David Belasco

Belasco, David (1853–1931), playwright, producer, and director. He was born in San Francisco to parents of Portuguese‐Jewish origin whose name had once been Velasco, and his father had played in London pantomimes. Details about his early years are obscure, but the boy apparently came under the tutelage of a Father McGuire and, even after he ran away from home, Belasco retained an affection for the priest and later claimed his affectation of wearing a clerical collar to be in his honor. It is believed that he made his acting debut in 1864 playing the young Duke of York opposite Charles Kean's Richard III, and at the age of twelve he wrote his first play, Jim Black; or, The Regulator's Revenge. By 1873 he was a callboy at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco, but he continued to act as well, performing with John McCullough, Edwin Booth, and other leading players. A year later in Virginia City, Nevada, he met Dion Boucicault, from whom he learned much about acting, directing, and playwriting. Returning to San Francisco, Belasco became an assistant stage manager for Thomas Maguire and then managed the Baldwin Theatre for James A. Herne. Some of his earliest plays, such as La Belle Russe, a tale of female treachery, and The Stranglers of Paris, which William Winter called “a repulsive sensation melodrama” and Belasco himself later dismissed as “buncombe,” were first mounted at the Baldwin in 1881. The next year he came to New York, where he served as stage manager of the Madison Square Theatre, later serving in the same capacity for Daniel Frohman at the Lyceum. During this time he also wrote a number of plays with Henry C. de Mille, including, The Wife (1887); Lord Chumley (1888), centering on an English eccentric; The Charity Ball (1889); and Men and Women (1890). In 1888 Belasco staged Sophocles' Electra for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in a mounting years ahead of its time in its stark simplicity. Thereafter his luck seemingly ran out until Charles Frohman asked him to write a play to open the Empire Theatre. The result was a collaboration with Franklin Fyles, The Girl I Left Behind Me (1893), whose love story was set against a background of soldiers and Indians. He firmly established himself as a playwright, producer, and director with the Civil War romance The Heart of Maryland (1895), followed by the French adaptation Zaza (1899), the slight farce Naughty Anthony (1900), the Japanese tale Madame Butterfly (1900), the period piece Du Barry (1901), the touching melodrama The Auctioneer (1901), the gripping Oriental drama The Darling of the Gods (1902), the charmer Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1903), the costume tragedy Adrea (1905), the frontier romance The Girl of the Golden West (1905), the Spanish‐American melodrama The Rose of the Rancho (1906), the domestic drama A Grand Army Man (1907), the supernatural character piece The Return of Peter Grimm (1911), the tragic revenge play The Son‐Daughter (1919), and the French adaptation Kiki (1921). Several of these were cowritten with playwrights John Luther Long, Charles Klein, and others. Among the many plays that Belasco produced but in which he had little or no hand in writing were The Music Master (1904), The Fighting Hope (1908), The Easiest Way (1909), The Woman (1911), The Boomerang (1915), Polly with a Past (1917), Tiger Rose (1917), Daddies (1918), and Lulu Belle (1926). In 1901 he leased the Republic Theatre, renaming it the Belasco; but in 1906 he built his own house, calling it the Stuyvesant at first but later gave it his own name.

Belasco was obsessed with realism on stage, in one play re‐creating a Child's restaurant in which fresh coffee was brewed and pancakes made. Although many critics felt his determined “archrealism” of setting masked a lack of artistic seriousness, Walter Prichard Eaton attempted a balanced assessment when he wrote, “What Mr. Belasco has done has been to write pieces for the play‐house, not criticisms of life . . . he has bent his mind to devise them with all possible air of probability and with all possible fidelity of pictorial setting. Especially in the latter respect he has succeeded as no other man of our time has.” Many of his better plays, as well as those of fellow authors that he mounted, retain a theatrical effectiveness and might well succeed in an open‐minded theatre that does not largely reject its past. Belasco's off‐stage life was in some ways as extravagant and carefully staged as his plays. One favorite trick was a temper tantrum in which he would stamp on his own watch, smashing it into uselessness. Close associates knew he kept a stock of cheap, secondhand watches for just such occasions. Biography: The Bishop of Broadway, Craig Timberlake, 1954.

David Belasco (1853-1931), American theatrical director-producer and playwright, attempted to bring veracity to the popular melodrama through meticulous detail in setting and lighting. He led in the movement that made the director the theater's dominant personality.

David Belasco was born in San Francisco, Calif., on July 22, 1853. He was educated in a monastery, which may have prompted the quasi-clerical garb he wore in later life - a style that earned him the name "the Bishop of Broadway." He fled the monastery and joined a circus. By the age of 12 he was an actor on the San Francisco stage and had begun writing plays. In the following few years he joined companies barnstorming through the mining camps. In Virginia City, Nev., he served as secretary to Dion Boucicault, who inspired Belasco to try playwriting again. From 1873 to 1881 he was associated with several San Francisco theaters. His first play to attract attention was a collaborative effort with James A. Herne, Hearts of Oak. At 29 Belasco left for New York City, having acted more than 170 roles and written or adapted more than 100 plays.

His first position in New York was as a stage manager of the Madison Square Theater. In 1886 he became dissatisfied and joined the Frohmans as stage manager and house playwright. In 1890 he became an independent producer; his first real success was his own The Heart of Maryland, a melodrama inspired by the poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight." Belasco took unknowns and turned them into stars. The first of these, Leslie Carter, had suffered through a sensational divorce. Penniless, a social outcast, she came to Belasco, who trained her and then starred her in Maryland. It played for three seasons and was then taken to London.

During the 1890s the Theatrical Syndicate gained control of the theatrical world and individuals who refused to join found themselves with no theaters. In Washington, D.C., Belasco was forced to rent the barnlike Convention Hall, leaky roof and all, for his production of Andrea with Carter. During the fourth act there was a violent rainstorm, and the audience observed the play from under their umbrellas. In 1902 Belasco gained control of the Republic Theater in New York. In 1906 he began work on a new building on West 44th Street, which eventually became the Belasco Theater.

In addition to Carter, Belasco elevated David Warfield (a vaudeville entertainer), Lenore Ulric, Frances Starr, and Blanche Bates to stardom. Most of these stars had natural ability, but Belasco was also a master at handling publicity campaigns. Certainly Carter's past was in part responsible for her success. Belasco also preferred to work with unknown playwrights. He collaborated with John Luther Long to write Andrea, Madam Butterfly, and Darling of the Gods; and with Henry C. DeMille on Lord Chumley and The Wife, among others. Madam Butterfly and Belasco's own The Girl of the Golden West were later adapted as the librettos for the Puccini operas.

Belasco claimed to have been associated with the production of nearly 400 plays, most of them written or adapted by himself; but his writing, in a time when lbsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov were introducing realism, remained filled with sensational melodrama or maudlin sentiment. His plays have virtually no lasting value. His advances in realism were in technical aspects of theater; his settings were accurate to minute detail, for rather than recreate a specific setting he preferred to buy it and then move it on stage. He particularly excelled in spectacular effect and in amazing mechanical contrivances. In lighting, he pioneered the use of color silks and gelatin slides, loving to create "real" sunsets. Also, in a day when productions were hurriedly put together, Belasco took time to perfect his work; even his most severe critics admit a "tidiness" not often found on the American stage. He excelled in creating a mood and tension in his crowd and mob scenes. Moreover, whatever was seen on stage was Belasco and the other artists were the instruments of his will. He died in New York on May 14, 1931.

Further Reading

Belasco presents his ideas in The Theatre through Its Stage Door (1919) and in a chapter in Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinou, eds., Directors on Directing (1963). Craig Timberlake, The Bishop of Broadway: The Life and Work of David Belasco (1954), is an objective biography. The theater conditions Belasco knew are described in George R. McMinn, The Theater of the Golden Era in California (1941), and Robert Grau, The Business Man in the Amusement World (1910). Alan S. Downer, ed., American Drama and Its Critics (1965), contains material about Belasco.

For more information on David Belasco, visit Britannica.com.

Belasco, David (1853–1931), American playwright and producer, especially known for his melodrama Madame Butterfly (1900) and his frontier play The Girl of the Golden West (1905), both of which were made famous by Giacomo Puccini. While these plays are not fairy tales per se, their basic plotlines draw from the genre. The Japanese Madame Butterfly, for instance, recalls fairies like Mélusine and Undine whose tragic fates are determined by the betrayal of mortal (here American) men. In fact, Belasco put together a collection of tales with Chas. A. Byrne entitled Fairy Tales Told by the Seven Travelers at the Red Lion Inn (1906), structured much in the tradition of The Decameron, in which a group of travellers, including an American, a Frenchman, an Englishman, a Swede, and a Russian, each tell a tale which is then discussed by the group. The collection includes ‘The Wonderful Horse’, in which an apparently useless animal brings a poor boy good fortune; and ‘A Chinese Idyl’, in which a Genie helps Hyson get his princess.

— Anne Duggan

Belasco, David (bəlăs'kō) , 1853–1931, American theatrical manager and producer, b. San Francisco. He was actively connected with the theater from his youth, and while associated with Dion Boucicault in Virginia City, Nev., he was first exposed to scenic realism. At 19 he became stage manager of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco. His first venture as a playwright was when, in 1880, in association with James A. Herne, he toured the country in Hearts of Oak, a play adapted by them from an old melodrama. Connections with the Frohmans brought him to New York City in association (1882–84) with the Madison Square Theatre and later (1886–90) as stage manager of the Lyceum. He became an independent producer in 1895. Known for his minutely detailed and spectacular stage settings, Belasco showed inventiveness in his use of stage lighting. A creator of stars, he was lucratively associated with Mrs. Leslie Carter, David Warfield, Blanche Bates, Frances Starr, Ina Claire, and Lenore Ulric. His plays, mostly adaptations, were vehicles for his actors and for his lavish settings. His most successful writing combinations were with Herne, Franklyn Fyles, Henry C. De Mille, and John Luther Long. In 1907 he built the Stuyvesant Theater, later known as the Belasco, during his fight against the Theatrical Syndicate of the 1890s. The New York Public Library has his collection of theatrical materials. He wrote The Theatre through Its Stage Door (1919, repr. 1969).

Bibliography

See his plays, ed. by R. H. Ball (1940, repr. 1965); biography by W. Winter (2 vol., 3d ed. 1925, repr. 1972).

(1839-1901)

1879	Hearts of Oak. Based on an idea suggested by Belasco, Herne achieves his first major success with this drama about an old sailor who raises two orphans, a boy and a girl. He falls in love with the girl but loses her to the boy. The play is unusual for its time in that it lacks a clear villain or hero. Herne would rework the play as Sag Harbor in 1899.
1884	May Blossom. Belasco's initial solo New York success is a Civil War melodrama about a soldier who returns home to find that his best friend has married his fiancée, who thought she had been abandoned by him. The soldier's death in battle resolves the dilemma.
1887	The Wife. The first of the playwrights' successful collaborations concerns a young woman "on the rebound" who marries a man when she is disappointed by the man she truly loves. De Mille was the father of playwrights William C. De Mille (1878-1955) and Cecil B. De Mille, and grandfather of dancer and choreographer Agnes De Mille (1905-1993).
1889	The Charity Ball. The play treats the revelation to John Van Buren that his brother has seduced the woman that John has sworn to protect. His confrontation with his brother is regarded, at the time, as one of the most powerful scenes in drama.
1890	Men and Women. The writing team's fourth and final collaboration uses a celebrated contemporary banking scandal as the backdrop for this melodrama, concerning a theft of bonds that divides four pairs of lovers.
1893	The Girl I Left Behind Me. This rousing, suspenseful melodrama concerns an army post under Indian attack. Fyles served as the drama critic for the New York Sun for twenty-five years. His subsequent plays included The Governor of Kentucky (1896), Cumberland '61 (1897), and Kit Carson (1901).
1895	The Heart of Maryland. Belasco solidifies his reputation as the leading actor, director, and producer of his era in this Civil War melodrama based on Rose Hartwick Thorpe's poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight!" In the play a Maryland belle tries to prevent the execution of her Union lover by stopping the tolling of the bell that signals his end.
1898	Zaza. Belasco's comedy, adapted from a French play by Pierre Berton and Charles Simon, concerns a prostitute who becomes a music hall entertainer and the mistress of a married man. The play's sexual content and humane depiction of an "immoral" woman create a considerable stir.
1900	Madame Butterfly. Based on Philadelphia lawyer and writer Long's 1898 short story of the same name, the one-act play, presented as a curtain-closer for Belasco's farce Naughty Anthony, is about a geisha, Cho-Cho-San. She falls in love with an American naval officer who betrays her. The play runs for only twenty-four performances. Puccini would adapt it as an opera in 1906.
1901	Du Berry. Controversy erupts around Belasco's hit play, about a Parisian milliner who enters French royal circles, when it is charged that the playwright had plagiarized from the French playwright Jean Richepin. Belasco also has a success with the ethnic comedy The Auctioneer, about a Jewish peddler on New York's Lower East Side.
1902	The Darling of the Gods. After their one-act Madame Butterfly (1900), the playwrights collaborate on a full-length romantic drama set in Japan and involving Yo-San's relationship with the outlaw Prince Kara.
1903	Sweet Kitty Bellairs. Belasco's drama depicts an Irish upstart in eighteenth-century Bath who proves herself morally superior to an English highborn lady. It would be adapted as an operetta by Rudolf Frimi (1879-1972) as Kitty Darlin' in 1917.
1904	Adrea. The playwrights' last collaboration is a romantic tragedy set during the fifth century, which involves a competition between two royal sisters.
1905	The Girl of the Golden West. Belasco's popular western drama features a schoolmarm/saloon keeper who falls in love with an outlaw and plays cards to decide his fate. Puccini would create an opera based on the story in 1910.
1911	The Return of Peter Grimm. Belasco and De Mille achieve a major popular success with this drama about a man who, after persuading his ward to marry his nephew, comes back from the dead to prevent a marriage he realizes is a mistake. De Mille would go on to become a successful Hollywood director and producer.

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