Lulu Belle

Lulu Belle (1926), a play by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur. [ Belasco Theatre, 461 perf.] Lulu Belle (played in blackface by Lenore Ulric) is a flamboyant prostitute who pounds the pavements both of San Juan Hill and Harlem. She succeeds in luring a white barber, George Randall (Henry Hull), away from his wife and family, only to desert him for Butch Cooper (John Harrington), a prizefighter. But Lulu leaves him, too, when the Vicompte de Villars (Jean Del Val) promises to set her up in luxury. Yet the passions she evokes overwhelm all the figures in her life: Butch winds up with a knife in his ribs, and the demented Randall follows her to Paris and strangles her in her posh apartment. Brooks Atkinson concluded, “Lulu Belle is splendid showmanship; but it retains few of the elements of drama.” Although “Negro” groups protested against the lurid picture the play painted of African‐American life, producer‐director David Belasco's reputation and skill turned the melodrama into one of the era's biggest successes.