Sometimes a comparatively poor singer becomes, in opera, a tolerably good actor,—but that is the limit of achievement in this direction. True impersonation, as made known on the dramatic stage,—in, for example, Forrest’s Othello, Davenport’s Macbeth, Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle, Barrett’s Cassius, Irving’s Mephistopheles,—never has been and never can be displayed on the operatic stage.

Talking with me about the first performance of this opera, Belasco said: “It was a great night for me, and I took unbounded pleasure in it and felt much honored when I found myself taking curtain calls with the author, Toscanini, Gatti-Casazza, Caruso, Miss Destinn, and the rest. Puccini, as always, was simple and frankly demonstrative in his delight. The singers were all wild with enthusiasm—I was never so much be-kissed in my life!—but I{217} think I was, perhaps, most interested in that wonderful man Arturo Toscanini. He seemed to me one of those self-contained fellows—calm on the surface but burning white-hot inside. To me it was thrilling to watch him conduct, and he did so at that first performance without a score, as though the work were a classic long familiar to him and held in memory.”

Belasco’s labor on the production of “La Fanciulla” was wholly one of love, as he declined to accept any payment for all his arduous work at rehearsals. In the programme of the first performance appeared a notice saying: “The Metropolitan Opera Company desires to make public acknowledgment of its indebtedness, and to express its cordial thanks, to Mr. David Belasco for his most valuable and kind assistance in the stage production of ‘The Girl of the Golden West.’” And among his most cherished possessions is a sumptuous album containing signed portraits of all the principal singers who participated in the opera, as well as of Puccini, Toscanini, and Gatti-Casazza, together with an exquisitely illuminated copy of the programme on vellum and an appreciative inscription, also illuminated on vellum. This gracious token was taken to Belasco’s studio and delivered to him by a committee, representing the opera company, composed of Messrs.{218} Otto Kahn, Henry Rogers Winthrop, Robert Goelet, and John Brown.

BELASCO AND THE MESSRS. SHUBERT.

An incident of Belasco’s career in management which can conveniently be recorded here is his alliance with the Messrs. Shubert. That alliance was arranged in 1904-’05, when Belasco was in active conflict with the Theatrical Syndicate, by the late S. S. Shubert, of whom and of their business association he writes: “I found him an earnest young man, with the power to make friends and possessed of an irrepressible enthusiasm.” Shubert, with two brothers, began theatre management (or, rather, correctly speaking, theatre control) in Syracuse, New York, where they leased the Bastable Theatre. They subsequently obtained control of the Herald Square Theatre in New York, and then, directly or indirectly, of many other theatres in various cities of the country, especially in the smaller places which are known as “the one-night stands.” “You have attractions and a reputation,” urged Shubert, addressing Belasco, “but no theatres out of New York: we have theatres but lack attractions and reputation. Join us, and all our out-of-town houses shall be at your disposal.” The arrangement

THE OPERA OF “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST”—

A Souvenir, to Belasco

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thus proposed was made and it had mutual advantages, but it was more valuable to the Shubert Brothers than to Belasco. Possessed of contracts to “book” the latter’s “attractions” the Shuberts were strengthened in their relations with theatre managers not dominated by the Trust who desired to have those attractions presented in their houses,—and thus they were, in turn, strengthened in dealings with managers of other “attractions.” The Belasco-Shubert alliance lasted for about four years. The time came when Mr. Lee Shubert (who had become the head of the Shubert Company) condescendingly intimated in public that he did not believe that anything could be accomplished by the methods of opposition to theatrical despotism which were long employed by Belasco and by the shrewd, indefatigable, vindictive H. G. Fiske and his intrepid, brilliant, accomplished wife; nevertheless, if it had not been for their opposition, the subjugation of the American Theatre to injurious monopoly would, in all human probability, have been so complete that Mr. Lee Shubert and his associates would never have found an opening through which to break.

S. S. Shubert died, May 12, 1905, in consequence of injuries sustained in a train wreck on the Pennsylvania Railroad, near Lochiel, Pennsylvania, on the 11th. Belasco considers his death “a hard blow{220}” and is “sure he would have occupied a great place in the history of the American Theatre. He had keen business instincts, a lovable nature, and was the soul of honor.” He would have required to possess a more extensive equipment to entitle him to the eminence Belasco believes he would have attained. I had no personal acquaintance with Mr. Shubert: he never did anything of notable importance as a theatrical manager, properly so called. His brother, Mr. Lee Shubert, through the shifts and chances of fortune, at one time almost held the destiny of our Theatre in his hand,—but he is merely a commercial exploiter of the Stage and consequently made nothing of his opportunity.

Belasco was to have accompanied S. S. Shubert on the journey which proved his last and, had he done so, might have perished with him. “I have had three such ‘close calls,’” he has said to me: “Once, when I was a lad, I gave up an excursion trip on the Sacramento River to please my mother,—and the excursion boat was blown up soon after she left the dock. The second was when, at the last minute, I cancelled a trip to Cincinnati, with Charles Frohman. He took a secretary with him, the train was wrecked, and the secretary, sitting beside him where I would have been, was killed. The third was the trip with ‘Sam’ Shubert. We{221} were to have gone to Pittsburgh together, on business connected with the Duquesne Theatre there, which, with the Shuberts, I took over and which was renamed the Belasco. If I had gone I am sure that I should have been killed in the wreck.” It is probable that he would have been: the train on which Shubert travelled to his death “side-swiped” a freight train, loaded with dynamite: many lives were lost.

THE ADVENT OF FRANCES STARR.—BELASCO’S “THE ROSE OF THE RANCHO.”

Frances Starr was born at Albany, New York, June 6, 1880, and made her first appearance on the stage as Lucy Dorrison, in Robertson’s “Home,” with a stock company, in that city, under the management of the late Frederic Bond. During the next six years she gained experience in various stock companies,—at the Murray Hill Theatre, New York; in San Francisco, in Boston, and at Proctor’s 125th Street Theatre, New York,—and, February 12, 1906, she appeared, in association with Charles Richman, as Nell Colfax, in “Gallops,”—a weak echo of Boucicault’s horse-racing plays of “The Flying Scud” and “The Jilt.” Belasco first saw her when she was acting at the Murray Hill, and his attention was again called to her by his brother Frederick, who, in 1905, wrote to him from San{222} Francisco, praising her in high terms. Writing about Miss Starr, Belasco has given this account of her employment by him—certainly the most fortunate event of her life:

The first play in which Belasco presented Miss Starr as a leading performer, heading an important theatrical company—less than six months after he had seen her in “Gallops”—was “The Rose of the Rancho.” This piece is based on an earlier one, by Richard Walton Tully, called “Juanita,” which had been produced in Los Angeles with the excellent actor John H. Gilmour in the principal male part. Mr. Tully’s play was verbose, diffuse, and coarse in texture. Belasco, after once rejecting it, being in urgent need of a vehicle for Miss Starr, read it again and agreed to “accept it, provided I might have the privilege of rewriting it.” This “privilege” Belasco has exercised in many instances—to his loss and the immense advantage of various inconsequential and ingrateful amateurs of dramatic authorship. His stipulation was acceded to by Mr. Tully, and Belasco, working as usual under the stress of haste and the distraction of many projects, revised, curtailed, amended, and reconstructed “Juanita,” which, in its final form as “The Rose

FRANCES STARR

Inscription:

“To him who made me what I am and inspired what I hope to be,—with ever living love and gratitude.”

Photograph by Strauss Payton.
Belasco’s Collection.

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of the Rancho,” gained abundant success. It was first acted, under that name, at the Majestic Theatre, Boston, November 12, 1906, and was brought out in New York, at the Belasco Theatre, November 27: it held the stage there until June 29, 1907.

There is, in this play, a glance at a disgraceful episode in American history,—the technically legal, but outrageously unjust and brutally tyrannical, seizure of the estates of Spaniards in California, after the Mexican War; but the purpose was not so much to relumine a remote and half-forgotten rascality as to display the incidents of a romantic love story associated with the nefarious proceedings of that distressful and turbulent time and place. That purpose Belasco accomplished in pictorial settings of uncommon beauty. The scenery of Southern California is inexpressibly charming, because it combines tranquil loveliness with awful grandeur and is everywhere invested with poetic mystery. The stupendous and austere mountains, the boundless, lonely plains, the balmy orange groves, the graceful palm trees, the fragrant magnolias, the abundance of wild flowers, the glorious blue skies and the pure, sweet air,—these and many other beauties unite to make that region a paradise. It is in Southern California that the Rose of the Rancho blooms, and Belasco, who knows and loves that coun{226}try well, made his stage a garden of luxury and a dream of splendor to convey that charm—presenting a series of pictures which have never been excelled and seldom equalled. The investiture of this play, indeed, blending old Spanish architecture with a semi-tropical wealth of natural beauty, was literally magnificent and considerably excelled the worth of the play itself. This is a synopsis[2] of that fabric,—from which it will be seen that the theme is, to some extent, the same as that treated in Helen Hunt Jackson’s prolix and tedious novel of “Ramona”:

The scene is laid amid the sleepy, picturesque Spanish missions of Southern California. The plot deals with the great tragedy that underlies California history—the taking of the Spanish inhabitants’ homes by land-jumping Americans. The Rose of the Rancho is Juanita, the youngest daughter of the Castro family. Through pride and indolence the Castros have neglected to make their property secure to them by filing an entry with the American land agent, and things have come to a serious pass with them. One of the most notorious land-jumpers in the state, Kinkaid, of Beaver, Neb., has come to San Juan, with his outfit, to take the{227} whole valley. At the same time another American has appeared on the scene,—Mr. Kearney, of Washington,—a government agent sent to investigate the land disputes.

Previous to the rising of the curtain upon the beautiful mission garden the latter has met and fallen in love with the fascinating Juanita. Because of enmity toward all gringoes she refuses to treat him civilly, but she meets him by accident every day, unknown to her mother, who arranges (according to the custom) that Juanita shall marry a young Spanish spark, from Monterey—Don Luis de la Torre. The girl’s father was an American, and there begins a struggle between her loyalty to her mother, her Spanish relatives and friends, on the one side, and the young American who comes with the offer of his love and aid, on the other. Juanita, given her first kiss, lets the blood of her father direct her actions. She gives the data necessary for a registration to Kearney, who has no authority to interfere with Kinkaid, but who sends his friend, Lieutenant Larkin, to Monterey to make the entry for the Castros. Kearney remains behind to delay Kinkaid as long as he can. Larkin agrees to bring back the state militia for Kearney’s protection. Meanwhile, the mother has learned that her daughter has tossed a geranium to a gringo (signify{228}ing, “I love you”), and Juanita is locked in her room.

The Second Act takes place in the patio-court of the old Castro ranch house. In spite of the danger that threatens, the mother is giving the engagement party she has planned. Juanita’s friends are present. There are Spanish dances and the throwing of cascarones, and Don Luis appears to claim his bride. Juanita is defiant, and when they are about to betroth her she declares herself to be a gringo and the promised wife of a gringo. For this her mother disowns her, and is about to turn her out of the house, when Kinkaid and his men attack it and break in, and Juanita is thunderstruck to find the man she has trusted among them. The crowd of riffraff insult the women, who are protected by Kearney. He, however, must pretend that he is upon Kinkaid’s side. Juanita appeals to him, and is rebuffed. Kinkaid agrees to wait until dawn before taking possession—thereby giving Kearney the time desired. The latter gets away from the land-jumper and finds Juanita to explain. She lashes him with her tongue for his betrayal of her people, and when he tries to make her listen she strikes him. Nothing daunted, he forces her to listen to his explanation. She tells him that she thinks he is a liar, but—she will wait till morning to see if the militia comes.{229}

The Third Act takes place upon the roof of the ranch house. Dawn is coming, and no help has arrived. Kearney makes Kinkaid a prisoner as a hostage to protect the women. Unfortunately, Don Luis, jealous of the American lover of Juanita, in an effort to compel him to fight a duel, lets Kinkaid go. The latter joins his men and an attack is imminent. The old Franciscan, Father Antonio, assembles “his children” in prayer for delivery, the sunrise hymn of the Californians. This delivery comes in the shape of the long-awaited militia from Monterey. The rancho is saved, but the mother will not see her daughter go to an American. She forces her daughter to choose, and this she does—in favor of the gringo.

That is a simple, almost trite, story; but Belasco contrived to tell it in action more than in words, and his telling of it proceeds from one sensation to another with cumulative effect. Divested of all outward flourishes, it is seen to be the portrayal of a conflict between virtue, animated by love, and villany, impelled by cupidity and brutal license. The vulgarian would seize the estate of the old Spanish family. The hero, who loves its young mistress, would save it for her; and in order to accomplish{230} that object he is compelled to pretend fraternity with her oppressor,—for which reason she temporarily mistrusts him; but his purpose is accomplished, his fidelity is proved, and his love is rewarded. In all this, happily, there is no examination of the remote causes of the universal passion; no philosophic essay on masculine strength as opposed to feminine weakness; no treatise on elective affinities. The play, in short, is an old-fashioned melodrama in a new-fashioned dress; one of those plays that the spectator observes with an interested desire to ascertain how it will turn out. No new type of character is presented, nor is a special attempt made to variegate the old types. Kearney, of Washington, is the handsome, gallant, expeditious young cavalier who has loved and rescued the endangered maiden in a hundred plays of the past. Kinkaid, of Beaver, is the same old blackguard and bully who seems victorious for a moment, but is always finally discomfited, in the chronic story of the Far West. Don Luis is the debonair but disappointed suitor, from whom the Bride of Netherby always rides away. Father Antonio is the good and gentle priest who cheers the drooping spirit and bestows ecclesiastical benediction. The only persons who savor of exceptional quality are Señora Kenton and her daughter Juanita, the Rose,—the one a stern and formidable{231} woman, vital with Spanish hatred of the invading American; the other, a passionate, capricious, wilful girl, who can be sweet and tender, but who is customarily piquant, independent, and resolute in her own course: characters strongly reminiscent of the matron and the heroine in “Ramona.” But, all the same, the old tale of strength protecting weakness, stratagem defeating duplicity, and love triumphant over hate, pleased, as it always has pleased, and as it always will continue to please—“till all the seas run dry.” Although, intrinsically, not exceptional as a work of dramatic art, “The Rose of the Rancho” has positive and abundant felicity of theatrical merit, imparted by the skilful hand of Belasco, and the production of it was worthy of his brightest fame. This was the original cast of it:

{232}

Miss Starr, in her performance of Juanita, manifested impetuosity of temperament combined with charm of personality, and by her arch behavior as a coquette, together with the vigor and sparkle of her demeanor as a wounded, doubting, resentful, and angry young woman, gained and merited general admiration.—A significant thought as to expedition

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

FRANCES STARR AS JAUNITA, IN “THE ROSE OF THE RANCHO”

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and indolence in the fibre of contrasted races is conveyed in two casual remarks in this play: “Civilization,” says the “land-jumper,” Kinkaid, with blatant vulgarity of manner, when announcing his purpose of legalized robbery, “must progress”; and when it is found that certain muskets which have been collected for use in defending the Castro ranch are useless because of lack of powder, the Spanish cavalier is heard to murmur: “I meant to have got that powder to-morrow.” Charles Richman, as the intrepid Kearney, and John W. Cope, as the sinister Kinkaid, gave performances of sterling merit, because true to life and symmetrical and fluent in expression,—the one presenting, in a notably earnest spirit, a sonsy, healthful, interesting, thoroughly good fellow: the other assuming, in a painfully natural way, the obnoxious characteristics,—including a repulsive personal appearance,—commonly, and correctly, ascribed to the Western breed of ruffian.

Belasco has, in drama, made use of the element of natural accessories,—meaning peculiarities of climate, cloud, sunshine, rain, storm, calm, the sound of the sea, the ripple of leaves in the wind, the swirl of dust, the gentle falling of flower petals, the incessant variations of light according to place and time, whether morning or evening, noonday or midnight,{234} and so following,—with an unerring skill akin to that of Wilkie Collins in the writing of fiction. In “The Rose of the Rancho” he took almost unparalleled pains to render his effects perfect. Writing of this work, he has recorded:

A NEW PROJECT:—THE SECOND BELASCO THEATRE.

Although Belasco held the Belasco Theatre under a lease with an option of renewal, he was at all times during the early years of his theatre management conscious of a certain weakness in his position: an unforeseen disaster—a fire, for instance,—might leave him with many theatrical enterprises and no metropolitan theatre to present them in. “Besides,” he writes to me: “not only was I always confronted by the fact that the lease of my Forty-second Street{235} house might not be renewed, but also it was natural that I should desire to have a theatre all my own, in the making of which I could carry out, fully, my ideas of stage construction, lighting, and seating.” The result of this desire and of his wary vigilance to maintain managerial freedom is the second Belasco Theatre (which originally was named David Belasco’s Stuyvesant Theatre), which was built by Meyer R. Bimberg (18—- 1908), on designs made by Belasco and under his personal superintendence. The cornerstone of that theatre was laid on December 5, 1906. David Warfield came from Philadelphia, where he was acting, to participate; Miss Bates came from Boston; Miss Starr was at the time filling her first engagement in New York in “The Rose of the Rancho.” Belasco, those players, his business associates, and a numerous company of friends gathered round the site of the new theatre. Miss Starr deposited in a niche beneath the bed of the cornerstone a copper casket containing various records and programmes of Belasco’s productions, photographs of himself and of the chief players then appearing under his direction, and a miscellaneous assortment of souvenirs, cards, and “good luck pieces” contributed by various friends. Miss Bates then spread the mortar upon which the stone was to be laid and uttered this touching sentiment as she{236} did so: “Here’s hoping that Mr. Belasco will stick to all of us, and we and all his friends will stick to Mr. Belasco, as this mortar will eternally stick to this stone.”

The cornerstone was then swung into place, settled, and declared to be “well and truly laid,” whereupon Belasco’s daughters, Reina and Augusta, each broke a bottle of champagne against it, saying, in unison, “David Belasco’s Stuyvesant Theatre.” The dramatist Bronson Howard (who had risen from a sick-bed to attend this ceremony) then spoke, saying:

Writing of this occasion and of his new theatre, Belasco says:

The second Belasco Theatre (originally called David Belasco’s Stuyvesant Theatre, by which name it was known until the fall of 1910) stands on the north side of West Forty-fourth Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, on lots Nos. 111 to 121, inclusive. The site has a front of 105 feet and a depth of 100 feet. The building is of red brick and white stone, simple and graceful, in the style of architecture denominated as Colonial. It was, originally, three stories high, with a rectangular, tower-like eminence at the southwest corner. The entrance from the street is into a small lobby, at the right of which are large swinging doors opening into a clear space which extends, behind the orchestra seats, parallel with Forty-fourth Street, from side to side of the auditorium. In this playhouse,

Photograph by Byron. Author’s Collection.

BELASCO IN HIS WORKSHOP

Inscription on Back:

“Genius doesn’t burn this morning, dear friend!—D. B.”

{239}

as in the first Belasco Theatre, there is a handsome screen of carved wood and crystal glass at the rear of the orchestra, which protects the audience from drafts of air. The orchestra and balcony chairs are of heavy wood, upholstered in rich, dark brown leather, the back of each chair being embossed with the emblematic bee. The decoration of the interior is opulent and dark in tone,—deep browns, blues, and greens with dull amber and orange being the prevailing colors. There is a large painting above the proscenium opening and on either side are several mural paintings, of various sizes, with here and there a rich tapestry hanging. The groups and figures in these paintings are symbolical,—Music, Grief, Tranquillity, Allurement, Blind Love, Poetry, and the like being depicted. The ceiling is raftered into twenty-two panels, which are set with rich-colored stained glass and illumined from above. Each panel contains two shields, with heraldic mantling,—among the coats-of-arms displayed being those of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Racine, Molière, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Tennyson. The seating capacity of the theatre is now (1917) about 1,000 persons,—430 on the orchestra floor, 320 in the balcony, and 240 in the gallery. There are no supporting pillars in the auditorium, the balcony and gallery being constructed on cantilevers, so that an{240} unobstructed view of the stage is afforded from every part of it.

The stage was carefully designed with the purpose of facilitating in every possible way the setting and shifting of scenery. It is eighty feet wide and twenty-seven feet from the curtain-line to the back-wall. The proscenium opening is thirty-two feet wide and thirty feet high. The “gridiron” is seventy-six feet above the stage; the fly galleries, of which there are two, one on each side of the stage and thirty feet above it, have forty-five feet of clear space between them. In recent years an adjustable apron, five feet wide, has been constructed in front of the curtain-line, covering the musicians’ pit. The stage can be opened at any desired spot, and the centre of it is an elevator-trap, ten feet from front to back and twenty feet long. Upon this trap the paraphernalia of an entire scene can be lowered to, or raised from, the level of a cellar floor, thirty feet below the stage.

The original cost of this theatre, including the land upon which it stands, was more than $750,000, and various alterations and improvements made in it down to the present time (1917) have increased the total investment to nearly $1,000,000. In the summer of 1909 a one-story and mezzanine addition was built upon the roof of the Stuyvesant, in which{241} Belasco has made his studio,—a strange, romantic place in which he has assembled priceless objects of art and antiquarianism. That studio (an adequate description of which would necessitate weeks of examination and would, alone, fill a large volume, and which, here, can be given only passing notice) is entered by a narrow, low, heavy-latticed door from the business offices of the Belasco Company. The first room is a small, low-roofed one, in itself somewhat suggestive of an old cathedral crypt. Along the walls are ranged shelved cases containing a wondrous collection of specimens of precious glass, the most recently made piece of which is more than eighty years old. A sort of alcove opens from this room, at the right side, which is stored with scores of relics associated with that arch-villain the great Napoleon,—a collection which includes a lock of his hair, cut from his head after death, and in which Belasco takes special pride and joy. Beyond the entrance room is a larger one; beyond that are low, dim passages; a library with stairs to a gallery; a dining-room; an odd little bedroom, exquisitely furnished in Japanese style,—with a miniature Japanese garden built outside its window,—and luxurious facilities for bathing. These passages, rooms, and stairs,—ceilinged with multi-colored banners, carpeted with soft, rich rugs, and almost everywhere{242} lined with shelf on shelf of books,—are somewhat maze-like to a stranger, and in them is gathered a vast, confusing medley of collectors’ treasures: here, a sinister, black-steel armor; there, a stand of French halberds; beneath that old table, an unmatchable set of rapiers; upon this one, nearly twoscore different styles of dagger; yonder, a huge carved wooden chest, blackened with age and stuffed with antique velours; against it, a great two-handed sword,—“such a blade as old Charles Martel might have wielded, when he drove the Saracen from France”; across that opening, an antique wooden window-lattice, with heavy shutters, taken from an English house built more than 700 years ago; beside it, a chair once used by England’s King Henry the Eighth; against this wall, a stone mantel brought from Italy, with a hearth made of tiles stolen by slaves from the Alhambra. In the walls are many odd nooks and hidden cupboards, which open by the release of secret springs,—in which, when illumined by small, concealed lamps, are revealed collections of jewelled rosaries; or of crucifixes wrought in ivory, ebony, and iron; or of specimens of the potter’s art; or of trinkets once worn or owned by members of the gentle Borgia Family. The stranger, wandering through this reclusive domain,—into which few strangers ever are permitted to{243} penetrate,—opening low Gothic doors, will blunder into angular hutches or long, low tunnels filled with shelves and cases of rare pamphlets and old books; will pause with awe before a superb window of purple stained glass; or gaze with wonder on a massive globe suspended in a well over which a translucent canopy is so arranged that it takes and intensifies all the changing colors of the covering heavens; or will come with startled delight upon a grot in which a small fountain of crystal water flings its spray over a little pool half-filled with violets, sweetpeas, and full-blown roses.

Belasco, unlike many other collectors, has an intimate personal knowledge of every article in his collection; can recall at once where, when, and how each was acquired; and, notwithstanding the number and seeming confusion of the different pieces, knows exactly where each one is placed and instantly perceives and vituperatively denounces any disarrangement of them such as occasionally is caused by members of that pestiferous sisterhood which plies the duster and the brush without sense of the sacredness of an antiquarian’s sweet disorder,—a sisterhood which has stirred up consternation and wrath since long before Mr. Oldbuck’s time. His writing is done there among his treasured collections, now in{244} one corner, now in another, upon a small, battered, baize-covered cutting-table, such as ladies use for sewing, which he carries about from place to place as the fancy suits him. And there, also, his principal recreation is found when, wearied by labor or oppressed by care, he turns to contemplation and enjoyment of the heaped-up beauty which he has gathered about him.

IN THE MATTER OF STAGE LIGHTING.

A much needed addition to the technical literature of the Theatre is a comprehensive, authoritative, and just account of the origin and development of modern stage mechanism and of the art of stage lighting. The pioneer achievements of Edwin Booth, at Booth’s Theatre (opened, February, 1869), and of James Steele Mackaye and Augustin Daly are, as a rule, blandly ignored in writing on those subjects, and the movement for “Stage Reform” which began in Austria in 1879-’80 is taken as the starting-point. If ever such an account is written, laborious experiments and fine achievements by David Belasco, especially in the latter field, will, of necessity, occupy a conspicuous place in it. His active practical interest in the problems of stage lighting began as early as 1876 and it has not{245} abated. The first attempt in America to use electric light for stage illumination,—at least, the first attempt of which I have found a record,—was made at the California Theatre, San Francisco, February 21 to 28, 1879. Belasco was there at that time and carefully observed the experiment, which was not notably successful.[3] From 1879 to 1902 he closely studied all methods of lighting and experimented much: since 1902, when he opened his first theatre and obtained satisfactory facilities for the work, his experimentation in that field has been incessant. The lighting system at the Stuyvesant Theatre was designed by Belasco in collaboration with his chief electrician, Mr. Louis Hartman, and was installed under their supervision. When that theatre was opened, the lamps of the footlights on the stage, and also those in each of the overhead “border light strips,” were arranged in seven sections, each section connected upon separate resistance, in order that any desired part of the stage or any figure or group of figures might be illumined or shadowed as desired. There were five sets of the border lights, with 270 lamps in each; there were eighty-eight con{246}nection pockets in the fly galleries and upon the stage through which large or small “bunch lights” could be connected as required; the switchboard (one of the largest, if not the largest, then in use in an American theatre) was equipped with seventy-five dimmers, in order that the lights should be under perfect control. Since the opening, in 1907, the lighting system has repeatedly been altered and improved. The most radical change is one made about two years ago [1917], whereby footlights are entirely dispensed with. The objection to footlights is, of course, an upward thrown shadow: this, however, can be satisfactorily dealt with, and, in my judgment, it is seldom if ever advantageous wholly to discard them. Belasco, however, thinks otherwise: his productions are the only ones made without footlights, which I have seen, in which the absence of those lights is adequately compensated. In his present theatre there is a contrivance, placed in the front of the first balcony, which, while the curtain is down, appears to be an ornamental glass panel about six feet long. When the curtain is raised, however, shutters in the front of that panel are opened by an electrical device operated at the switchboard on the stage, and a singular bright light, which is transmitted without casting perceptible rays, is diffused upon the stage, bringing the

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

SWITCHBOARD OF THE SECOND BELASCO THEATRE, NEW YORK

{247}

actors into clear vision.—It is not practicable to pursue this subject further in this place; but readers will, perhaps, realize the importance Belasco attaches to the art of lighting as an adjunct to acting and the care he lavishes upon it when they are informed that the experimental workshop in his theatre is operated all the year round and that in many instances the expense of his light rehearsals alone has exceeded the total of all other costs of production. Perhaps the most perfect example of stage lighting ever exhibited was provided in Belasco’s presentment of “The Return of Peter Grimm,”—and that was the result of nine and a half months of persistent experimentation. Dilating on this subject, Belasco has said with justified wrath:

{249}

OPENING OF BELASCO’S STUYVESANT THEATRE:—“A GRAND ARMY MAN.”

Belasco opened his Stuyvesant Theatre, October 16, 1907, with a play entitled “A Grand Army Man,” written by himself in collaboration with Miss Pauline Phelps and Miss Marion Short,—that is, rewritten and made practical by Belasco, working on the basis of an amateur essay in dramatic authorship provided by those ladies. That play was first acted on any stage at the Hyperion Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, September 23, the same year. It presents neither surprising ingenuity of construction nor uncommon felicity of style, but it tells a plain story in a plain way. The chord that is struck in it is that of romantic, almost paternal, altogether manly and beautiful affection. As a work of dramatic art it appertains to the class of comedies represented by such plays as “Grandfather Whitehead,” “The Porter’s Knot,” and “The Chimney Corner,”—plays in which the theme involves unselfish love and the sentiments and emotions that cling to the idea of Home. In that respect it reverts to a style of drama once, fortunately, dominant—at a time when the American Stage was illumined and adorned by such actors as Henry Placide, John Gilbert, John Nickinson, Charles W. Couldock, William Warren,{250} and Mark Smith. The authors of it provided Warfield with a vehicle of dramatic expression that exactly conformed to the bent of his mind. The plot is simple, but by reason of being natural and being fraught with true, as opposed to false, emotion, its simplicity nowhere declines into insipid commonplace. The chief character, Wes’ Bigelow, is a veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic. He has never married. In youth he has loved a girl, but has not won her, and she has become the wife of one of his comrades. Years have passed, and the American Civil War has occurred. That comrade has been slain in battle. The widow has died: but she has left a child, that comrade’s boy, and Bigelow has adopted and reared him. The substance of the play is his experience with the fortunes of that ward.

It happens sometimes that a man whom a girl has rejected, and who remains unmarried because of his absorbing love for her, will fix his affection on her child,—she having married a more favored suitor and produced a family,—and will love that child as if it were his own. That happens to Bigelow. The son of his loved and lost idol is the light of his eyes and the joy of his heart. There is no labor that he will not do and no sacrifice that he will not make for the lad, of whom he ardently prophesies{251} success and honor. The boy, Robert, has been intrusted with money, the property of the Grand Army veterans, and, instead of placing it in the bank, as directed to do, he has used it in speculation, and lost it. When the knowledge of that fault comes to the veteran he is, at first, stunned by it; then enraged; and then broken by the conflict between the sense of shame and the struggle of affection. He tries to thrash the boy with a horse-whip, but in that manifestation of wrath he fails: his cherished pet cannot have done wrong; has only erred through accident; can surely be redeemed; must, of course, make amends,—and all will be well. The case comes to trial, before a judge who, privately, is hostile to Bigelow, and measures are taken to insure conviction. The veteran offers to replace the money that has been taken by his ward,—supposing that the complaint will then be dismissed. That money he has obtained by sale of his personal effects, and also by means of a mortgage imposed on his farm. The old soldier makes an impassioned, pathetic appeal to the court, but the hostile magistrate cannot be appeased. Robert is convicted and is sent to prison for one year. A little time passes, and Robert’s sweetheart, the daughter of that malicious judge, leaves her father’s abode and seeks refuge with Bigelow and the kind old woman who{252} keeps house for him. Robert is pardoned, at the intercession of the veteran’s military comrades, and he comes back, to his guardian and his love, on New Year’s Day.

Nothing could be more simple than that unpretentious idyl of Home. It is in situations of simplicity, however, that an actor is subjected to the most severe tests of his inherent power, his fibre of character, his knowledge of the human heart, his store of experience, his resources of feeling, and his artistic faculty of expression. Warfield endured that test, allowing the torrent of feeling to precipitate itself without apparent restraint, and, at the same time, controlling and guiding it. Such artistic growth he had evinced in his impersonation of the Music Master, and he evinced it even more effectively in his assumption of the Grand Army Man,—going to Nature for his impulse and obeying a right instinct of Art in his direction of it. In the portrayal of the noble, sweet-tempered, yet fiery old soldier he aimed especially at self-effacement, at abnegation of every motive or trait of selfishness. On finding that his boy loves the daughter of his enemy, and is by her beloved, the veteran is, almost at once, disposed to placate that enemy and favor those young lovers. There is, to be sure, a little reluctance, a little struggle in his mind; but that is{253} soon over. The actor denoted that struggle and that surrender in a lovely spirit. In the tempestuous scene of Bigelow’s horrified consternation, the agonized conflict between anger and love, when the misconduct of the boy is exposed and confessed, and the old man, after trying to beat him as a felon, clasps him to his heart as only the victim of an unfortunate, venial error, the anguish and the passionate affection of a strong, even splendid, nature were expressed with cogent force. The appeal spoken in the courtroom,—an outburst of honest, simple, rugged eloquence, all the more fervid and poignant because unskilled and fettered,—had the authentic note of heartfelt emotion. In circumstances those situations, which are the pivotal points of the play, recall certain supreme effects in “Olivia” and “The Heart of Mid-Lothian,” but Warfield’s histrionic treatment of those situations was fresh and his achievement in them displayed him as an actor to whom the realm of pathos is widely open and who can move with a sure step in the labyrinth of the domestic emotions,—one of the most perplexing fields with which dramatic art is concerned. All observers know how easy it is, in treatment of themes of the fireside, the family, the home, to lapse into tameness. An actor must possess an ardent and beautiful spirit, and must be greatly in earnest,{254} who can sustain such themes and invest them with the glow of passionate vitality. Some of the best of the managers and actors of an earlier, and as I believe in many ways a more fortunate, generation might well have been proud of placing before the public such a play and such an impersonation as Belasco and Warfield provided in “A Grand Army Man,”—a play and an impersonation instinct with fidelity to common life and yet far removed from commonplace. Warfield, as a player, possesses in a marked degree the charm ascribed to John Bannistere (one of the greatest serio-comic actors in theatrical annals), that he wins you immediately by seeming to care nothing about you. His identification with the character of Bigelow was absolute and he never, for even a moment, lapsed out of it. It had been long since such complete absorption, such living inside of a fancied identity, had been seen on the stage. The blending of humor and pathos was exceedingly fine, and it touched the heart even while it brought a smile to the lips.—“A Grand Army Man,” together with “The Music Master,” was acted at the Stuyvesant Theatre until May 2, 1908, when Warfield’s season closed. On the opening night Belasco, called upon the stage by a brilliant and enthusiastic audience, made a brief speech, saying:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID WARFIELD AS WES’ BIGELOW, IN “A GRAND ARMY MAN”

{255}

This is the original cast of “A Grand Army Man”:

{257}

A DEFEATED PLAN: “THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK.”

Belasco had planned to open his new theatre with a play by the eccentric Jerome Klapka Jerome, entitled “The Passing of the Third Floor Back.” In his “Story” he gives the following account of his plan and purposes and of the way,—surely most unjust,—in which they were defeated. The actual reason for Mr. Jerome’s “misunderstanding” undoubtedly was that he preferred to have Forbes-Robertson, instead of Warfield, act the principal part in his “idle fancy,” as he designated his monotonous but amazingly popular fabric of insipid colloquy:

“THE WARRENS OF VIRGINIA.”

Belasco opened the season of 1907-’08, at the Belasco Theatre, August 31, with a revival of “The Rose of the Rancho,” which he continued to present there until November 9. On November 11 Miss Bates appeared at that theatre, where she acted for three weeks, in “The Girl of the Golden West.” On December 3 he there brought out, for the first time in New York, a play called “The Warrens of Virginia,” written by William C. De Mille, son of his old friend and early collaborator, Henry C. De Mille, and retouched by himself. It had been acted at the Lyric Theatre, Philadelphia, on November 18. In that play the interest is concentrated on the character of a general in the service of the Southern Confederacy, toward the close of the American Civil War, and on the conduct of his daughter, in a well-contrived emergency, involving the conflict,—perennial as a dramatic expedient,—between love and duty. The story is interesting, and it illustrates,{261} in a manner that is both pictorial and pathetic, the contrasts of circumstances and the vicissitudes of domestic experience that, necessarily, were incident to the harrowing condition of fraternal strife then prevalent in this country. The play, however, is not in any sense either political or sectional. It has no didactic drift. It does not discuss the war. It does not advocate either union or disunion. It tells a story, and, necessarily therefore, it portrays characters. The predominant element in it is picture, but it contains much incident, of a kind more notable for utility than novelty, and some of its situations are fraught with the dramatic element of suspense. Its special charm is a sweet and gentle domestic atmosphere.

The action is supposed to pass during the twenty-four hours immediately preceding the surrender of the Confederate army, at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, and to close five years later. Act First occurs in a woodland glade, near to the abode of the Warrens of Virginia. Acts Second and Third proceed in a room in that dwelling. Act Fourth, and last, is placed in a rose garden adjacent to the Warren home. General Warren, a Confederate commander, is ill, broken by care and privation, and he has been ordered from the field, for rest. General Griffin, a Union commander, has acceded to the request of{262} General Lee that Warren should be passed through the Union lines to his home. Warren’s daughter, Agatha, trying to reach the Confederate forces, with such little relief as the Warren family could supply, has been stopped by Lieutenant Burton, a Union officer,—known to her before the outbreak of the war,—who loves her, and who is by her beloved, although she has repulsed him. Lieutenant Burton, in turning Agatha back to her home, begs the privilege of visiting her, if he can obtain leave of absence, but his request is denied. General Warren, however, on the way to his dwelling, meets with Burton and consents to the proposed visit. A supply train is expected by the Confederates, and its arrival is vital to them, while the stoppage of it is equally essential to the forces of the Union. Stratagem is planned. A bogus despatch is prepared, ordering the interception of the train at a certain point, and it is desired that this despatch be captured by the Confederate commander, so that he will be deceived by it and will send the train another way. The Union commander utilizes Lieutenant Burton’s wish to visit his sweetheart, and compels him to carry the despatch,—having previously ascertained that a movement of the Confederates is intended which will insure Burton’s capture at General Warren’s home. Various reasons constrain Burton to carry the despatch,{263}—although his expectation is that he will be shot as a spy. When the scene shifts to the Warren home Agatha and Burton meet and they plight their faith as lovers. Burton is captured by the Confederates, but Agatha has obtained the despatch and has concealed it in her shoe. Her purpose is to shield her lover; but General Warren, surmising that she knows where the document is concealed, appeals to her in such a way that she breaks down and surrenders it. The General is deceived. The supply train is despatched in a wrong direction and is captured by the Union forces. The conduct of Burton thereupon is stigmatized as grossly dishonorable; Agatha renounces him; and, making no defence, he is likely to be shot. The surrender of the Confederate army terminates the war, and thus Burton’s life is saved. After the lapse of five years he once more repairs to the Warren home and renews his suit for the hand of Agatha. At first his prayer is denied,—notwithstanding the girl still loves him. The talk of the lovers is heard by General Warren, who appears all the while to have been asleep, and presently the father recalls the departing lover, and, for his daughter’s sake, consents to a reconciliation and a marriage: and thus a pretty picture of happy love and peace is made to close an ordeal of trouble and grief. It seems a pity that some device could not have been{264} found to make the young soldier carry the despatch without being aware of the treachery that was intended. He is forced to act in a dishonorable manner, and he forfeits all sympathy in the action of the play.

There is no limit to the pathos of conflicting emotions that can be pictured, incident to war, and especially to a civil war. Some of that pathos is indicated at moments in this drama. The little children, concocting a letter to their soldier brother; the agonized lover, who while waiting for the moment in which the trick to which he has lent himself will be accomplished, is fondly treated by the girl whom he loves, and toward whom he feels that he has been deceitful; the worn, ill, suffering Confederate general, gleeful in his supposed triumph, waiting for the safe arrival of the supplies that will relieve his wretched troops, and sitting with his wife by his side and their two young children at their knees; the blind, almost insane fury of that deceived, resentful old man when he learns of the capture of those supplies—those incidents and others like to them are exceedingly effective. There is excess of dialogue and there is too much attention to unimportant detail delaying the action. The incident of the father’s kneeling to his daughter is copied from Wills’s splendid play of “Charles I”—in

Photograph by Otto Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.

CHARLOTTE WALKER AS AGATHA WARREN, IN “THE WARRENS OF VIRGINIA”

{265}

which the betrayed King, in a similar situation, begs Lord Murray to bring his forces to the rescue of the royal arms. The opening incident—the meeting of the Union and the Confederate soldier—is reminiscent of the opening of Boucicault’s “Belle Lamar.” The acting was, in several instances, superb. Frank Keenan was, in appearance, true to the indicated ideal of General Warren and his performance was instinct with the truth of Nature, shown with the delicate exaggeration of proficient art. Power, dignity, authority, and blended humor and pathos were its attributes, and it was especially admirable for its repose. The finest moment in it was that of the outbreak when Warren is apprised of the loss of the supply train and cannot believe that his son has obeyed orders. Miss Emma Dunn, who acted Mrs. Warren, gave a touching and interesting, because carefully considered, well-planned, and smoothly and fully executed, impersonation of an affectionate wife and mother,—the result of close study informed by exact observation and the intelligence and feeling native to the nature of the actress. Miss Charlotte Walker as Agatha Warren was extremely handsome and winning, and, in the lighter moments of the play, acted with charming effect. The stage dresses and pictures were, in every detail, historically correct and characteristic of the period to which the{266} play relates; in fact, the production was a memorable example of taste and excellence in the provision of harmonious and helpful stage environment.—“The Warrens of Virginia” was acted at the Belasco Theatre until May 2, 1908; on May 4 it was transferred to the Stuyvesant Theatre, where it was presented until the 16th, when that house was closed for the season. This was the cast:

Of the Mary Pickford who appeared in this cast as Betty Warren—and who gave an agreeable performance—Belasco affords this reminiscence, which{267} it is specially pleasant to quote here because instances of appreciation and gratitude among actors of the present day are not frequent:

“THE EASIEST WAY.”

Mr. Eugene Walter’s play called “The Easiest Way” is one of the most obnoxious specimens of theatrical trash that have been obtruded on the modern Stage. It depicts a segment of experience in the life of a shallow, weak, and vain prostitute, who makes a feeble attempt to reform but who fails to{268} do so. The significant impartment of that play—in so far as it possesses any significant impartment—is an intimation that “the easiest way” in which a woman can obtain and hold a position on the stage and live in luxury off it is by the sale of her chastity; but that “the easiest way” will, at last, prove to be the hardest, ending in misery and a broken heart. The ethical platitude is supposed to constitute a “moral lesson,” and this disgusting play was proclaimed as instructive and admonitory in its purpose. The assumption of a right and duty to “teach good moral lessons” in the Theatre by causing the public mind to dwell with tolerant familiarity on wholly commonplace and sordid proceedings and experiences of blackguards, rakes, pimps, and harlots, as such, is as stupid as it is impudent, but it has been made by some of the most eminent men and women of the Stage. Lester Wallack produced Boucicault’s tainted drama of “Forbidden Fruit,” and trailed the banner of the noble Wallack tradition in the gutter by doing so; Richard Mansfield, to the end of his life, retained in his repertory the feculent play of “A Parisian Romance” (produced by A. M. Palmer); Mme. Modjeska introduced in our Theatre Mr. Sudermann’s radically pernicious “Heimat” (“Magda”); William and Madge Kendal exploited the “Tanqueray” scandal; that great man{269}ager and actor John Hare (one of the loveliest artists that ever graced the Stage) sullied his fair fame by presenting, and attempting to defend, “The Gay Lord Quex”; Belasco brought out “The Easiest Way”—and so it goes. Dispute as to the propriety of presenting such plays is unending. It is not, however, essential to continue that dispute (of which I have long been sick almost to death) in this place: my views on the whole subject of the drama of demirepdom have been explicitly stated in the chapter of this work relating to the play of “Zaza.” When “The Easiest Way” was first made known in New York I wrote and published these words of comment:

It is melancholy and deplorable that he should have lent his great reputation to the support of the vicious play which now disgraces his Stuyvesant Theatre.... No lover of Dramatic Art, no admirer of David Belasco, can feel anything but regret that he should give the authority of his great managerial reputation,—the greatest since Augustin Daly’s death,—and the benefit of his genius and his rich professional resources to the exposition of a drama that cannot do good.... We do not want to see in the Theatre the vileness that should be shunned; we want to see the beauty that should be emulated and loved!{270}

These words expressed my conviction then—and they express my conviction now. And I am encouraged to believe that my old friend (whose productions of “Zaza” and “The Easiest Way” I opposed by every means in my power) has come to my way of thinking on this subject because in a recently published newspaper article I find him declaring: “Art is not confined to the gutter and the dregs of life. Rather, real art has more to do with the beautiful. Perverted and degenerate ideas are the easiest to treat of in literature, the drama, and the stage.”

“The Easiest Way” was produced with vigilant attention to detail. Nothing was forgotten: the rooms shown were reproductions of fact,—from the rickety wardrobe, with doors that will not close and disordered sheets of music and other truck piled on top of it, in the boarding-house chamber, to the picturesque, discreetly arranged disorder of the opulent apartments, the signs of a drunken orgy, and the artfully disclosed and disordered bed. All that stage management could do to create and deepen the impression of reality was done, and the result was a deformity magnificently framed to look like nature,—another example of a thing done perfectly that ought not to have been done at all and one from which I gladly turn away. This was the cast of “The Easiest Way{271}”:

“WESTWARD, HO!”—THE SYNDICATE SURRENDERS.—INCIDENTS OF 1909.

Belasco, accompanied by several friends, left New York on February 7, 1909, for San Francisco, where he arrived on the 12th and where he remained for nearly a month. He had been apprized that the health of his father was failing and that, in the course of nature, his death was likely to occur soon. His expedition was prompted by filial affection and it was undertaken with a heavy heart. His visit, however, greatly cheered and benefited his aged parent, and the sojourn in his native city was made a time of festival and happiness. On February 24 a dinner was given at the Bismarck Café by surviving pupils of the Lincoln Grammar School, of the classes from 1865 to 1871, at which Belasco was the principal guest; and on the 27th a supper was given in his honor at the Bohemian Club. He has written for me this account of his visit:

Photograph in Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID BELASCO AND HIS FATHER, HUMPHREY ABRAHAM BELASCO, IN SAN FRANCISCO, FEBRUARY, 1909—THEIR LAST MEETING

{273}

I have endeavored to obtain reports of the speeches at these festivals but have been unable to do so. At the Lincoln Grammar School Dinner the speakers{274} were Professor Marks, Charles A. Miller, Joseph Greenberg, James I. Taylor, Charles F. Gall, and J. J. McBride, all of San Francisco, and Arthur L. Levinsky, of Stockton. Among the speakers at the Bohemian Club supper were Dr. J. Wilson Shiels, Joseph D. Redding, Charles J. Fields, Willis Polk, Waldemar Young, and Mackenzie Gordon.—Belasco left San Francisco for New York on March 2 and arrived there on the 7th.

In the spring of 1909, soon after he returned from his visit to San Francisco, the Theatrical Syndicate practically surrendered in its fight to exclude Belasco from the theatres which it dominated. The reason for this surrender was, of course, purely selfish. The Belasco theatrical productions were not only the best that were being made in America but, also, they were among the most profitable. He had long been firmly established in public favor: he was managing two splendid theatres in New York: he controlled, directly or indirectly, others in other cities: each season he had grown more influential: it was a manifest impossibility to crush him: many janitorial managers of theatres in different parts of the country were bitterly dissatisfied because his popular and remunerative productions were not “booked” in their theatres: the obvious course of commercial expediency was to terminate a losing{275} conflict and utilize and prosper by the leading theatrical manager in America: to the Syndicate, as to Petruchio in Grumio’s description of him, “nothing comes amiss so money comes withal,” and the greatest wonder is not that it forgave Belasco the heinous crime of working for his own advantage but that, at heavy financial loss, it so long debarred him from the “first-class territory.” The upshot of the various considerations indicated was an understanding between the parties in opposition (namely, the booking agency of the Messrs. Klaw & Erlanger, representing the Syndicate, on the one side, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Grey Fiske and Belasco, on the other), whereby,—as set forth in a statement issued by Fiske,—it was arranged that “Klaw & Erlanger and Fiske and Belasco will hereafter, whenever mutually agreeable, play attractions in each other’s theatres.” Since that understanding was reached, April 29, 1909, they have, as far as I know, done so.

I am far from regarding any association between Belasco and the Theatrical Syndicate as being either for his best interest or for that of the American Stage. Belasco, however, thinks differently, and in a recent conversation with me he summed up his feeling about the Syndicate in these words: “In the conferences initiated by our lawyer Mr. Gerber{276} [David Gerber was attorney for Belasco as well as for Klaw & Erlanger] it was found that we could enter upon business relations for the betterment of the American Stage without any sacrifice of principle or integrity, and I think our arrangement has been beneficial for the Stage. I am older than I used to be; I have no ill-feeling; our relations are very friendly, and I am satisfied to ‘let the dead past bury its dead.’” That is very well—but, as it happens, all that was truly urged by Fiske and Belasco (among others) in opposition to the Theatrical Syndicate before the business understanding above recorded remained equally true after it; newspaper files and many legal instruments are accessible and anybody can consult them who wishes to do so; the public record cannot be evaded. I am thoroughly familiar with the annals of the Syndicate and I do not agree with Belasco in his present friendly and favorable attitude. On the contrary, I am satisfied that the influence of the Syndicate upon matters of dramatic art must, in the nature of things, remain vulgar and degrading, and in matters of business oppressive and sordid, to the end of the chapter. Public opinion, however, and that of the newspaper press has long been indifferent on this subject, and I am now convinced that it is only by the passing away of the men who compose the Syndi{277}cate (in whom, happily, “nature’s copy’s not eterne”) and the accession to theatrical management of men of higher character and ideals and finer intellect that the American Theatre will be measurably redeemed from its impaired estate.

Belasco’s course, meanwhile, in dealing with the Syndicate has been incorrectly described as “a surrender” on his part and he has been much misrepresented therein. From the first of difference and dispute he maintained his right to independence in the conduct of his managerial business. In various conversations with me, many years before the arrangement with his opponents was reached, he declared, in substance, half-a-score of times or more: “I have no wish to try to interfere with these people [meaning the Syndicate] in their business. What I am fighting for is my right to book my productions with whatever managers want to book them, for my best advantage.”

A newspaper intimation that Belasco, while booking through the Syndicate agency, would “fear to offend the Trust” brought from him (1909) the following specific disclaimer of subserviency:

{278}

Mr. Lee Shubert, who controlled theatres competing with Syndicate houses in which Belasco productions were presented for a long time after the Syndicate agreed to book for him, made the following comment on the understanding:

One immediate result of the Fiske-Belasco arrangement with the Syndicate was the settlement out of court of the lawsuits over “The Auctioneer,” implicating Klaw & Erlanger, Belasco, and Joseph{279} Brooks, and the withdrawal of the appeal by Belasco, in that matter, which had been filed April 13, 1906.

A painful incident of this year (1909) was a bitter attack on Belasco made by his former friend and professional associate Mrs. Leslie Carter. That singular woman, having appeared in John Luther Long’s absurd play of “Kassa” and made a failure, was pleased to ascribe that regrettable result not to a bad play and a tiresome performance but to the malign influence of Belasco! A long and silly “statement” was issued in her behalf to the effect that there was a plan on foot to interfere with “her career” in that play, and it was intimated that Belasco was the instigator of this alleged nefarious scheme. Later Mrs. Carter gave out another screed, which was circulated throughout the press of the country, reflecting in the most gross and unwarranted way upon the man who had made her theatrical career possible, and in which she declared: “If I were going to die and could save my life by playing again for David Belasco, I would not do it!” As nothing could ever have induced him to resume the management of Mrs. Carter this declaration was a trifle superfluous. Belasco’s only comment on this matter was explicit: “It is,” he said, “absolutely false that I have sought, or desired, in any way, to{280} injure Mrs. Carter. It is monstrous that such a thing should be said against me, and monstrous that anybody should dare to ask me if it is true.”

During the summer of 1909 Belasco proposed to his old friend Lotta that she return to the stage under his management (she had retired from it about 1890) and make a farewell tour of the country. “I urged her all I could,” Belasco writes, “because I knew I could make her reappearance and tour a sensational success and that the public would be delighted to see the little Lotta of other days. At first I wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer, and for a while Miss Lotta was inclined to accept my proposal. But, finally, she declined, saying: ‘I’ve seen so many people make the same mistake, when they’ve grown old and outlived their public, of coming back to appear in the parts that were written for them in their youth. “Other days, other ways.” It is better to let my old friends remember me as they saw me many years ago. I shall never act again.’” That was a wise decision. No doubt there would have been much friendly interest in a formal farewell by Lotta; but the elfin charm of her youth was gone and the venture would have inspired sadness: “Yesterday’s smile and yesterday’s frown can never come over again!{281}”

THE SEASON OF 1909-’10: “IS MATRIMONY A FAILURE?”—“THE LILY”—AND “JUST A WIFE.”

Belasco produced three new plays in the season of 1909-’10,—“Is Matrimony a Failure?”, “The Lily,” and “Just a Wife.” “Is Matrimony a Failure?” is a clever farce, adapted by Leo Ditrichstein from a German original, “Die Thür ins Freie,” by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelberg. It relates to the ancient, evergreen subject of conjugal friction,—which, in this instance, seems intolerable but proves indispensable,—and it implicates ten married couples and one pair of prospective connubialists. The scene is a pleasant country town in New York. A coterie of husbands has grown restive under what is deemed to be an excessive exercise, by their wives, of matrimonial authority. A lawyer named Paul Barton visits the town to settle the estate of an old Justice of the Peace, recently deceased, ascertains that the wedding ceremonies of the various couples implicated were performed by that official’s clerk, in the absence of his employer, and declares them to be illegal. The husbands decline to validate their marriages unless their wives agree to permit them greater freedom than they have enjoyed, and, leaving their homes, establish themselves at a neighboring inn,—where{282} they soon find that, however irksome may have seemed the dominion of their wives, it is immensely preferable to the total lack of their society. More particular rehearsal of the complications, cross-purposes, and conflicts woven about this posture of circumstance would be superfluous: they were not less comic and amusing because the legal quirk upon which the original play was based is inapplicable under the law of the State of New York. The farce was exquisitely set and admirably played,—especially by that excellent light-comedian and lovable man, the late Frank Worthing,—and it enjoyed acceptance bounteous and remunerative. “Is Matrimony a Failure?” was first acted at Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 29, 1909, and, in New York, at the Belasco Theatre, on the 23d of that month,—with the following cast:

THE HUSBANDS.

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

NANCE O’NEILL AS ODETTE DE MAIGNY AND JULIA DEAN (THE YOUNGER) AS CHRISTIANE DE MAIGNY, IN “THE LILY”

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THE WIVES.

“Jane Cowl,” said Belasco, “had been with me for several years, understudying many parts in different plays, acting ‘bits,’ and working hard. I felt that she had earned her chance, and I gave it to her in ‘Matrimony.’ Her performance was splendid and she has been successful ever since.”

“The Lily” is a play in four acts, adapted by Belasco from a French original, “Le Lys,” by MM. Pierre Wolff and Gaston Leroux. It was produced for the first time, December 6, 1909, at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, and was first acted in New York, at the Stuyvesant, December 23. The story of this play is one of domestic tyranny, possible in{284} France but impossible in America, and one which, accordingly, inspired only tepid interest in the American public,—although the treatment and presentation of it were in a high degree theatrically effective. This is the substance of that story: The Comte de Maigny, a profligate Frenchman who is also a father and a widower, tyrannizes over his children. The eldest of those children, Odette, is “the lily,”—a woman of thirty-five who, in girlhood, has been parted by her father from the man she wished to marry and who has become a mere domestic convenience, dwelling in lonely celibacy as her father’s housekeeper and lavishing her affection upon her sister, who is ten years younger. That sister, Christiane, is destined by their father for the same barren existence, but she meets a strolling artist, who wins her love and with whom, because he cannot wed her,—being already married to an uncongenial woman who will not divorce him,—she enters into an illicit relation. De Maigny has contrived to arrange a loveless marriage between his son and the young daughter of a man of great wealth,—being intent thus to obtain money for libidinous self-indulgence. The relation of Christiane and her artist becoming known to that person, he breaks off the marriage of his daughter with Christiane’s brother, not explicitly stating his reason{285} but with ambiguous givings out which intimate it. The chief scenes of the play then follow. The infuriated licentiate badgers his unfortunate daughter, who, at first, lies to protect herself, until, at last, he elicits from her a rebellious, exultant declaration of the truth. Then, in the fury of his disappointed cupidity, he is about to beat her, when the long-suppressed, meek-seeming but actually passionate Odette, opening her valves under an immense and rising pressure of emotional steam, intervenes, denouncing the conventions of society in general and the iniquities of de Maigny in particular, certifying to the propriety of her sister’s conduct in the wretched circumstances existing, and declaring her purpose to protect that sister in her natural desire for “love and happiness.” Christiane then departs with her lover and the expectation of deferred matrimony, and her disgruntled parent, practically ejected from his home, goes off to Paris, whining that a waiter will probably close his eyes in death,—a pious kindness which the spectator hopes may be performed at an early date.

The play, of course, was devised for the sake of the sudden, blistering outburst by the elderly spinster—which in representation is undeniably effective—and, in the French original, for the sake of emitting some specious special pleading in extenu{286}ation and justification of illicit conduct. As to the doctrine which Odette declares in this play and which Christiane and her unhappily married swain exemplify,—the doctrine, namely, that when two persons who love each other are held asunder by cruel chance of social circumstance they are warranted in setting aside convention in order to come together,—its utter fallacy is too obvious for detection. Practical application of it, however, has often provided variously dramatic results: pathetic exposition of some of its possible consequences, to helpless, innocent persons, is made in Collins’ great novel of “No Name.” Belasco, in presenting his modified version of “Le Lys,” sought to evade the ethical issue, but he added one more to his long list of plays perfectly environed and admirably acted. Miss Nance O’Neil, who appeared in it as Odette, has been designated as a “tragic actress” (which she is not) and has been extravagantly extolled. She possesses rough natural ability, animal strength, vocal capacity, some sensibility and considerable power of forceful simulation. Most of her performances have been monotonous: in this one, in which, practically, she had only one scene and in which, furthermore, she had the advice and assistance of a consummate stage manager, she was interesting and impressive,—uttering the verbal explosion

Photograph by the Misses Selby. Author’s Collection.

BELASCO, ABOUT 1911

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of voluble vehemence addressed to de Maigny with fine abandon, passionate intensity, and powerful effect.—The cast of “The Lily” is appended:

“Just a Wife” was written by Mr. E. Walter and was first acted at the Colonial Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio, January 17, 1910, and at the Belasco Theatre, New York, on the 31st of that month. As a playwright that writer has exhibited a persistent, morbid preoccupation with the subject of illicit sexual relations which suggests the possible utility of vigorous open-air exercise, the cold sitz-bath and potassium bromide. In this play a libertine named John Emerson, who has consorted with a widow named Lathrop until their relation has become a{288} public scandal, by way of “keeping up appearances” marries an impecunious vestal from South Carolina, named Mary Ashby. As he immediately installs Mrs. Emerson in a luxurious rural habitation somewhere on Long Island and practically deserts her, this expedient would hardly seem to be of much social service. However, after neglecting his wife for about six years, Emerson grows weary of his mistress, quarrels with her and runs away from her to visit his wife. The mistress, much incensed, follows him, and a sort of three-cornered debate,—protracted, sophistical, and indelicate,—on the sexual relation is held at Mrs. Emerson’s country residence, in the course of which that lady manifests a sweet temper and admirable self-control. After it is over, Mrs. Lathrop (to whom it has been intimated that in men the ruling passion is sex impulse and that she is growing somewhat elderly) goes away in a peaceful and much chastened mood. Mrs. Emerson then snubs her neglectful spouse and signifies that he may not hope to possess her as his wife until he has recognized the supremacy of Love, which it is implied he will soon do. It is all very edifying, of course,—especially as the author of it, apparently, knows as much about love, as distinguished from carnal concupiscence, as a tomcat on the tiles does. This was the cast:{289}

A CHANGE OF NAMES.—THE FARCE OF “THE CONCERT.”

Belasco’s management of the theatre in West Forty-second Street which was the first to bear his name extended over a period of twelve years. In the spring of 1910 he began to feel dubious as to whether he would,—perhaps as to whether he could,—renew his lease at the end of its term, two years later. He therefore determined to restore to that house its former name of the Republic, and thereafter to designate the Stuyvesant as the Belasco Theatre. That change, accordingly, was made, in July, 1910; and on August 22 the Republic Theatre was reopened under that name with a performance of a play made by Mr. Winchell Smith, on the basis of a clever and amusing story by Mr. George Randolph Chester, called “Bobby Burnitt”: that play was produced by Cohan & Harris. On October 10 the second Belasco Theatre was opened with a performance of “The Concert,” adapted by Leo Ditrichstein from a German original by Herman{290} Bahr: it had been acted, for the first time, at the Nixon Theatre, Pittsburgh, September 19.

The theme of “The Concert” is an old one,—Woman’s infatuation relative to the Musical Performer. The intention is to satirize that foolish state of the female mind, and also to expose and ridicule a despicable combination of febrile sensuousness, splenetic temper, and insensate egotism, often, and unjustly, designated “the artistic temperament.” That intention is accomplished in a manner certainly ludicrous, though heavy-handed and cynical: it is characteristic that the Stage of the Present, reflecting some aspects of life in the Present, while from time to time it exhibits much that is clever, brilliant, hard, satirical, exhibits little—whether of writing or of acting—that is amiable, playful, engaging, pleasant, and therefore potent to make the spirit gentle and happy. The chief postulate of “The Concert” and the manipulation of it are strongly reminiscent of “Delicate Ground” and “Divorçons.” The musician, Gabor Arany, having lied to his wife as to a purposed excursion from his home, which he says is undertaken for the purpose of “giving a concert,”—goes to a secluded retreat in the mountains of New York with one of his pupils, the wife of another man, intending an amorous intrigue with her. The other man, in

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

LEO DITRICHSTEIN AS GABOR ARANY AND JANET BEECHER AS HELEN, MRS. ARANY, IN “THE CONCERT”

{291}

company with the wife of the musician, pursues those fugitives, and, when the two couples are confronted, the insulted husband, after the manner of Citizen Sangfroid, blandly proposes that the complication of domestic affairs shall be solved and adjusted by an exchange of wives, sequent on the attainment of divorce. The silly woman who admires the musician is rescued by exposure of his selfishness and her folly, the musician is baffled and rebuked, and domestic peace is supposed to be restored.

Mr. Ditrichstein called his adaptation of Mr. Bahr’s play “a comedy.” The terms applied to plays, by way of classification, are somewhat indefinite at the best, but as to Comedy,—the general understanding is that it should be a dramatic composition which, in delineating character and manners, while piquant by virtue of delicate exaggeration and amusing by virtue of clever equivoke, moves within the limits of reason and probability. “The Concert” begins with farce and proceeds with violent absurdity. The persons implicated would not, in real life, act in a manner even approximate to that which is prescribed for them. The note that is struck, considered at its best, is that of burlesque. The play, in as far as it is a play,—the clash of character and the exposition of conduct,—begins in{292} the Second Act. Sixteen persons are implicated in the action of the piece, but only seven of them are seen after the first curtain has fallen. The tone of the Second and Third acts, except at moments, is radically and extravagantly farcical. But toward the end an opportunity occurs, and it is duly improved,—perhaps in jest, perhaps in earnest,—of saying the magnanimous words that are usually attributed to philosophical lovers: “If you love a woman, and that woman happens to be your wife, you wish her to be happy, and if you discover that she thinks she can be happier with another man than she is with you your wish is that she should join him, if she can be sure of her feelings”; and so forth. At the close of this piece the wife of the genius affectionately assures him that she has all along understood his conduct, but is willing to pardon him if he will be faithful in future, and, by way of emphasizing her docile, charitable, and eminently tolerant spirit, she produces bottles of hair-dye and proceeds to rejuvenate his fading locks.—The scenic setting, the stage management, and the acting by which this farce were commended to public approbation were so appropriate, so resourceful and deft, so careful, zealous, spirited, and effective, that it gained immense popularity. This was the original cast of “The Concert{293}”:

LOSS AND GRIEF.—“NO MAN BEARS SORROW BETTER.”

“Thanks for your kind sympathy, dear William Winter,” Belasco wrote to me, in July, 1911. “I have thought of you so often in my grief. I should be glad to come over to your island to see you, but I am not able.... I am trying to be resigned; and, though the pain is great, I must be. Nothing can ever be the same again, and it is all very, very hard. Yet I must go on, and I shall. There is nothing but our work....” He had, within less than two months of each other, lost his father{294} and his dearly loved daughter Augusta,—Mrs. William Elliott. His father was stricken on April 6th, and he died on the 11th, at his home, No. 1704 Sutter Street, San Francisco. Belasco, however, was at that time in almost distracted attendance on his daughter, at Asheville, North Carolina, and could not leave her when he received news of his father’s illness; nor was he able to attend his funeral. Humphrey Abraham Belasco was buried beside his wife in Hills of Eternity Cemetery, San Mateo, California, April 12th.

The death of Belasco’s daughter,—“my little guardian,” as he has called her in talk with me,—was a bereavement more than usually bitter. She was a creature of extraordinary goodness and beauty, of exquisite sensibility, gentle and lovely in nature, childlike in disposition, the pitiful friend of all sorrowing and suffering persons, the special comrade and comfort of her father, and her death came within less than five months after her marriage—to the actor William Elliott. When Belasco was informed of his child’s attachment to Elliott (whom she had met when he was a member of the company supporting Miss Starr in “The Rose of the Rancho”) he, at first, opposed their marriage,—“Not,” as he has told me, “that I had any personal objection to ‘Billy,’—who is a dear fellow

“Oft in the still night
Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me
Fond Memory brings the light
Of Other Days around me.”

From an original made for, and loaned by,
Mrs. David Belasco.

{295}

and whom I always liked,—but because I had hoped she would choose a husband out of the theatrical profession, one who could live all his life with her,—which the inevitable travelling of theatrical life makes practically impossible. But when I saw that my little girl was pining for him, that a great love had come to her and that she could never be happy without him, I brushed all my own hopes and wishes away and urged their immediate marriage. I thought to keep her always near her mother and me, so as a wedding gift I had an apartment fitted up for them in the Marie Antoinette, where we live, and we were all going to be together and happy: but it was not to be.”

William Elliott and Augusta Belasco were wedded, at the home of her parents, January 27, 1911: as they were about to start on their honeymoon, the bride, while bidding good-bye to her father, was stricken with sudden illness and collapsed. At first it was believed that her illness was merely a transient disorder, which would soon yield to treatment. For a few weeks her condition fluctuated, but seemed, on the whole, to improve: then, at the end of March, she began rapidly to decline, and Belasco was informed that she was afflicted with an acute form of tuberculosis, which must soon cause her death. That was an issue which{296} her father could not and would not accept without a bitter struggle. “I had seen so many desperate cases of consumption saved, for years,” he said, “that I could not believe my little girl, who had always seemed so strong and well, who was so young and lovely, on the threshold of her new life, with everything to live for, must die. I gathered her up, overnight, and fled with her to Asheville.” There Belasco leased Witchwood, a fine residence,—the home of the late Colonel Charles W. Woolsey,—and installed his daughter in it. Her fatal malady could not, however, be stayed, though every expedient was tried that love could prompt or wealth employ, and she grew rapidly worse. On May 1, in a forlorn hope that the climate of Colorado might prove beneficial, Belasco chartered a special train and removed her to Broadmoor, a beautiful place in the environs of Colorado Springs,—where, on the afternoon of June 5, after great suffering borne with patience and fortitude, she died. Her body was taken to New York; funeral services were held there, at the Temple Ahawath Chesed, on June 9, and late on that day she was laid in her grave in Ahawath Chesed Cemetery, at Linden Hills, Long Island.

{298}

Belasco’s elder daughter, Reina Victoria, was married to the theatrical manager Morris Gest, of New York, at Sherry’s, in that city, on June 1, 1909.

A DRAMA OF SPIRITUALISM.

(Fragmentary Notes, Not Revised.)

The extreme dissatisfaction of the Ghost, who, on returning from the spirit world to this mundane sphere, ascertains that his, or her, earthly sweetheart or husband has formed a nuptial alliance with somebody else has been noticed by various poetical writers in deeply affecting verse, dramatic, descriptive, and pathetic,...

Belasco’s play “The Return of Peter Grimm” deals with the mysterious and certainly important subject of Spiritualism,—a subject which deserves all the thoughtful, studious inquiry which has, in recent years, been bestowed on it by many persons of exceptional intellectual capacity and power. It is, nevertheless, a subject which is generally treated with pitying contempt or scornful antagonism, especially by those persons,—the vast majority of humanity,—who are most comprehensively ignorant of its history and its apparent phenomena. It was, accordingly, a bold choice which selected that subject for exposition in a drama of prosaic, contemporaneous

AUGUSTA BELASCO, MRS. WILLIAM ELLIOTT

Original made for, and loaned by,
Mrs. David Belasco.

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setting, and it is a significant testimony at once to Belasco’s managerial perspicacity and to his skill as a writer and a stage manager that his play of “Grimm” achieved unusual success....

In the days of my youth, when I was a student at the Dane Law School of Harvard College, it was my good fortune to gain the friendship of the erudite lawyer Theophilus Parsons, who was a preceptor there, and to listen to much interesting and instructive discourse by him on many subjects—among them, the Swedenborgian faith, to which he was an absolute and happy adherent. “Death,” he remarked, in expounding to me the tenets of that faith, “is no more than walking from one room into another.” The same thought (which has, of course, been cherished by many persons) seems to have been predominant in the mind of Belasco when he was writing “The Return of Peter Grimm.”...

BELASCO’S “THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM.”

In drama, whether prose or verse, the device has frequently been used of bringing back to our material world the spirits of persons who have passed out of mortal life, and causing them to pervade the{300} scenes with which they were associated in the body. That device is employed in Belasco’s “The Return of Peter Grimm,” in which David Warfield made his first and, thus far, his only approach to the realm of Imagination [since this passage was written Warfield has appeared, 1915-’16, as Van Der Decken, in a drama by Belasco on the subject of “The Flying Dutchman.”—J. W.]. Peter Grimm, a prosperous, self-willed, kind, good old man, who in the government of his family and the arrangement of his worldly affairs has made serious errors,—the most deplorable of them being the separation of his ward, a docile, affectionate girl named Kathrien, from a youth who loves her and whom she loves, and her betrothal to his nephew, Frederik Grimm, a hypocrite and a scoundrel,—is suddenly stricken dead, of heart disease, and, after a little time his spirit returns to the place which was his earthly home, intent on retrieving those errors, discomfiting the rascal by whom he has been deceived, and making his foster-child happy. Warfield, personating Peter Grimm, first presented him as a mortal, afterward as a spirit. The character,—honest, sturdy, opinionated, worldly-wise, somewhat rough and imperious, yet intrinsically genial,—was correctly assumed and expressed, but the actor’s denotement of spiritual being was neither

REINA BELASCO. MRS. MORRIS GEST

Photograph by White. Belasco Collection.

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imaginative nor sympathetic, and it did not create even the slightest illusion.

The purpose of the dramatist seems to have been to intimate a notion, comfortable to the general mind, that spiritual existence of beings once mundane is merely a continuation of their everyday condition in this world. In the absence of knowledge on the subject that assumption is as tenable as any other. Persons who are commonplace in what we call Time may reasonably be held to remain commonplace in what we call Eternity. No one knows. The Book of Destiny has not been opened. But the rationality of assumption which makes of “that undiscovered country” only a prolongation of this earthly scene at once dissipates, especially for dramatic purpose and effect, all atmosphere of spirituality, all glamour of the ideal, which happily might be superinduced by imaginative treatment of a mysterious subject. However prosaic the quality of a disembodied spirit may remain, it seems reasonable to assume that there must be some essential difference between the material body and the spiritual body, and the person undertaking to represent a spirit could succeed, if at all, in denoting that difference not by stage tricks but only by mental power and affluence of emotion, by weird strangeness of individuality, by{302} exquisite sensibility, by magnetism, and by the artistic skill to liberate those forces and so elicit and control the sympathy of his auditors. Warfield’s personation of Grimm gave not the faintest intimation of spirituality, and there was not one gleam of imagination in his presentment of the spirit.

Few actors have ever succeeded in conveying to an audience any really convincing, absorbing sense of spiritual presence. The dramatist of “Peter Grimm” probably did not intend that any such sense should be conveyed. Warfield, apparently, did not attempt to convey it, and if, as appears true, it was the actor’s purpose to present Grimm as essentially the same person after death as before, then his personation, undoubtedly, was the rounded result of a definite plan, and was, as such, entirely successful.

The part of Peter Grimm has been described as one of great difficulty. It is, on the contrary, very easy. Its requirement is sincerity. Grimm, as a spirit, clothed as in mortal life, must move among persons who were his friends, unseen by them, unheard when he speaks, eagerly desirous to influence their conduct, but practically helpless to do so, except at moments when accession of extreme sensibility on the part of one or another of them provides occasion, until, at last, force of circumstances{303} and the impelling guidance of the dead man achieve his purpose. Acted in the spirit precisely as in the flesh, as a good old man, the part makes no draft upon the resources of mind or feeling or upon the faculty of expression that any good actor might not easily satisfy. The situations wherein Grimm, ostensibly, is ignored by the other persons on the stage in fact revolve around him and are dependent on his presence; he engages the sympathy of the audience practically to the exclusion of all the other characters, and the almost universal interest—whether assenting or dissenting—in anything relating directly to the theme of spiritual survival after death, together with the novelty of a ghost displayed in the environment of every-day, centres observation on Grimm and his personator.

Warfield’s performance, notwithstanding the prosaic atmosphere of it, was interesting, and his excursion into the realm of the occult was, at least, calculated to stimulate thought on a serious subject. In this, as in many other matters, the degree of approval gained by the play and its performance will ever be variably accordant to taste. To some persons, no doubt, the ideal of a newly dead child being borne away on his spirit-uncle’s shoulders, singing about “Uncle Rat has gone to town to buy his niece a wedding gown,” and musically inquiring,{304} “What shall the wedding breakfast be? Hard-boiled eggs and a cup of tea?” will be delightful. Others, equally without doubt, will fail to find it impressive.

“The Return of Peter Grimm” was acted for the first time, January 2, 1911, at the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston; and for the first time in New York, October 18, the same year, at the present Belasco Theatre. This was the original cast of that play:

CONCERNING THE EUNUCHS OF CRITICASTERISM.

The gentle Goldsmith, commenting on a meanness in human nature which causes little minds to envy and disparage the achievements of large ones, remarked that “There are a set of men called

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID WARFIELD AS PETER GRIMM, IN “THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM”

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answerers of books, who take upon themselves to watch the republic of letters and distribute reputation by the sheet: they somewhat resemble the eunuchs in a seraglio, who are incapable of giving pleasure themselves and hinder those that would.” Such emasculated perverters of the function of criticism,—scribblers bloated with envy engendered by conscious intellectual impotence,—flourish more or less in all periods; they are peculiarly prosperous in this one, and their envious malice is employed with at least as much industry in the “answering” and defaming of dramatists and actors as in the “answering” of books. Before Belasco had produced “Peter Grimm” in New York and almost in the hour of his personal bereavement, a representative specimen of that wretched brotherhood, itching to detract from the achievement of an author whom he could not hope ever to approach, published the false statement that Belasco was only part author of that play. Among the papers loaned to me by Belasco is a copy of the following letter, which I print here because the misrepresentation alluded to has been several times iterated and the refutation of it should be placed on record:{306}

(Belasco to a Quidnunc.)

“THE WOMAN”—AND MR. ABRAHAM GOLDKNOPF.

Belasco devoted most of the summer of 1911 to work on William C. De Mille’s play entitled “The Woman,” which he produced for the first time in New York, September 19, that year, at the Republic Theatre: a trial production of that play had been effected, April 17 preceding, at the New National{307} Theatre, Washington, D. C. It is a highly effective melodrama, of the “contemporaneous interest” type, and it implicates twelve persons, nine of whom are germane to its action. It is neat in construction; it skilfully utilizes the invaluable element of suspense, and interest in its progress is cumulative to the dramatic climax. This, in brief, is its story:

A corrupt politician, the Honorable “Jim” Blake, a member of the national legislature, is scheming to get a specious bill enacted into law, whereby over-capitalization of railroad corporations and wholesale swindling of the public can be perpetrated in the guise of legality. Another member of the legislature, the Honorable Matthew Standish, perceptive of the latent iniquity of that measure and of the predatory intent of Blake, has so vigorously opposed the enactment of it and so bitterly assailed its sponsors that Blake and his associates fear to force its passage. They determine, therefore, to divert attention of the people from the opposition of Standish to their corrupt measure and purposed malfeasance by blasting his personal reputation with social scandal. In their effort to do this they ascertain that several years previous the Honorable Matthew, inflexible before Plutus, has succumbed before Venus—has, in short, registered at an hotel with a woman not his wife. The name of that{308} woman is not known to their informant, and it is the despicable task of Blake and his adherents to ascertain her identity in order to ruin his public career by convicting him of private misconduct. That task they attempt to perform by endeavoring to extort from a young woman, Wanda Kelly, the operator in charge of a telephone exchange desk, a telephone number in New York which Standish, in Washington, has called for, immediately after being apprised of the dastardly purpose of Blake and his associates. The identity of the concealed and errant she as Blake’s daughter, the wife of one of his chief supporters, the Honorable Mark Robertson, is deftly discovered to the audience by the device of a second telephone message to her, by her husband, immediately after the close of the warning of impending disclosure by Standish. The sympathetic Miss Kelly resolutely persists in her protective secrecy as to The Woman at the other end of the wire, and the climax is then attained when Standish refuses to be driven from his public duty by the threatened assault on his private character and when Mrs. Robertson, having in an agony of dread listened to the unsuccessful coaxing and badgering of Miss Kelly, with sudden and desperate courage terminates the anxious situation by avowal of her delinquency, thus providing her corrupt parent and{309} spouse with considerably more information than they desire to publish as to the amatory weaknesses of the obdurate Standish. This was the cast with which that play was first presented in New York:

The exceptional success of Belasco’s production of “The Woman” prompted a genius thitherto unknown to fame, a certain inspired and amiable barber of New York, Mr. Abraham Goldknopf, to assert that it was stolen from a sublime drama indited by himself in the intervals of tonsorial exercise and entitled “Tainted Philanthropy.” Belasco, in defending himself against this preposterous claim, resorted to a unique and costly though conclusive expedient. But before describing the trial of Mr. Goldknopf’s allegations, it is convenient here to{310} examine with some particularity the general subject of

BELASCO AND PLAGIARISM.

“FOLLY LOVES THE MARTYRDOM OF FAME.”

No person rises to eminence without exciting antagonism and incurring detraction. Malice is quick to perceive any possibility, however trivial, of tarnishing a distinguished character, and hatred is ingenious in devising specious means of disparagement. The slightest appearance of weakness in any talented person favorably conspicuous in the public eye is eagerly seized as a ground of condemnation. Every close student of biography must have observed, relative to almost every eminent person commemorated, that there is always some one particular form of reproach which, by diligent, persistent iteration, is made to adhere to that person’s name, so that at last the one is seldom mentioned without association with the other. Eminent actors of the Past have been particularly singled out for defamation in this way. Barton Booth, for example, scholar and poet as well as actor, is stigmatized, on no competent authority, as a gross voluptuary; Garrick, because he was prudent, especially while he was poor, is styled an avaricious niggard; Kemble,{311} an opium sot; Edwin Booth, a drunkard, which is a specially contemptible slander. Henry Irving was one of the greatest of actors, but, because he happened to be a person of many peculiarities, perfectly natural to him, we are forever hearing that he had “affected mannerisms”—which is distinctly untrue. Every department of biography furnishes examples of this form of aspersion. In the case of Belasco the customary disparagement takes the shape of an iterated charge of Plagiarism. In this work an examination of that charge is essential.

THE “TRICK” AS APPLIED.

“Plagiarism,” says The Dictionary, is “the act of appropriating the ideas or the language of another and passing them for one’s [sic!] own; literary theft.” It would not be very difficult, testing Belasco’s plays by that definition, and excluding all other considerations, to invest the charge of plagiarism against him, in some instances, with validity. The last part of “Hearts of Oak” is borrowed from Leslie’s “The Mariner’s Compass”; “La Belle Russe” is based on situations taken from “Forget Me Not” and “The New Magdalen”; the thrilling situation in the Third Act of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” is based on a similar situation in Boucicault’s “Jessie Brown; or, the Relief of Lucknow”; the agonizing situation in the Third Act of “The Darling of the Gods,” in which a military despot extorts information from a woman by forcing her to gaze on her lover subjected to torture, is derived (and bettered) from Sardou’s “La Tosca.” Other instances of similarity could be specified. It would, however, be a manifest injustice to stigmatize Belasco, and only Belasco, as a plagiarist on the

Photograph by Count Jean de Strelecki. Belasco’s Collection.

“THE STUDENT”—DAVID BELASCO

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ground of his indebtedness to plays earlier than his. He has done only what all other dramatists have done since the beginning of the craft; that is, he has based some of his plays on dramatic expedients and situations that have long been considered to be common property.

AN ANCIENT USAGE.

Several of Shakespeare’s plays were based by him on plays of earlier date, by other authors. Dryden borrowed freely from Spanish plays and sometimes from Corneille and Molière,—a fact which caused Scott to remark (Preface to “The Assignation”) that “originality consists in the mode of treating a subject more than in the subject itself.” English dramatists, from Wycherly onward, have freely borrowed from Molière. Fielding, there is reason to believe, derived an occasional hint from the great Frenchman, as also from Thomas Murphy. Goldsmith was a little indebted to Wycherly. Hoadley borrowed from Farquhar; Steele from Bickerstaff; Colman from Murphy; Sheridan from both Wycherly and Congreve, and perhaps from his mother’s play of “The Discovery” and her novel of “Sydney Biddulph”; Boucicault from many French sources and some English ones. I would not be understood as approving or defending that practice in dramatic{314} authorship: on the contrary, in the whole course of my long service as a dramatic critic and historian I have condemned it. These words, written by me many years ago, relative to Boucicault, indicate my view of the practice:

If the large majority of dramatic authors,—Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, Molière, Sheridan, and the rest, down to the present day,—be convicted of plagiarism on the ground that they have rehashed old material, that charge will stand against Belasco. But the dramatist who, with manifest truth, pleads, as Belasco can plead (and as I understand that he does plead), “a well-known, universal, recognized custom” cannot, justly, be singled out and stigmatized for plagiarism,—any more than a respect{315}able Turk, resident in Constantinople, with four wives, can be singled out and stigmatized for bigamy. I no more approve the custom of what I call “playwrighting” than I approve or advocate polygamy,—but I speak for justice. Moreover, it is essential to be remembered that the number of basic situations, in fiction as in fact, is limited, and consideration of the method of combining and treating them must vitally affect the question of “originality.” To make an avowed adaptation of the work of another, or, with credit, to base a passage on suggestion derived from an incident in the work of another is not plagiarism.

The fair investigator of the charge of plagiarism against Belasco will find that it is twofold: it accuses him of appropriation from the works of other writers precedent to him, and of appropriation from other writers contemporary with him to whose writings he has had, or, as alleged, may have had, access.

CHARLES READE ON PLAGIARISM.

In considering the first part of the accusation I would recommend all inquirers to read the masterly exposition of the subject of Plagiarism made by Charles Reade (himself one of the successful writers frequently, in his day, accused of the offence), which{316} is printed, in his collected Works, as an appendix to his capital story of “The Wandering Heir,”—a story first made public in dramatic form. That exposition is too long to be quoted here in full, but the appended extract from it, which deals with what Reade calls “the mere intellectual detraction” involved in the charge that he had stolen “The Wandering Heir” from Dean Swift’s “The Journal of a Modern Lady,” is illuminative:

“FOR THE DEFENDANT.”

Examination of Belasco’s plays will reveal that they are, for the greater part, founded on what Reade designates “heterogeneous works,”—that is,{319} while he has in some instances borrowed or utilized material long generally regarded as common property, he has gone, far more, to history and record,—and that his plays contain more original writing than ninety per cent. of the plays which are customarily acted on the English-speaking Stage.

Turning from the question of what Belasco may or may not have derived from elder dramatists, we come to a field in which it is easy to move with definite, assured steps. The first accusation against him of plagiarism from a contemporary, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was made by Albert M. Palmer, on information and belief, in regard to the play of “The Millionaire’s Daughter,” first produced at the Baldwin Theatre, San Francisco, May 19, 1879. Palmer had been given to understand that Belasco, in this play, had infringed Bronson Howard’s play of “The Banker’s Daughter,” first produced at the Union Square Theatre, November 30, 1878, and which Maguire had endeavored to secure for Baldwin’s. He sent his attorney, W. Barnes, to see Belasco’s play of “The Millionaire’s Daughter,” accompanied by assistants, who took down as much as possible of the dialogue. After the performance Belasco said to Maguire: “It is not necessary for Mr. Barnes to try to{320} take down my dialogue: he has seen the play: tell him he can have a copy of the manuscript, if he wishes.” Barnes advised Palmer that there was no plagiarism by Belasco, and there the matter ended.

The second accusation was that of Howard P. Taylor, alleging that Belasco took material portions of “May Blossom” from “Caprice”: Taylor would not bring that charge into court, though Belasco invited him to do so; and Harrison Grey Fiske, the editor of “The Dramatic Mirror,” the publication in which the false accusation had been repeatedly made, publicly declared it to be unwarranted.

Beyond these, I have been furnished by my friend Judge A. G. Dittenhoefer (acting with Belasco’s permission) with a list showing that six distinct, formal charges of plagiarism have been made against Belasco and redress sought by legal action for injury thus alleged to have been done by him. The plays as to which these charges have been made are (1) “The Wife”; (2) “Du Barry”; (3) “Sweet Kitty Bellairs”; (4) “The Woman”; (5) “The Case of Becky”; (6) “The Boomerang.”

In the first of these cases suit was instituted, in 1888, by Fannie Aymar Matthews, against David Belasco and Henry C. De Mille, praying for an

DAVID BELASCO

Photograph by the Misses Selby.
Author’s Collection.

{321}

injunction to restrain the further presentation of their play of “The Wife,” on the ground that it was a plagiarism of her play entitled “Washington Life.” The action was tried before the Hon. Miles Beach, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York. Judge Beach decided in favor of Belasco and De Mille, finding that there was no infringement, no plagiarism.

The second case was an action brought by the French writer M. Richepin, January 25, 1902, in which he demanded an accounting for the receipts from representation of Belasco’s play of “Du Barry,” on the ground that it was, in fact, a play written by the Plaintiff. M. Richepin would not bring this case to trial, and it was finally discontinued, in January, 1908.

In the third case Grace B. Hughes (otherwise known as Mary Montagu) began an action, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, February 3, 1904, against Belasco, Maurice Campbell, and Henrietta Crosman. The action was brought to restrain further representation of Belasco’s play of “Sweet Kitty Bellairs,” on the ground that it was, in fact, an infringement of the Plaintiff’s play of “Sweet Jasmine.” Motion for an injunction was argued before Judge Lacombe, on March 18, 1904, and on March{322} 26 it was denied, Judge Lacombe holding that there was no plagiarism. The case was never brought to trial, and it was stricken from the calendar, on March 3, 1913.

The fourth case (which is dealt with in detail, page 336, et seq.) was the action brought against Belasco and William C. De Mille by Abraham Goldknopf, in February, 1912, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, praying for an injunction to restrain the further representation of their play of “The Woman” on the ground that it was, in fact, an infringement of Goldknopf’s play of “Tainted Philanthropy.” Judge Holt, before whom the case was tried, held that there was no infringement by Belasco and De Mille, no plagiarism, and on March 3, 1913, final judgment was entered dismissing the Plaintiff’s complaint, upon the merits.

In June, 1912, the fifth action against Belasco was brought by Amelia Bachman and George L. McKay, seeking to restrain him from further presentation of “The Case of Becky,” on the ground that it was, in fact, a plagiarism of their play entitled “Etelle.” Trial of this action was begun May 13, 1913, before Judge Julius M. Mayer, of the United States District Court, and was concluded the next day. On July 9, 1913, Judge Mayer rendered his{323} decision, holding that there was no plagiarism by Belasco, and dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint, upon the merits.

The sixth case was an action begun on January 14, 1916, by Lila Longson, to restrain Belasco, Winchell Smith, and Victor Mapes from further presentation of their play of “The Boomerang,” upon the ground that it was an infringement of her play of “The Choice.” The case was tried in the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, on September 19-21, and, at the close of the trial, Judge W. B. Sheppard held that there was no infringement and dismissed the complaint. Final judgment, dismissing the complaint upon the merits, was entered September 25, 1916.

In all these cases only one judgment in favor of Belasco was appealed,—that by Judge Mayer, in the action by Amelia Bachman and George L. McKay, in re “The Case of Becky.” Their appeal was taken to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was argued April 6, 1914. On May 12, following, the Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its decision in favor of Belasco, affirming Judge Mayer’s decision dismissing the complaint. The opinion of the Court was written by Judge E. Henry{324} Lacombe, and can be found in 224 Fed. Rep., page 817.

The significance of this summary of facts is obvious. Belasco has been, and is, freely accused of literary theft,—but on each and every occasion when accusation has been made and investigated in Court he has defeated his defamers and been completely vindicated.

CONCERNING BENEFITS—REMEMBERED AND FORGOT.

While Belasco, in common with the generality of dramatic authors, has certainly profited by the example and sometimes by the labor of others (a fact which he does not seek to conceal or deny, but which, on the contrary, he has freely and fairly recognized and admitted), there is a per contra aspect of his relation to other play-writers which none of his detractors,—and, for that matter, as far as I am aware, none of his admirers and advocates except myself,—ever mentions,—namely, the immense and direct advantage and profit derived by other play-writers from him. Nor is that indebtedness confined to makers of plays: as theatre manager, stage manager, mechanician, success for others if not always for himself has walked{325} with him, and for scores of persons connected with the Theatre (many of them void of appreciation) his has been the touch of a Midas, turning dross to gold and, incidentally, establishing them in reputation. Among the makers of plays who, first and last, have greatly profited by his sagacity, skill, and labor are James A. Herne, Peter Robertson, Bronson Howard (who always handsomely acknowledged the obligation), William Young, H. H. Boyesen, Henry C. De Mille, A. C. Gunter, Clay M. Greene, P. M. Potter, Franklyn Fyles, Charles Simon, Pierre Berton, Charles Klein, Lee Arthur, John Luther Long, Richard Walton Tully, Miss Pauline Phelps, Miss Marion Short, William C. De Mille, William J. Hurlbut, Eugene Walter, Avery Hopwood, Edward J. Locke, Miss Alice Bradley, George Scarborough, and Winchell Smith.[6] In all the mass of letters addressed to Belasco and examined by me in preparing this Memoir I have found fitting acknowledgment of benefits conferred by only two of those persons, aside from Howard,{326}—Franklyn Fyles and Mr. Scarborough. The latter wrote:

(George Scarborough to David Belasco.)

The scope and variety of his labor as an author are impressively signified in the following partial list of his writings:{327}

THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF DAVID BELASCO.

JUVENILE EFFORTS.

WRITTEN BEFORE 1882-’83 (BELASCO’S NEW YORK CAREER BEGAN IN SEPTEMBER, 1882).

Photograph by Count Jean de Strelecki. Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID BELASCO

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WRITTEN SUBSEQUENT TO 1882-’83.

{332}

PLAYS AS YET UNACTED.

BELASCO AS A DRAMATIST:—A FRAGMENT.

Careful study of the plays of Belasco has convinced me that, much as he has accomplished, he has not yet fully developed his powers or fully expressed himself as a dramatist. There is ample evidence in his writings that he abundantly possesses the natural faculty of dramatic expression. That faculty is born—not made. The dramatic mind comprehends a story not in narrative but in action, sees the characters which are involved, each as a distinctive individual, perceives their relations to one another, notes their movements and hears them speak. To the dramatic mind the spectacle of human life is, essentially, one of movement. But that spectacle is vast, tumultuous, bewildering, not to be comprehended at once, perhaps not ever to be comprehended fully, and certainly not to be comprehended without the reinforcement of large experience and a profound, peaceful meditation.{333} The reader of Shakespeare feels that the fully developed intellect of that great dramatist calmly brooded on the world: but there is no Shakespeare now, and there has been no such thing as tranquillity in the world for many long years.

Belasco, when he began to write, was a poor boy, imperfectly educated, in a disorderly environment, subject to all sorts of distractions and impediments, and throughout the whole of his career he has struggled onward under the sharp spur of necessity, without leisure or peace. In scarcely one of his many dramas is it possible to discern an unforced dramatic impulse, spontaneously creative of an exposition of diversified characters, acting and reacting upon circumstances, in dramatic situations, and constituting an authentic picture of human nature and life. In many of those dramas the existence of that impulse is perceptible, but almost invariably the growth of it is checked and the sway of it is impeded by the necessity of haste, or of conformity to the demand of some arbitrary occasion or of deference to the requirement of some individual actor, or to weariness and dejection. Fine bits of characterization appear; flashes of fancy frequently irradiate dialogue; imagination imparts a splendid glow to striking situations,—as in “The Darling of the Gods” and “The Girl I Left Behind{334} Me,”—and pathos is often elicited by simple means; but sometimes probability is wrested from its rightful place, and extravagance of embellishment mingles with verbosity to cause prolixity and embarrass movement. In a word, a sense of effort, a strenuous urgency for the attainment of violent effect, is largely perceptible in Belasco’s plays,—as, indeed, it is in nearly the entire bulk of modern American Drama. How could it be otherwise?

Belasco, a good son, affectionate and faithful, ever solicitous to contribute to the support of his parents and their family, began labor in childhood, and he has never ceased to labor. At an early age he married, assuming the duties and incurring the responsibilities of a husband and a father in harsh surroundings. In about twenty-five years, working as factotum, secretary, teacher, agent, mechanical inventor, actor, stage manager, theatre manager, and playwriter, and battling against a powerful, unscrupulous, malignantly hostile commercial antagonism, he raised himself from poverty-ridden obscurity to independence, general public esteem, and{335} international celebrity as a theatrical leader. Throughout the ensuing fifteen years he increased his eminence, becoming at last the representative theatrical manager of our day [meaning, here, about 1902 to the present, 1917] in America. He has adapted or rewritten more than 200-odd plays, has collaborated with other writers in making twenty-odd new ones, and is himself the sole author of about thirty more, most of which have been acted but several of which have not. The wonder is not that his writings exhibit some defects, but that, at their best, they contain so much truthful portrayal of character, pictorial reflection of life, fine dramatic situation, and compelling power to thrill the imagination and touch the heart. The time, it seems to me, has not yet come for attempting a comprehensive and final estimate of his faculty and achievement as a dramatist. Whether as an author or a character, he presents a singular, elusive, and perplexing study. The constitution of his mind, I have often thought, shows a striking resemblance to that of the romantic and copiously inventive old English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. The same prodigal vitality, the same intensity of interest, the same audacious recklessness of probability, the same facility of graphic characterization, the same exuberance of detail, and above all the{336} same wild romanticism peculiar to Ainsworth’s novels are perceptible in Belasco’s plays. The imagination that conceived “Adrea” might well have conceived “The Lancashire Witches” or the first book of “Jack Sheppard.” But Belasco is not merely an imitator. He has pursued a course natural to himself, and he has created much in Drama that is both original and beautiful. If he had written nothing but “The Girl of the Golden West” and “The Return of Peter Grimm” his name would live as that of one of the best dramatists who have arisen in America.

THE GOLDKNOPF TRIAL—A UNIQUE DEMONSTRATION.

The trial of the Goldknopf action against Belasco, based on the pretence that “The Woman” was plagiarized from “Tainted Philanthropy; or, The Spirit of the Time,” was begun, July 31, 1912, with a hearing before Commissioner Gilchrist, at

DAVID BELASCO

From a photograph by Arnold Genthe.
Author’s Collection.

{337}

the Federal building, New York, and it proceeded, the Hon. George C. Holt, Justice, presiding, in the United States Circuit Court, on August 5. It was established by sworn testimony that Goldknopf’s “play” was submitted by him to the Belasco Play Bureau in May, 1910, and that under date of July 10 Mr. Henry Stillman, the play reader of that bureau, wrote to Goldknopf a letter in which he said:

Mr. William C. De Mille testified that after the production of “The Warrens of Virginia,” in January, 1908, he had suggested to Belasco that if they could “throw up a good heart story against the general background of political ‘graft’ it would make a good play”; that Belasco had been favorably impressed by the suggestion, and that a contract had been entered into between them, in that year, for the writing of such a play,—several drafts of which, bearing different titles (“The Princess of the Wire,” “The Machine,” “1035, Plaza,” etc.), were made before the final one was put into{338} rehearsal. It also was established that Mr. De Mille had read his play to friends,—among them Professor John Erskine, of Columbia University,—in 1908.

Belasco corroborated Mr. De Mille; specified that he had instructed Mr. Stillman “to be kind to aspiring dramatists,” which fact he surmised “might account for the courteous tone of his note to” Goldknopf; testified that he had never seen the manuscript of “Tainted Philanthrophy” prior to July 31, 1912, and had not even heard of it until the suit was started. Then, becoming exasperated, he exclaimed: “I am heartily sick of being sued by nurserymaids, waiters, and barbers every time I bring out a new piece, and I should like very much to give a performance of both these plays before your Honor, in the fall.” To this startling proposal Judge Holt assented, remarking that he could doubtless have the merits of the case better placed before him by witnessing both the plays in representation than by merely reading them,—adding: “But it will be very expensive for you to have the case decided in this way, will it not?” To this inquiry Belasco replied: “Yes, sir; it will cost me about $5,000, but I want to show these unknown authors, once and for all, that they cannot come into the courts and attack every successful production I make{339} without submitting their plays to a comparison that will dispose of their claims very quickly.” On Belasco engaging himself to provide as good a cast for “Tainted Philanthropy” as that with which he was presenting “The Woman,” his proposal was accepted by counsel for Goldknopf.

The comparative performances were given, November 26, at the Belasco Theatre, in the presence of Judge Holt and invited audiences—Belasco desiring that as many journalists and members of his own profession as possible might see for themselves the shameful injustice to which he was subjected by the charge of plagiarism. “The Woman,” which was then filling an engagement at the Grand Opera House, New York, was acted first, beginning at eleven o’clock in the morning. After an interval of an hour “Tainted Philanthropy” was presented, “exactly as written,”—manuscript copies of both plays having been submitted to the court in order to make impossible any dispute on grounds of alleged changes during representation. The Goldknopf fabrication proved to be the veriest farrago of impalliable trash,—and, as it was performed with absolute sincerity by conscientious and capable actors, it became ludicrous in the extreme. On November 29, Judge Holt rendered his decision, finding, necessarily, that there is no plagiarism from{340} “Tainted Philanthropy” in “The Woman.” The chief parts in the former were cast thus:

The following letter on the subject of the Goldknopf accusations gave Belasco much satisfaction:

(The Society of American Dramatists and Composers to David Belasco.)

In his decision Judge Holt said:

Final judgment to that effect was entered March 3, 1913. Belasco’s unique demonstration of the shameful injustice of the Goldknopf charge, however, cost him $5,700. Writing on the subject of{342} this suit and of the performances offered in evidence in it, he has said:

{343}

A DRAMA OF PSYCHOLOGY.—“THE CASE OF BECKY.”

Belasco produced “The Case of Becky” for the first time, October 30, 1911, at the New National Theatre, Washington, D. C., but it was not until October 1, 1912, that, at the Belasco Theatre, the piece was first made known in the metropolis. It is a psychological “study,” in dramatic form, based on a play by Edward Locke, entitled “After Many Years.” Locke (who entered Belasco’s employment to study stage management and who for a time acted a small part in “The Music Master”) read his play to Belasco,—who, perceiving in it possibilities of novel and striking dramatic effect, at once accepted it, with the understanding that it should be rewritten under his supervision. That stipulation was agreed to and partially fulfilled,—the rewriting being (as in a great many other similar instances) done largely by Belasco. The members of the company which eventually acted in the drama could conclusively testify to this fact, since much of that labor was performed in their presence, at rehearsals.

The name finally bestowed upon this piece is “The Case of Becky.” It is in three acts, requires only two scenic settings, implicates seven persons,{344} and is an ingenious and interesting play on a painful but important subject,—namely, disease or disorder affecting human personality. The chief characters in it are Dr. Emerson, an eminent physician who employs hypnotism in psychiatry; Professor Balzamo, an itinerant and unscrupulous hypnotist of extraordinary power, and a girl named Dorothy. This girl is the victim of a dreadful metempsychosis and is often mysteriously changed from her normal, lovable personality,—in which she is sweet-tempered, affectionate, gentle, and refined,—into a common, mischievous, vindictive hoyden who is designated as Becky. Dr. Emerson is laboring to reëstablish her permanently in her normal consciousness by means of hypnotism,—an object which, ultimately, he attains. It is incidentally revealed that many years earlier Balzamo, exercising his hypnotic faculty, has compelled Emerson’s wife to leave her husband and travel with him, as a subject for use in brutal and degrading exhibitions of hypnotism. While in that helpless bondage the daughter, Dorothy, has been born (her psychic disorder being attributable to the prenatal effect of abuse of her mother) and the miserable woman has died. Chance has installed Dorothy as a patient in the home of her father, who, while ministering to her in affliction, does not know her

FRANCES STARR AS BECKY, IN “THE CASE OF BECKY”

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

{345}

as his child. Balzamo, learning the whereabouts of the girl and desirous of recovering custody of her, in order to utilize her as a subject, visits Emerson and seeks to reëstablish his control over Dorothy, begun when she was a little child. The Doctor is led to suspect the originative facts in “the case of Becky” which are unknown to him; a conflict of wits and powers ensues between him and Balzamo; the latter is, by a trick, subdued and thrown into hypnosis,—in which state he is compelled to confess the truth and is then deprived of his hypnotic power.

Belasco, writing about this singular play—in which he presented Miss Frances Starr for more than two years—has recorded:

{346}

It is interesting to note that the method prescribed for Miss Starr by Belasco, in acting Dorothy and Becky, is the same which Henry Irving declared should be employed in acting Jekyll and Hyde: Irving bought the English dramatic rights to Stevenson’s story about that dual character, intending to put his theory about impersonating it into practice, but he never did so.—This was the cast of “The Case of Becky”:

“I was as much surprised as I was delighted,” said Belasco, “by the popular success of ‘The Case of Becky,’—which was entirely unexpected.” His delight was considerably moderated by the prompt appearance of a couple of discontented playwrighting amateurs, alleging plagiarism. Their names were Amelia Bachman and George L. McKay; they asserted that “The Case of Becky” was taken from a drama which they had written, called “Etelle”; their suit was brought in June,{347} 1912; it was tried, May 13 and 14, 1913, before Judge Julius M. Mayer, in the United States Circuit Court, and it was decided against them, “upon the merits,” on July 9. That decision was appealed, the appeal was argued before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, April 6, 1914, and decision in favor of Belasco was affirmed. In rendering the original decision Judge Mayer said:

{348}

“A GOOD LITTLE DEVIL.”

“A Good Little Devil” is a fairy fantasy, written in French by Mme. Edmond Rostand (using the pen name of Rosamonde Gerard) and her son Maurice Rostand. It was adapted to the American Stage by Austin Strong, and Belasco produced it, for the first time in this country, December 10, 1912, at the Broad Street Theatre, Philadelphia: January 8, 1913, it was acted in New York, at the Republic Theatre. An immense amount of space, first and last, has been filled in the American newspaper press with sentimental rhapsody about such fabrications as “Peter Pan,” “The Blue Bird,” and “A Good Little Devil.” They are well enough in their way, but they possess nothing of authentic importance, whether literary, poetic, or dramatic, and the success gained by them is due solely to the interest of children and of those who enjoy the amusements of their children: “The sports of childhood satisfy the child.”

In “A Good Little Devil” experiences are depicted of a Scotch orphan, a lad named Charles MacLance, who is abused by his aunt, a witch, Mrs. MacMiche; comforted and befriended by fairies;{349} loved by a little blind girl named Juliet, from whom he is separated; saved from evil beings (Old Nick, Sr., and Old Nick, Jr.); and raised to high social rank, where he forgets the comrades of his boyhood and is about to wed unworthily, when he returns to the home of his aunt. There he is visited by the spirit of his youth; his better nature and his memory of olden times and friends are awakened, and he returns to the arms of his early love—whose sight has been restored by the fairies—declaring his intention to live the life of the affections.

The stage accoutrement in which Belasco presented this fabric of whimsical extravagance was so beautiful, so full of the poetic feeling and allurement conspicuously absent from the piece itself, that it gained and for some time held, and deserved to hold, popular favor: it was played at the Republic Theatre until May 3, 1913,—152 consecutive performances being given.

“A Good Little Devil” was presented with the following cast: {350}

“THE SECRET.”

“A secret and villanous contriver.”

“When I produced ‘The Secret,’” writes Belasco, in a biographical note made for me, “I was told by{351} most of the writers for the [news]papers, and by many friends, that the principal character in it, Gabrielle, is untrue to life—is impossible! Well, all I have to say is:—It is not impossible. She is very exceptional, no doubt, and morbid; but she is true to life and I know it, because I have seen and known and had to deal with exactly such women as Gabrielle. They are unpleasant, of course,—but they are real, a part of the Comedy of Human Life that I have aimed to show in the Theatre, and that is the reason I produced ‘The Secret,’ notwithstanding much advice against it. I did not expect financial success.”

When Belasco first heard of “The Secret,”—which, written in French by Henri Bernstein, was originally produced, in March, 1913, at the Théâtre Bouffes-Parisiens, in Paris, with Mme. Simone (Mme. Simone Le Bargy) in the principal part,—Charles Frohman had just relinquished the right of producing it in America. He was so much impressed by the published accounts of the plot and of the performance that he went to Paris (sailing, June 18, 1913, on the Campania, via Fishguard) to see it, and there, after witnessing several representations of the drama, he personally arranged with its author for an American production. “Bernstein,” he writes, “wanted me to have{352} Mme. Simone act Gabrielle in America; but, although she is a fine actress and gave a good performance, she did not, in my opinion, make the part credible. I could see nobody for it but little Miss Starr—and Bernstein waived his wishes and left everything to me. I knew from the first that it was impossible to make money with the piece in America; but I was determined to do it, and I did; and I am content, though it cost me $57,000 in order to show the American public a perfect piece of modern play writing and (as I think) acting.”

The qualities in Bernstein’s “The Secret” which won Belasco’s profound admiration are its technical constructive deftness and its cumulative theatrical effectiveness. While repellent in subject, it is, for stage purposes, extraordinarily well made. The principal character in it is Gabrielle Jannelot, a wife, young, accomplished, beautiful, admired, and loved,—apparently a paragon of feminine excellence; in fact, a personification of malignant jealousy and malicious envy. This charming female, blessed with everything that should make her contented, cannot endure the sight of the happiness of others and, while cloaking her wickedness with an assumption of generosity, gentleness, and goodness which for years completely deceives her husband and her

Photograph by the Misses Selby. Author’s Collection.

BELASCO, ABOUT 1914

{353}

friends, she industriously spreads misery all about her. She has contrived to establish bitter estrangement between her devoted husband and a dearly loved and loving sister; and, ascertaining that another sister-in-law, Henriette Durand,—who is her closest friend and who has confided in her,—is beloved by a high-principled, jealous young man, Denis Le Guern, she schemes to wreck their prospective happiness. The fair Henriette (whose amorous receptivity appears to be comprehensive) has secretly been the mistress of a profligate man of fashion, named Charlie Ponta-Tulli, to whom she would have been wedded had not Gabrielle surreptitiously suppressed missives passing between them and thus caused their intrigue to be ended. Aware of Guern’s jealous disposition and strong preference for early vegetables, Gabrielle counsels Henriette, when he shall formally propose marriage to her, to make a full confession to him of her relation to Ponta-Tulli,—being confident that Guern will then withdraw his proposal. This advice Henriette promises to act upon; but, through fear, she fails to do so, and presently she and Guern are wedded and for a while dwell in bliss. Gabrielle, unable to endure the spectacle of their felicity, plans to destroy it by contriving to have all the persons implicated in the action assembled as guests in{354} a country residence, thus bringing the new-wedded couple into close contact with the ardent though alienated Ponta-Tulli. There the former lover protests to the distressed Henriette his unchangeable passion, and there they are surprised together by the suspicious Guern in the moment when Tulli is demanding her reasons for having broken with him. A violent wrangle ensues, during which Gabrielle, under pretence of attempting reconciliation, neatly manages to make known the former illicit relation of Tulli and Henriette to the latter’s husband. In the passages of bitter recrimination which follow Tulli at last establishes the fact that he had not wilfully abandoned the charming Henriette, and then (with remarkable dramatic dexterity) the spiteful treachery of Gabrielle is little by little elicited and “the secret” of that vicious and contemptible little mischief-maker is finally revealed when she is forced to confess to her wretched husband all her years of wicked intrigue and perverse malice. There, dramatically, the play ends,—where so much of human experience ends, in heartbroken misery and despair. A superfluous “tag” is, however, provided in which Jannelot first induces Guern to forgive Henriette and then himself casts the mantle of indulgence over the sins of Gabrielle—the fervid Ponta-Tulli being left to recede into the{355} dim perspective of Paris, there to comfort himself as best he may.

The performance of this painful play was, in the main, excellent, Miss Marguerite Leslie acting the errant Henriette with deep and sympathetic feeling, and Miss Starr, as Gabrielle, giving perhaps the most completely finished and artistic performance of her career,—because definite and intelligible in ideal, sustained, fluent, precise in expression, and entirely plausible in effect. Mr. Frank Reicher appeared as the excitable and jealous Guern and provided a significant exhibition of the radically artificial, insincere, and finical method so common to the Continental European Stage and so much admired and commended in America for the reason, apparently, that it is European.—“The Secret” was exquisitely set upon the stage, in scenery designed by Ernest Gros, and was presented by Belasco with the following cast:

{356}

“MARIE-ODILE.”

[Of all the productions which he has made, excepting only that of “Madame Butterfly,” Belasco feels most pride in that of Edward Knoblauch’s play entitled “Marie-Odile,”—a work esteemed by him to be one of great artistic excellence and beauty. It was brought out in Washington, January 18, and at the Belasco Theatre, New York, January 26, 1915. Through a series of mischances it happened that neither my father nor I saw that production. Therefore, as critical consideration of it should not be omitted from this Memoir, I here copy, from “The New York Evening Post,” the review of the representation written by my father’s old friend and co-worker John Ranken Towse, now the most experienced and authoritative writer on the drama connected with the New York press.—J. W.]

This was the cast of “Marie-Odile”:

Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.

FRANCES STARR AS MARIE ODILE

{361}

RECONCILIATION WITH CHARLES FROHMAN—AND JOINT PRESENTMENT OF “A CELEBRATED CASE.”

The antagonism of Belasco and the Theatrical Syndicate, which he fought for so many years, naturally led to friction between him and Charles Frohman,—a person of extraordinary self-conceit, who loved to have applied to himself the ridiculous designation of “the Napoleon of the Theatre”; who aspired to be thought the greatest of theatrical managers, and who, necessarily, felt himself rebuked under the superior talents of the man with whom, in early years, he had been so closely associated and{362} who had done so much to make his career possible. In 1903 he had a personal quarrel with Belasco (about what I do not know), and for twelve years thereafter they were more or less actively at enmity and treated each other as strangers. Frohman, however, appears to have possessed engaging qualities, which endeared him to many of those who knew him well. Belasco, for example, has assured me that through all the time of their estrangement he “cherished a great affection for ‘Charlie,’” and that he is “grateful beyond words that our misunderstanding was cleared up and our friendship renewed before he sailed away to his death.” Frohman left New York on board the steamship Lusitania, May 1, 1915, and he lost his life, May 7, when, to the eternal infamy of the German nation, that vessel was sunk off Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. “I was alone in my studio, one evening early in 1915,” Belasco has told me, “and by chance I noticed a newspaper paragraph about Charles Frohman being ill, at the Hotel Knickerbocker. It set me thinking about our first meeting so long ago in San Francisco, and of all that followed; of our first venture in Chicago and of all the years when we worked together and had rooms side by side, when ‘Charlie’ used to consult me about everything and I used to read my ‘May Blossom’ to him. As I sat there{363} thinking it all over I realized that the shadows were beginning to slant toward the east—and suddenly I decided that if ‘Charlie’ should die without our being reconciled it should not be my fault. I started to write a little note to him but got no further than ‘Dear Charlie’ when my telephone-bell rang. The caller was Roeder—and the first thing he said was: ‘I’ve just had a telephone message from Charles Frohman. He wants to see you’! We met that night, in his rooms, and forgot that we ever had a disagreement.”

Soon after that reconciliation Belasco held a little festival in honor of Frohman, in his theatre-studio, and there, at first in jest, it was proposed that they should make a joint revival of some notably successful play of earlier days. This proposal led to a serious discussion and eventually to an agreement whereby the two managers covenanted to make a joint production every season during a term of years. At Frohman’s request Belasco agreed to choose the first play to be presented by them, and his election fell upon “A Celebrated Case.”

That play (first produced in America at the Union Square Theatre, New York, January 23, 1878) is a melodrama in six acts, translated, in rough English, from the French of Adolphe D’Ennery {364}(1811-1899) and Eugène Cormon (18—- 18—). It presents the image of a murder which was done in France, on the eve of the Battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745), and for which an innocent man was made to suffer years of cruel punishment, till, at last, in a mysterious and circuitous way, it was brought home to its perpetrator. The circumstances of the crime are peculiarly hideous and the circumstances of the belated retribution are peculiarly complex. The innocent man, Jean Renaud, is condemned, for the murder of his wife, on the testimony of their child. Lazare, the guilty man (as in many other fictions on this antiquated pattern), assumes the identity of another person connected with the crime, the Count de Mornay, and, after various escapes from exposure and much suspense, he is baffled in his maintenance of the assumed identity and is brought to justice. The parting of the condemned father with his innocent, prattling child, who has unconsciously convicted him of murder, and their meeting in after years, he a wretched galley-slave and she a young woman, afford a poignantly affecting contrast. Adroit use, likewise, is made of a certain singular jewel as the instrument for discovery of the actual criminal. Although there are no remarkable characters in the piece and nothing extraordinary in its dialogue, it possesses substantial dramatic merit in its occasional{365} scenes of acute agony, relieved by the violent action of natures taxed beyond endurance. Its sentiment, moreover,—that of filial affection,—is pure; and in its complication of the lives and the emotional troubles of two young girls it deals skilfully and tenderly with difficult and lovely themes. Its choice by Belasco (who had several times directed performances of it in the days of his youth and in whom predilection for tense situation and sharp effect is dominant) was a natural one. Affiliated with Frohman, he presented it in a slightly revised form—some of its dialogue being a little “modernized”—but substantially unaltered and in picturesque and rich dress. It was well acted and kindly received. The first performance of this Belasco-Frohman revival occurred at the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, March 28, 1915, and, April 7, they brought it out at the Empire Theatre, New York. This was the cast:

{366}

LENORE ULRIC.—AND “THE HEART OF WETONA.”

Many players of talent and present eminence have been fostered and developed under Belasco’s management—that being, indeed, one of his most important services to our Stage. He is an inveterate theatre-goer,—attending performances everywhere and, sooner or later, seeing practically everything and everybody visible on the American Stage. This customary vigilant observance of all activity within his profession he facetiously describes as “my fishing trips,” and, conversing with me on the subject, he has remarked: “It is often a long time between ‘bites,’ but one of the delights of the sport is that you never know, as the curtain goes up, how soon you may ‘hook a big one.’ Among the biggest I have ever landed is, I believe, little Miss Ulric: I think she will grow bigger every season she is before the public.{367}”

Miss Lenore Ulric, to whom Belasco thus referred, was born at New Ulm, Minnesota, July 21, 189—. In childhood she knew the meaning of hardship, and she has studied and learned in the often harsh school of experience. Whether or not she will fulfil Belasco’s high expectation time alone can tell, but one thing about her is certain: she belongs to a class of which there is urgent need on our Stage,—she is “a born actress.” She resorted to the dramatic calling not through mere vanity, the impulse of personal exhibition, or the acquisitive hope of profit,—motives which actuate a majority of the young women who go upon the Stage,—but because her natural vocation is acting. As far as known, no precedent member of her family was ever associated with the Theatre, and for some time her choice of that calling met with severe paternal disapproval. Her novitiate was served in various stock companies in Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Syracuse. In August, 1913, Miss Ulric appeared as Luana, in “The Bird of Paradise,” under the management of Mr. Oliver Morosco: she acted that part for two seasons. In 1914, while playing at the Standard Theatre, New York, she wrote to Belasco asking him to witness her performance of that part and expressing the hope that after having done so he might find a place for her in some one of his companies. “I have{368} long made it a rule,” writes Belasco, “to comply with such requests from young players whenever it is possible for me to do so. I well remember how long I pleaded with dear John McCullough for a hearing before I got it and I know the discouragement of ‘hope deferred.’ Besides—nobody can make a fairer proposition than ‘watch my work and, if you think it is good, engage me.’ But I was extremely busy when I received Miss Ulric’s request and couldn’t give the time,—so I sent my secretary, Mr. Curry. His report was so favorable that I felt I must see her at work—so, since I could not go to her, I had Mr. Roeder bring her to me by making her a tentative offer of an engagement to act in George Scarborough’s play of ‘The Girl.’ She accepted, of course (she has told me, since, that she had set her heart on getting with me and would have accepted almost any offer to do so), and I had my stage manager call a rehearsal. I was not supposed to attend,—but I slipped into the gallery unknown to anybody (a little trick I have) and watched her carefully. After twenty minutes I knew I was watching a very talented and unusual young woman—one who with opportunity and proper training might do great things. Before the rehearsal was over I had told Roeder to close the arrangement with her to play the leading part in{369} ‘The Girl,’ which, afterward, became ‘The Heart of Wetona.’”

In its original form the scene of that play was “A Middle Western Town” (Missouri), its five characters were Caucasian, and its story was one of erring love, deceit, shame, and rescue set in a commonplace rural environment,—a main purpose of its author being, presumably, to exhibit a group of conventional persons impelled by violent passion yet restrained by religious feeling. In that form it received a trial presentment, June 28, 1915, at Atlantic City, New Jersey, with this cast:

In the Prologue.

In the Play.

“Although its material was undeniably good, I had felt strong doubts about the piece, from the first, but I gave it a ‘try-out,’ anyway,” said Belasco. “Then I saw that it would not do as it stood and took it off, and, at my suggestion and{370} under my supervision, with such assistance as I could give, Mr. Scarborough rewrote ‘The Girl’ and eventually we had a real success with it.”

The rewritten play was first acted, January 20, 1916, at Stamford, Connecticut, under the title of “Oklahoma”; soon after it was called “The Heart of Wetona,” and under that name it was brought forth, February 29, at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, where it held the stage until May 20.

In its definitive form the scene of “The Heart of Wetona” is an Indian Reservation, in the torrid State of Oklahoma; several of its persons are aborigines of the Comanche tribe, and,—though its action and incidents are sometimes arbitrarily directed,—it is a remarkably good melodrama of a long-familiar kind. Belasco’s purpose in directing the revision was to provide an effective play for the exploitation of the young actress whose talents had so favorably impressed him, and that purpose was well accomplished,—the interest centring continuously in the principal female part, a girl named Wetona, the child of a Comanche chieftain and a white mother, deceased. This girl, who has been seduced under a lying promise of marriage by Anthony Wells, a visitor to the Indian Reservation, is chosen as a sort of vestal virgin in ceremonial rites of the Comanches, and thereupon, in the{371} Tribal House, before her father and his assembled warriors, though concealing her lover’s identity, she confesses her transgression. The girl is then subjected to a harrowing inquisition by the Indians, who desire to find and slay her lover. At last, unable to endure longer, she agrees to reveal his name on condition that she first be permitted to warn him of his danger. She seeks him in the home of his friend John Hardin, the Indian Agent on the Reservation (who secretly loves the girl and desires to make her his wife), and is followed by her father, Chief Quannah, who, finding her in conference with Hardin, furiously accuses him of being the wronger of his daughter and demands that he instantly marry her—as an alternative to being instantly slain with her. To save the girl, himself, and her to him unknown lover, Hardin agrees to do so, privately assuring Wetona that the marriage shall be one in name but not in fact, and, a clergyman being conveniently accessible, the wedding is at once performed. Afterward Wetona, collapsing, calls upon the name of her Anthony—thus discovering to her husband her resolutely guarded secret. Later, Wells, ensconced in the home of Hardin and supposing himself unsuspected and secure, seeks to resume his relation with Wetona, but is repulsed by her until a divorce (to{372} which Hardin will connive) shall have been obtained and he shall have fulfilled his promise of marriage. Then the perfidy of Wells is revealed to Wetona and she revolts from him; Quannah discovers the truth; Hardin, though righteously wrathful against Wells, tries to save him from the vengeance of the Indians (providing him with weapons and a steed) but fails,—that rascal being shot and killed as he attempts to ride away in the night,—and the injured, forlorn Indian girl humbly and thankfully confesses to Hardin her contrition, her gratitude for his protective generosity, the affection with which he has inspired her, and her glad willingness to remain with him as his wife.

The ethics of all this will hardly bear scrutiny—but the dramatic effect of it in representation was undeniable; and, perhaps, where virtue is, presumably, intended it is to consider too curiously to consider further. Miss Ulric presented with vigor, skill, simplicity, sustained continuity of identity, and remarkable force a true, pathetic, and alluring ideal of unsophisticated girlhood, confiding feminine ardor and passionate distress, and she gained an auspicious success.—The cast of “The Heart of Wetona,” as acted at the Lyceum under the management of Belasco and a corporation called “Charles Frohman, Inc.,” is appended:

Photograph by Abbe. Belasco’s Collection.

LENORE ULRIC AS WETONNA, IN “THE HEART OF WETONNA”

{373}

VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS—MISCELLANEOUS RECORD: “WHAT’S WRONG.”—“THE VANISHING BRIDE.”—“THE LOVE THOUGHT.”—“ALIAS.”

During the last five years [that is, the five years preceding April, 1917] Belasco has made productions of various plays which do not require extended consideration, though they must be specified and briefly described in this Memoir in order to complete the record of his labors. Those plays are “The Governor’s Lady,” “Years of Discretion,” “The Temperamental Journey,” “What’s Wrong,” “The Man Inside,” “The Vanishing Bride,” “The Phantom Rival,” “The Boomerang,” “The Love Thought,” “Seven Chances,” “Alias,” “The Little Lady in Blue,” and “The Very Minute.”

Of these, “What’s Wrong,” by Frederick Ballard; “The Love Thought,” by Henry Irving Dodge;{374} “The Vanishing Bride,” adapted by Sydney Rosenfeld from a German original called “Tantalus,” by Leo Kastner and Ralph Tesmar; and “Alias” (based on a story by John A. Moroso and originally called “The Treadmill”), by Willard Mack, are plays to which Belasco gave trial productions, and all of which, except “The Vanishing Bride,” he purposes to present in New York hereafter, when they have been smoothed and polished and are deemed by him to be ready for metropolitan presentment. “What’s Wrong” was brought out at the National Theatre, Washington, D. C., May 4, 1914; “The Vanishing Bride” at Long Branch, New Jersey, July 27, the same year; “The Love Thought,” at the Parsons Theatre, Hartford, Connecticut, April 26, 1915; and “Alias,” first under its original title, at the Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, May 8, 1916, then, February 5, 1917, at the Belasco Theatre, Washington. “The Vanishing Bride” would have been produced in New York soon after its trial had not Belasco found Mr. Rosenfeld (who is an industrious and moderately clever writer but flatulent with self-conceit) excessively fractious and troublesome to deal with. “I had spent $18,000 on that play,” Belasco has told me, “and I know it could be made a success, because it has excellent material in it. But life is{375} too short for disputes with Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld. I am always glad to do my best for the men and women, writers or actors, who work with me, but I am not willing to wrangle and fight with them for the privilege of doing so! Therefore, I preferred to pocket my loss and let the piece go—with my blessing and the hope that its adapter will find a more satisfactory producer.”

The casts of the trial productions enumerated are here appended:

CAST OF “WHAT’S WRONG.”

CAST OF “THE VANISHING BRIDE.”

{376}

CAST OF “THE LOVE THOUGHT.”

CAST OF “THE TREADMILL”—“ALIAS.”

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“THE GOVERNOR’S LADY.”

Belasco produced “The Governor’s Lady” for the first time, May 1, 1912, at the Broad Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and, September 9, that year, at the Republic, he brought it out in New York. It is a drama of domestic dissension and tribulation sequent on the surrender to selfishness and vanity of a wilful man who is indicated as being, notwithstanding his faults and errors, innately kind and good. The name of him is Daniel S. Slade. He has been a miner and poor. Having acquired riches he has become ambitious and aspires to social and political eminence; would, in fact, be Governor of the State of Colorado, wherein he dwells. Mrs. Slade, his wife, is an exemplary but homely and home-keeping person and she cannot adapt herself to the ways of{378} the rich and fashionable society in which Slade desires to be a leader. She is, at first, disposed to consider their newborn incompatibility and her husband’s dissatisfaction as fanciful. But when Slade intimates that he regards her as a hindrance to his advancement and signifies that there had better be a formal separation, or a divorce, between them she is deeply wounded. She agrees, however, to separate from him, while indignantly repelling his suggestion that he obtain a divorce. Later she ascertains that he has chosen as her successor a young, beautiful, and unscrupulous woman who he believes will be useful in furthering his ambitions and who is willing to abandon the youth she loves in order to make a better match. Mrs. Slade then rounds on her discontented spouse and, being thrice armed in the justice of her quarrel, notwithstanding his wealth and influence, brings upon him and his prospective consort public odium, confronts and defeats him in court, and, bringing a counter suit, is granted a divorce from him. She leaves Denver and goes to New York,—where, two years later, Slade, who has meantime become Governor of Colorado, finds her in one of Child’s restaurants. The Governor makes known to her that he is perceptive of the impropriety of his course; that in spite of his conduct he has always loved the wife who has divorced him, and proposes{379} that they remarry. This Mrs. Slade declines to do, not, however, concealing the fact that she still cherishes affection for Slade, and the play ends with his picking her up and carrying her off in his arms, in quest of a parson, in order to establish her as the Governor’s Lady.

Belasco described this fabric as “a play in three acts and an epilogue in Child’s,” and it was announced as having been written by Miss Alice Bradley. During its first performance in New York Mr. Emmett Corrigan (who impersonated the character of Slade) came before the curtain and, in a brief speech on behalf of Miss Bradley, made known that she disclaimed credit for anything more than “the central idea” of the play. Neither that “central idea” (the idea, presumably, of showing the patient acquiescence of Mrs. Slade suddenly turned into resolute and triumphant opposition by discovery of the full extent of her husband’s baseness) nor anything else in the piece is dramatically precious or extraordinary. Many other “collaborators” with Belasco might, however, fairly emulate Miss Bradley’s frankness. The construction of “The Governor’s Lady” is sometimes arbitrary and the characters in it are in some respects extravagantly drawn—causing more the effect of rough sketches than that of finished portraits. The dialogue pos{380}sesses the merit of suitability to the situations and, in general, of seeming to arise spontaneously from them. The notable excellence of the production was its exact fidelity to the surface details of everyday life and the really remarkable smoothness, harmony, and sincerity with which it was acted—imparting to much that was crude and improbable an aspect of veracity.—The play was cast as follows: