THE LIFE OF
DAVID BELASCO
VOLUME TWO

“I will not be slack to play
my part in Fortune’s pageant!”
—Shakespeare

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.

THE LIFE
OF
DAVID BELASCO

BY
WILLIAM WINTER
(1836-1917)
“He, being dead, yet speaketh.”
VOLUME TWO
New York
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
JEFFERSON WINTER
All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS.
Volume One.

“To him the laurels and the lyre belong:
He won them well, and may he wear them long!”

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, 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”

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 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 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 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”

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 friendship between them began many years earlier: Belasco has given the following glimpse of its beginning:

“There was an usher at the Bush Street Theatre—a bright little fellow with a most luminous smile. He is still small, and his smile is still luminous. I did not then know his name, but I had heard that among his family and friends he was quite an entertainer, being able to sing, to mimic and to recite. One day I was at home, in my front room on the top floor, when I heard a voice in the street below. I leaned out, and there on the corner, standing on a box which scarcely raised him above the gaping onlookers, was the little usher from the Bush Street Theatre, reciting to a curious crowd. I went down and stood near until he had finished. Then I went up to him and asked him his name. ‘Dave Warfield,’ said he, giving me the smile that lived long afterwards in Herr von Barwig, during all the rehearsals of ‘The Music Master,’ and that was our first meeting.”

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 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 substantially 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.

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 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”

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 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 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”:

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.

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 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 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, represented 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 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 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 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 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 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:

“When I stated I would not play under the management of any one but Mr. Belasco, I meant just what I said. It was not a threat—simply expression of my honest conviction as to what was just and due to the man who has made me a successful star. ‘The Auctioneer’ was Mr. Belasco’s own investment, every penny of it. It was he who conceived the idea of starring me in a play of this character. From this man Brooks I have received nothing, nor have I from Klaw & Erlanger, who are Mr. Belasco’s partners in ‘The Auctioneer.’ The manner in which they became partners will be shown and proved when this case comes into court for trial. They refused to give Mr. Belasco bookings until he had surrendered 50 per cent. of the concern. I was an unmade star then, and Mr. Belasco was not in the position of power which he holds to-day. We had to divide. But of the profits which Klaw & Erlanger have made from the managers with whom they have booked the attraction, neither Mr. Belasco nor I have received one penny from our partners. As for Brooks, he has never had even carfare, unless Klaw & Erlanger have been more liberal to him than to us.

“The trouble and annoyance which this whole affair has caused me have made me ill. But, sick or well, I absolutely refuse to play in ‘The Auctioneer’ for any one but my own manager, Mr. David Belasco. I defy Mr. Erlanger to deny that he and Mr. Klaw, and not Mr. Brooks, are the real partners of Mr. Belasco in my tour. He told me so with his own lips, when the New Amsterdam Theatre was building last summer. He asked me to come and see how the foundations were getting on. And when I funked, before crossing a rather rickety looking plank, he said ‘I won’t let you get hurt, old man. Remember, I own 50 per cent. of you.’ When Klaw & Erlanger hand over our share of the profits they have made on the side, through booking my play, I will go on with the tour, if my health permits.”

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.

“I must disclaim any intention of having attempted to coerce the court into appointing the receiver I desired. Realizing as I did the enormous amount of labor and energy expended by Mr. Belasco in making the tours of ‘The Auctioneer’ a success, and appreciating as I did that without me in the cast it was a grave question whether the success of ‘The Auctioneer’ could continue, I thought it but proper for me to inform the court that conscientiously I could not continue to act unless Mr. Belasco was appointed receiver. I am very sorry that my statement had the effect it did have, but it is pleasing for me to learn that the charges made by Mr. Brooks against Mr. Belasco were unfounded and not believed by the court, because the court in its opinion says that were it not from a desire to rebuke me it might have felt inclined to have appointed Mr. Belasco receiver. That is sufficient satisfaction to us who know Mr. Belasco’s character, because it is certainly fair to assume that the court would not have felt inclined to appoint Mr. Belasco receiver if it believed the charges brought against him.

“I am forced to continue the stand I originally took. I have closed the season of ‘The Auctioneer,’ nor will I continue to act in that play under the management of any person but Mr. Belasco.”

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 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 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 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 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.

“Miss Marbury outlined the plot as told to her by the dramatist, and, as she repeated it to me, the story seemed to possess great possibilities. I had produced Revolutionary plays with much success and the period was dramatic. No manager in search of a woman’s play could have resisted the fascinating little milliner of history! Not long after our first interview I made arrangements with M. Richepin. I smile at the recollection of my conversation with the French author! He spoke very little English and I no French at all; yet I seemed to know what he said, and he grew most enthusiastic over my pantomime. The contracts were arranged, the advance royalties paid, the costume plates begun, and before I left for London the scene models were ordered from the scenic artist of the Comédie Française. Carried away by the enthusiasm of M. Richepin, I bought yards and yards of old du Barry velvets, antique silks, and furniture of the period. When I left for home I had made all arrangements to produce a play not a line of which was written. I returned to New York elated, feeling certain that in a few weeks M. Richepin would have the piece ready for rehearsals. When the manuscript of ‘Du Barry’ arrived, I could scarcely wait to open the package. Alas! I was doomed to disappointment. ‘Du Barry,’ in the literary flesh, was episodic. It was poetic and beautifully written, but deadly dull. It differed entirely from the story I had heard in Versailles. My company was practically engaged, my models done—and no play! I wrote to M. Richepin, and gave him my opinion of the manuscript. I did not utterly condemn his first draft, for I hoped that with some suggestions, he might be able to reshape his material; but the longer he worked the more impossible the manuscript became, until at last I lost all faith in it. It possessed a certain charm, but—it was not a play. By this time I had paid M. Richepin something like $3,000 in advance royalties, and the properties and scenes were almost all delivered. I was so deeply involved that I saw no way out of it. As du Barry was free to any dramatist, I decided it was time to have a hand in dramatizing the lady myself. I knew exactly what I wanted and what was best suited to Mrs. Carter. Under the circumstances, it seemed to me that I could save time and cablegrams by taking my own suggestions instead of sending them to Paris. I arrived at this decision only when I found that M. Richepin was a far greater poet than playwright. So I threw out his play and set to work on my own.”

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 Barry’s charms in the following couplet, which certainly carries adulation to an extreme limit:

“C’est aux mortels d’adorer votre image;
L’original était fait pour les dieux.”

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:

“Madame du Barry was one of the prettiest women at the Court, where there were so many, and assuredly the most bewitching, on account of the perfections of her whole person. Her hair, which she often wore without powder, was fair and of a most beautiful color, and she had such a profusion that she was at a loss to know what to do with it. Her blue eyes, widely open, had a kind and frank expression, and she fixed them upon those persons to whom she spoke and seemed to follow in their faces the effect of her words. She had a tiny nose, a very small mouth, and a skin of dazzling whiteness. In short, she quickly fascinated every one.”

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

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 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 ruthless 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 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 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 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”

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.

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 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.” 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 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

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 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 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 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 attractions 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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

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 appropriately 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:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: It is so hard for me to speak to you as I would wish. There is so much to say, yet so little that I can say. It is your kind sympathy and approval that have made this little playhouse possible. I owe you—the public—far, far more than I can tell. You all know that it has been my life-work, my greatest ambition, to give you the best I could. In this I can honestly say I have not faltered since I first knocked at your door,

DAVID BELASCO

Photograph by the Misses Selby.
Author’s Collection.

many years ago. And in that endeavor I stand firm to-night. I thank the friends who have upheld me so loyally all these many years. I thank the press for the encouragement I have received. There are some very beautiful things in the lives of those I have followed, and one of these is the fellowship of brother workers. I am always inspired, I always shall be inspired, by the memory and example of three inimitable comrades of the Theatre,—one the late Lester Wallack, another the late, lamented Augustin Daly, and yet another who is still with us, who has given the best years of his life to advance the art which both you and I love so well: I refer to Mr. A. M. Palmer. They fought the good fight, these three; they kept the faith. They gave us glorious traditions to remember and live up to. They gave all to advance the highest. This is something we must never forget.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is another of whom I must make some mention—one whose sympathy and help have contributed to my being here to-night. I mean my friend and companion in work, Mrs. Leslie Carter. Here and now I wish gratefully to acknowledge the debt of her services, her unselfishness and loyalty in time of many struggles.

“I have many plans for this little theatre, ladies and gentlemen. Let me say just a word to you about the managerial policy. I am anxious to make my patrons feel at home when they honor me by coming, and so I have tried to make your surroundings in front of the curtain those of a comfortable, home-like drawing-room. I intend that the productions and casts shall be the best that work and care can provide. In all ways I desire to make this new dramatic home of ours a dwelling of refinement, good taste, good entertainment, and good art. No stone shall be left unturned, no effort unmade, to accomplish that end. You cannot know what it means to me to speak to you, at last, after thirty years of labor in the dramatic calling, from the stage of my own theatre. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you—I thank you—I can say no more.”

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.

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.

SYNOPSIS OF SCENES.

Time: Period of King Louis the Fifteenth and after the reign of his Successor.

Place: Paris, Versailles, and Louveciennes.

Mr. Belasco wishes to state that, as the traditional parting of Madame du Barry and the King of France is impossible for dramatic use, he has departed entirely from historical accuracy in this instance. He also begs to acknowledge his indebtedness to M. Arsène Houssaye for his sequence of scenes. (“Nouvelle à la main, sur la Comtesse du Barry.”)

Between Acts I, II, and III there will be intervals of 12 minutes; between Acts IV and V an interval of 15 minutes.

The entire production under the personal supervision of Mr. Belasco.

Stage Manager H. S. Millward.

Scenery by Mr. Ernest Gros.

Incidental Music by Mr. William Furst.

Stage decorations and accessories after designs by Mr. Wilfred Buckland.

General Manager for Mr. Belasco Mr. B. F. Roeder.

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:

“Brief words, when actions wait, are well;
The prompter’s hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
Are idly lounging at the wings;
Behind the curtain’s mystic fold
The glowing future lies unrolled.
. . . . .
“One moment more: if here we raise
The oft-sung hymn of local praise,
Before the curtain facts must sway;
Here waits the moral of your play.
Glassed in the poet’s thought, you view
What money can, yet can not do;
The faith that soars, the deeds that shine,
Above the gold that builds the shrine.”

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,” 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 “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:

(David Belasco to William Winter.)

“...It was a strenuous, anxious time for me. I had so many things to think of and so much to do that sometimes I felt like that man in Dickens who tries to lift himself out of his difficulties by his own hair! I saw that I was to be forced to fight for my professional life—and I wasn’t ready. The public had been taught, season by season, to expect always more and more from the actor, the author, and, especially, the producer. The standard of production was so high that the theatre-goer looked not only for great acting but also for artistic perfection and beauty in the stage settings. The progressive manager was forced to invest immense sums in his stars and productions, and it was because I did this without hesitation that I was so unpopular with some of my contemporaries. According to them I “spoiled the public” because I looked first to the artistic instead of to the commercial result.”

Belasco had for several years prior to 1902 desired to present Mrs. Carter in a series of 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 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”:

Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.

A SCENE FROM “THE DARLING OF THE GODS”

“The Feast of a Thousand Welcomes”

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 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 (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 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.

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 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 summoned 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, 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 satisfy 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 production 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”

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:

“There was one scene in ‘The Darling of the Gods,’ called the River of Souls, which drove me almost mad and very nearly beat me. It was a sort of purgatory between the Japanese Heaven and the Japanese Hell. I engaged twenty young girls who were supposed to represent the floating bodies of the dead, but they wouldn’t float. No matter how hard I tried, the twenty souls looked like twenty chorus girls. Night after night, I kept the young ladies and a number of carpenters at work, but the illusion could not be carried out. The play was produced in Washington, and during the last rehearsal the River of Souls was the blot on the production; in fact, I had postponed the opening for three nights because of this scene. At last I made up my mind to give it one more trial and if it could not be improved to cut it out. Dawn found Miss Bates asleep in a stage-box, the company curled up on properties, the carpenters and electricians ready to drop, and the River of Souls as bad as ever. So I threw up my hands. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘out goes the River of Souls.’ I gave the order to strike [to clear the stage of scenery]. At that moment all set-pieces were pulled apart, the gauze curtain was down, and two calcium lights were at the back of the stage. As the scene-shifters drew up the back drop a carpenter walked across. His shadow was thrown several times on the shifting gauze in a most spectral fashion. ‘Stop!’ I called out. ‘Stop where you are! Don’t move! Don’t move!’ The poor carpenter halted in his tracks: he must have thought me mad. ‘We’ve got it!’ I exclaimed. I sent out for coffee and rolls, and called another rehearsal at six in the morning. I must say everyone rejoiced with me. When we finished breakfast I had the gauze so arranged as to catch the shadows of the young ladies whose souls were supposed to be floating between heaven and hell. I threw away the expensive paraphernalia, and instead of permitting the young women to be suspended in the air they walked behind the gauze, stretching out their arms as though floating through the strong rays of light. I have shown many different scenes, but none so baffling as this and none more impressively effective.... When I met Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree, who produced ‘The Darling of the Gods’ in London, he said that as he read the description of this effect in the manuscript he had not believed it could be carried out.”

“The Darling of the Gods” was one of the most costly and least profitable of all Belasco’s many 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 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 dishonorable and illegal conduct the entire refutation of it should be recorded. Miss Russell wrote about the matter as follows:

“I am very proud to have it known that Mr. Belasco is to be my future manager, but it is doing him a great injustice to assert that he tried to get me away from other managers with whom I was under contract. He, emphatically, did nothing of the kind. Everything was done in the most amiable spirit among all concerned, and, as a matter of fact, he and I were brought together, in a business relation, entirely by outside parties.”

From Miss Bates came a letter in which she said:

“I was entirely free from all contract obligations when Mr. Belasco first made me an offer to come under his management. I left Liebler & Company quite voluntarily, as I did not care to go to London with ‘The Children of the Ghetto.’ I was therefore out of an engagement when Mr. Belasco sent for me to create the leading part in a new comedy.... I was given the greatest opportunity of my life in ‘Madame Butterfly,’ and I have grown from leading woman to a star under his management. And because I know that my artistic future is safer in his hands than with anyone else I would not for a moment consider an offer from another manager.”

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

“Please deny for me that I had one more year [of service under contract] at Weber & Fields’. I came to you having always had an idea you could better my position.”

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:

“My purpose in causing the arrest of Mrs. Babcock (Onoto Watanna) is to stop, once and for all, the groundless persecution to which I am subjected whenever I dare to present a new play. That my productions are thorns in the sides of several managers I am perfectly aware, but through Mrs. Babcock, who will now have to give an account of her claims against me in court, I hope to reach the real instigators of this attack against my integrity as a manager and a man. I have never met Mrs. Babcock in my life nor have I read either of her books, to one of which Klaw & Erlanger have announced that they have purchased the dramatic rights. The first I heard of Mrs. Babcock was about two months ago, at which time my play had neither been put in rehearsal nor read to any one who could possibly have told her of its plot, characters, or incidents. At that time she informed a prominent morning newspaper man that the firm of Klaw & Erlanger were very anxious to have her bring a suit against me for plagiarism. I laughed at the whole matter, for, knowing that ‘The Darling of the Gods’ was entirely original with Mr. John Luther Long and myself, I could not conceive of any person being foolish enough to make such a charge. But it was the last shot in my enemies’ locker. From the day I started work on this production I have been harassed in every direction. I am almost as anxious to get this case into court and settled at once and for all as I am to have the ‘Du Barry’ controversy clinched. All I claim is the right of any citizen to pursue his business unmolested.

“This whole affair from start to finish is a conspiracy to throw a nasty slur on my name as a playwright and manager on the eve of a new production in which I have invested a great deal of money: and with the courts to help me I intend to unmask a few of the real culprits. Furthermore, I find now that Mrs. Babcock’s story ‘The Wooing of Wistaria’ was not published until last September. Our play was finished early in June. By causing the arrest of this woman I hope, in addition to justifying myself, to establish a precedent whereby other playwrights, when they happen to be successful, may be able to take drastic means to protect themselves against similar persecutions.”

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.

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 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.)

“New York, Friday,
“(August 30?), 1899.

“Dear Dave:—

“Don’t fail me on ‘Shenandoah.’ This is my chance, and you can do much for me. You know how I depend on you! After our engagement the tour is arranged as you have asked it. 11 A.M., Tuesday, Star Theatre. All details I have people to look after.

“Charles.”

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 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 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, 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 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 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 husband 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 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 intolerable; 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.

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

“Noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only falls on flowers.”

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

“They lived in that past Georgian day
When men were less inclined to say
That ‘Time is gold’ and overlay
With toil their pleasures.”

IN THE PROLOGUE.