_Count Andrea Droganoff_ James O. Barrows.
_Baron Woronoff_ John Wilson.
_M. de Verville_ ---- Doud.
_Father Eliavna_ ---- Nowlin.
_Marianna_ Adelaide Stanhope.
_Princess Anna Orloff_ Jean Clara Walters.
_Countess Droganoff_ Kate Denin.
_Wanda_ Blanche Thorne.
_Tforza_ Nellie Wetherill.
WANING FORTUNES AT THE BALDWIN.
Adelaide Neilson’s farewell season at the Baldwin Theatre (during which
it was guaranteed that she should receive not less than $500 a
performance) was almost the last notably remunerative engagement filled
there during Maguire’s tenancy of that house. Indeed, theatrically, “the
most high and palmy state” of San Francisco was passed, and the history
of the Baldwin, and of the stock company at that theatre, for the two
years which followed (July, 1880, to July, 1882), is one of anxious
striving, strenuous endeavor, often brilliant achievement, public
indifference, defeated hopes, declining fortunes, fitful renewals of
prosperity quickly followed by periods in which bad business grew always
a little worse, and ultimate failure and disintegration. When Belasco
began his effort to rehabilitate and reëstablish himself there, “playing
mostly bits,” as he expressed it to me, James H. Vinson and Robert
Eberle were, officially, in charge of the stage and, though he did much,
if not most, of the actual labor of stage management, his services were
not publicly acknowledged. For reasons of business expediency,
therefore, he, for a time, reverted to use of the name of Walter
Kingsley, which appears in various programmes. After a few weeks,
however, Eberle withdrew from the stage, devoting himself to business
affairs of the theatre, and Belasco soon worked back into his former
place as director and playwright. His “Paul Arniff” was followed, July
26, by the first presentment of a drama, taken from the French, entitled
“Deception,” by Samuel W. Piercy, who personated the chief character in
it, _Raoul de Ligniers_. Later, that play, renamed “The Legion of
Honor,” was presented by Piercy in many cities of our country: it was
brought out at the Park Theatre, New York, on November 9, 1880. That
capital actor Frederic de Belleville, coming from Australia, made his
first appearance in America when it was acted at the Baldwin.
“Deception” was followed, August 9, by “An Orphan of the State” (known
to our Eastern Stage as “A Child of the State”), and, on August 16, by
the first appearance of John T. Malone, who performed as
_Richelieu_,--Barton Hill playing _De Mauprat_. Belasco greatly liked
Malone and, in his “Story,” gives this glimpse of him:
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE,--JOHN T. MALONE.
“An oldtime companion of mine at this period was John T. Malone,
studying for the Catholic priesthood. But beneath the cassock my
friend harbored a great love for the Stage, and among his intimate
circle had won quite a reputation as a Shakespearean scholar. I
remember the morning he came to the Baldwin Theatre and told me the
story of his ambition. I engaged him at once, struck by his
personality! ’I’ve been waiting many years,’ said he, and now the
time has come.’... Later, he supported Booth and Barrett and his
name will ever be associated with that splendid gentleman who
founded The Players. As the years passed he became a victim of
Time’s revenges; nurtured in the blank verse school, his
engagements became fewer and fewer until they utterly dwindled
away. Often I picture him as an actor of exceedingly great talent,
but it had no outlet for its practical use. His is one of the many
sad cases in the theatrical world of ’exits’ marked by poverty and
loneliness.”
I know not whether Malone ever studied for the priesthood: I know,
however, that he was educated for the profession of law, and that in his
young manhood he practised law in San Francisco. He was born in 1854, I
believe in that city, and he died in New York, January 15, 1906: he
richly merited commemoration. He was a good man and a talented, zealous,
reverent servant of the Stage. No actor of our time more dearly loved
his profession or more devoutly and unselfishly labored in its support,
though his career was not attended with any specially brilliant
achievements or extraordinary incidents. He was a careful and thoughtful
student of Shakespeare, and his acquaintance with the works of the great
dramatist was intricate, extensive, and minute. He wrote much upon that
subject, and his contributions to contemporary magazines, in the vein of
Shakespearean criticism, are of peculiar interest. In his domestic life
he was unfortunate and unhappy, but to the last he retained a
philosophical spirit and a genial mind. As a comrade, among intellectual
men, he was both loved and admired,--because his nature was noble, his
heart was kind, his taste was pure, his mind was rich, and his manners
were gentle. It was a pleasure to know him, and the remembrance of him
lingers sweetly in the recollection of a few old friends.
“TRUE TO THE CORE.”
On August 18 H. J. Byron’s comedy of “The Upper Crust” was played at the
Baldwin, in conjunction with the burlesque opera of “Little Amy
Robsart,” and that double bill held the stage for a fortnight. During
that time Belasco completed an adaptation of the “prize drama” by T. P.
Cooke, entitled “True to the Core,”--first acted at the Bowery Theatre,
New York, December 17, 1866. It had been seen in San Francisco twelve
years earlier, in its original form. I have been able to find only a
mutilated programme of the performance of Belasco’s version, August 30,
1880, which gives part of the cast as follows:
_Truegold_ James O’Neill.
_Geoffrey Dangerfield_ Frederic de Belleville.
_Lord High Admiral of England_ A. D. Bradley.
_Marah_ Adelaide Stanhope.
_Mabel Truegold_ Lillian Andrews.
_Queen Elizabeth_ Eva West.
“True to the Core” is an old-fashioned melodrama, of which the hero,
_Truegold_, is an English pilot who passes through many “moving
accidents by flood and field,” being seized by treasonous conspirators,
placed on board a vessel of the Spanish Armada, which he pilots upon a
rock, instead of into Portsmouth Harbor, and who is in danger,
subsequently, of losing his head on the block rather than break his
word, but who is followed, served, and ultimately saved by a gypsy
woman, _Marah_, whom he has befriended. It was played for one week to
audiences of fair size and was succeeded, in order, by William G. Wills’
“Ninon,”--acted September 6, for the first time in America,--“Aladdin
Number Two; or, The Wonderful Scamp,” “Forget Me Not,” Bartley
Campbell’s “The Galley Slave,” the same author’s “Fairfax,” and “Golden
Game,”--all produced under Belasco’s care, and all, unhappily, performed
to lessening receipts.
The next incident of note at the Baldwin was the coming of William E.
Sheridan, who opened there November 15, playing _King Louis the
Eleventh_, and whose advent brought back a measure of prosperity to the
theatre. Belasco, in his “Story,” records this remembrance and estimate
of Sheridan:
A STERLING ACTOR AND AN INTERESTING ESTIMATE:--WILLIAM E. SHERIDAN.
“We were sadly in need of an attraction at this time, and so, when W. E.
Sheridan arrived, from Philadelphia, which city pointed to him with much
just pride, we engaged him at a nominal salary, and immediately he
soared into popularity, being acclaimed one of the most versatile actors
who had ever visited the Coast. Three times his engagement was extended,
for the people of San Francisco were loath to let him depart. His
_Othello_ was a scholarly performance; ’A New Way to Pay Old Debts’
increased his popularity, as did also ’The Fool’s Revenge,’ ’The Lyons
Mail,’ and _Shylock_. He was essentially a virile actor, forceful and
with a magnetic voice that was music in the ear. And I have seen many a
_Louis the Eleventh_, but he was the greatest of them all, not even
excepting that wonderful genius, Sir Henry Irving. Success found him
greatly astonished, for when he left Philadelphia he was practically
unknown to any but his townspeople, and now when his name was heralded
abroad, the East listened with a certain curiosity. As we played to
crowded houses and the applause floated to his dressing-room, he could
scarcely credit this sudden fame which had fallen upon him. More than
once Sheridan turned to me and said: ’I’ve found it all out now when it
is too late.’”
* * * * *
Belasco’s estimate of Sheridan is interesting and it should be
preserved--because it _is_ Belasco’s: the opinion of the foremost stage
manager of his time, about any actor, should be of interest. It would,
however, be far more instructive and valuable if the _reasons_ for it
were also given: but in a long experience I have found few commentators
on acting who give reasons for their declared opinions. _Why_ Sheridan
should have felt that he had “found it all out when it was too late”
passes my understanding,--because, in 1880, he was in the very prime of
life, forty years of age; contrary to Belasco’s impression, he was well
known throughout our country, and, moreover, he continued to be
abundantly successful for more than six years after his initial
appearance in San Francisco. He was a sterling actor and richly deserved
success. I knew him and liked him much. He took up “King Louis XI.”
because of the immense impression created by Irving’s revival of that
play at the London Lyceum, March 9, 1878, and he gave an effective and
admirable performance in it. Nevertheless, he was not, in my judgment,
even for a moment rightly comparable in the part with Irving,--because
nowhere in his embodiment of _Louis_ did he reveal even an approximate
of the wonderful personality, the indomitable intellect, the inerrant
apprehension of subtle traits of complex character, or the faculty of
identification, the grim menace, the baleful power, the grisly humor, or
the exquisite felicity of expressive art with which Irving displayed his
ideal of that human monster of cruelty and guile. Such acting as that
of Henry Irving in the scene of _King Louis’_ confessional, the scene of
his paroxysm of maniacal wrath, the scene of his supplication for life,
and the scene of his august and awful death, opens the depths of the
human heart, lays bare the possible depravity of human nature, depicts a
great character in such a way as to illumine the historic page, and
conveys a most solemn monition on the conduct of life.
During his first engagement in San Francisco Sheridan acted _Rover_, in
“Wild Oats”; _Lesurques_ and _Dubosc_, in “The Lyons Mail”; _Claude
Melnotte_, _Shylock_, _Richelieu_, _Othello_, _Hamlet_, and _Sir Giles
Overreach_, in “A New Way to Pay Old Debts.” Laura Don, making her first
appearance in San Francisco, November 24, played _Lady Amaranth_ to his
_Rover_, and _Julie_ to his _Lesurques_: Lillie Eddington played
_Pauline_, _Portia_, and other leading female parts with him. He was
supported by “the new Baldwin Company,” which had been organized just
prior to his coming to San Francisco, and which included Joseph R.
Grismer and “Harry” Colton. All the plays were produced under Belasco’s
stage management, and his familiarity with them and his indefatigable
zeal in rehearsals made his assistance invaluable to Sheridan. That
actor filled several subsequent engagements in San Francisco, and his
acting so vividly impressed Belasco that he gave public imitations of
him in _King Louis_ and in other parts. Sheridan served in the Union
Army during the Civil War and attained to the rank of captain. He
married the actress Louise Davenport (his first wife, Sarah Hayes, died
in 1872), went with her to Australia in 1886, and died there, in Sydney,
May 15, 1887. He was the impersonator of _Beamish McCoul_, in
“Arrah-na-Pogue,” when that play was originally performed in America, at
Niblo’s Garden, New York, July 12, 1865,--an occasion I have particular
reason to remember because that was the first theatrical performance
reviewed by me for “The New York Tribune.”
Of Laura Don, with whom Belasco became acquainted at the time of
Sheridan’s first San Francisco engagement, he gives this recollection:
LAURA DON.--AN UNFULFILLED AMBITION.
“Laura Don was a painter whose landscapes and portraits had won her
distinction in the art world. Indeed, she was quite a spoilt child
of the Muses, for the gods had dowered her with many gifts. Nature
had been kind to her in every way, mentally and physically, for she
had a face and figure of great attractiveness; her every movement
was serpentine and voluptuous. This was further heightened by an
excitable temperament, keyed to the highest pitch, and I never saw
anyone who had a more insatiable thirst for fame; so much so,
indeed, that her health was on the verge of being undermined. I
saw in this woman every possibility of making a wonderful
_Cleopatra_, and when she had joined the Baldwin Theatre I spent
many hours after performances training her in the rôle (_sic_).
Then one Sunday afternoon, when we had reached the Death Scene,
Laura Don fell in a faint, and I looked down to find drops of blood
coming from her mouth. So this was the reason for the hectic flush,
for the irresponsible moods and eccentricities! When she came to,
we had removed every outward sign of her fatal malady. But Laura
Don was not to be deceived. Many times when we had been working
together she would exclaim, ’Why is it I am so weak? Why is it I do
not gain strength?’ For two days she remained in her room, and then
she sent for me and confessed that she had known all along of her
consumptive tendencies. ’I shall never play _Cleopatra_,’ she said;
’you must find someone else to take my place. I suppose we cannot
escape the fate imposed upon us. I was born a butterfly and I shall
die one. I’ve fought the idea for years, and I have been conquered.
So I shall go East and pass the time as well as I may until the
end. If you are anywhere near when “it” occurs, send me a few
violets in memory of those you have always kept on the rehearsal
table.’ Soon after her arrival in the East came her tragic death,
so that it was not very long before I had to send the flowers.”
Laura Don’s true name was Anna Laura Fish. She was the first wife of the
theatrical agent and manager Thomas B. McDonough. She afterward married
a photographer, resident in Troy, New York, whose name I have forgotten.
She lived for
[Illustration: DAVID BELASCO AS _KING LOUIS THE ELEVENTH_
Photograph by Houseworth, San Francisco.
Original loaned by Mrs. David Belasco.]
[Illustration]
about six years after Belasco met her. On September 6, 1882, at the
Standard Theatre, New York, she produced a play called “A Daughter of
the Nile,” written by herself, and appeared in it as a star. The
principal person in it, a female named _Egypt_, is supposed to be of
Egyptian origin: the subject, however, is American and modern. Miss Don
never acted _Cleopatra_. She died, suddenly, at Greenwich, New York,
February 10, 1886.
Sheridan’s engagement at the Baldwin terminated December 28, and the
next night the well-known English melodrama of “The World,” by Paul
Merritt, Henry Pettitt, and Augustus Harris, was performed there, for
the first time in America. (Several years later, after Belasco had
become established in New York, he was employed by Charles Frohman to
make a revival of this play, which had been introduced to our Stage
under his direction, in New Orleans.) On January 10, 1881, a drama
called “The Eviction,” depicting some aspects of the landlord and tenant
disturbances then rife in Ireland, was brought out and filled one week.
On January 17 it was succeeded by a play called “Wedded by Fate,” the
joint work of Edward Captain Field and Henry B. McDowell, son of General
Irvin McDowell. The younger McDowell, possessed of wealth, proposed,
through Belasco, to subsidize a production of their play in order to
get it before the public, and Maguire, pressed for money, eagerly
assented to that arrangement. Belasco, recalling the incident of
bringing forth “Wedded by Fate” and the peculiarities of its principal
author, writes thus:
“An instance of the casual devotee of the Theatre was young
McDowell, son of the famous Union general. Our first interview was
most amusing. I remember how he stutterred: ’I s-s-should l-l-like
to b-be an a-a-a-actor,’ he said, with difficulty. He also, in
common with many others, believed that he could write a successful
play and agreed that if I produced something of his very own he
would finance it and would guarantee a certain bonus. His first
effort--I forget the name of it--cost him a trifle of a fortune,
but inasmuch as it was a local play by a local author people
flocked to see it. When I met him years afterwards in New York he
was still obsessed by the theatrical bee, from which he never
recovered. With Franklin Sargent he opened The Theatre of Arts and
Letters and lost a fortune. If I had not been, at the time, under
contract to the Lyceum Theatre I should have joined McDowell in
that undertaking.”
The period from January to July, 1881, exhibits nothing of particular
moment concerning Belasco, though, as usual, he was hard at work
throughout it. “Wedded by Fate” gave place to a revival, February 1, of
Daly’s version of “Leah the Forsaken,” made to introduce to the Stage a
novice, Miss Clara Stuart, who paid for the privilege of appearing and
whose money, like that of the extravagant McDowell, was welcome to the
distressed Maguire. Beginning on February 9, George Darrell, an actor
from Australia,--with whom Belasco had been associated in conjunction
with Laura Alberta, at Grey’s Opera House, in 1873,--acted at the
Baldwin for several weeks. During McDowell’s season and for several
weeks subsequent thereto part of the Baldwin stock company performed in
towns of the interior,--Belasco dividing his time between San Francisco,
where he assisted Darrell, and the Baldwin company, “on the road.”
Darrell opened in “Back from the Grave,” a play dealing with the
important, neglected, and often misrepresented subject of spiritualism
(that actor was, or, at least, bore the reputation of being, a hypnotist
and a student of occult matters). This was followed on the 21st by “Four
Fates,” and, on the 25th, by “Transported for Life.” John P. Smith and
William A. Mestayer played at the Baldwin for three weeks, beginning
April 11, in “The Tourists in a Pullman Palace Car”; Kate Claxton,
supported by Charles Stevenson and making her first appearance in San
Francisco, presented “The Two Orphans” there for two weeks, opening on
May 9; and the company of Jarrett & Rice, in “Fun on the Bristol,”
played there from May 30 to June 9, after which date the theatre was
closed until July 4. It was then reopened, under the temporary
management of J. H. Young, with A. D. Bradley as stage manager, and a
few performances of “Emancipation” were given by The Pierreponts.
Belasco, however, appears to have been occupied chiefly with his own
affairs from April to July.
“LA BELLE RUSSE.”
Even before Belasco had been reinstalled as stage manager at the Baldwin
Theatre he had resumed planning another campaign of adventure to gain
acceptance and position in New York, and that purpose was ever present
in his mind during the year that followed his return from the Eastern
venture with the Hernes in “Hearts of Oak.” He had set his heart on a
success in the leading theatre of the country, Wallack’s, and he
resolutely addressed himself to its achievement. Maguire had come to
depend more and more on Belasco, in the labor of keeping the Baldwin
Theatre open and solvent, and to him the ambitious dramatist presently
turned with his plans for a play to be called “La Belle Russe.” “I felt
that I had a play which would suit Wallack’s company,” he said, “and
that, if I could get some of his actors to appear in it, Wallack would
soon hear of it, and the task of getting a New York hearing would be
much simplified. Jeffreys-Lewis
[Illustration:
Photographs by Sarony.
MARY JEFFREYS-LEWIS
Belasco’s Collection.
OSMOND TEARLE
About 1881, when they acted in Belasco’s “La Belle Russe”]
was then in San Francisco, and I stipulated with Maguire that he should
engage her for me, and also Osmond Tearle and Gerald Eyre, from
Wallack’s; John Jennings, from the Union Square, and Clara Walters, who
was then acting in Salt Lake City.” Maguire agreed to do this, the
engagements were made, and Belasco earnestly addressed himself to the
completion of his play, which was accomplished in six weeks. Meantime
Tearle ended his engagement in New York (at Wallack’s Theatre, July 2)
and, with other members of the Wallack company, went at once to San
Francisco, where rehearsals of the new play were immediately begun.
Belasco’s “La Belle Russe” was originally entitled “Violette.” He
chanced to read the phrase “la belle Russe” on a wind-blown fragment of
newspaper, was pleased by it, and adopted it as a better title. The play
is a fabric of theatrically effective but incredible situations, and it
is founded on two other plays, well known to him,--both of them having
been acted in San Francisco, under his management,--namely, “Forget Me
Not,” by Herman Merivale and Charles Groves, and “The New Magdalen,” by
Wilkie Collins: the version produced under Belasco’s direction was a
piratical one made by James H. LeRoy. _La belle Russe_ is a beautiful
but vicious Englishwoman, named _Beatrice Glandore_, daughter of a
clergyman. She has sunk, by a facile process of social decline, until
she has become a decoy for a gambling house, where, pretending to be a
Russian, she is known to its frequenters by the sobriquet which gives
the play its name. She has a virtuous twin sister, _Geraldine_, so like
her in appearance that they are, practically, indistinguishable. _La
belle Russe_ has infatuated a young Englishman, _Captain Brand_ (known
at the time by the name of _Captain Jules Clopin_), with whom she has
lived, whom she has robbed, abandoned, and finally shot, believing
herself to have killed him. _Geraldine_, meantime, has married a young
Englishman of great expectations, _Sir Philip Calthorpe_, who is
repudiated by his mother and other relatives because of his marriage,
whereupon, in financial straits, though represented as loving his wife,
_Calthorpe_ deserts her, enlists in the Army, and disappears.