launched, Daniel Frohman, intending the establishment of a permanent
stock company at the Lyceum Theatre, began, with Belasco, consideration
of plays that might be suitable for production, in the next season, and
of actors whom it might prove expedient and feasible to engage for the
projected company. No play that seemed to them suitable was found, and
Mr. Frohman presently suggested that Belasco should write one. Belasco,
somewhat unwillingly,--because of the responsibility involved,--agreed
to do so; but while in conference with Mr. Frohman Henry De Mille
chanced to enter the office where they were, and the manager, conscious
of Belasco’s hesitancy, suggested that he should undertake the new play
in collaboration with De Mille. To this Belasco eagerly agreed, and that
was the beginning of a long and agreeable association. The co-workers
soon repaired to De Mille’s summer home, at Echo Lake, and began work on
a play which at first they called “The Marriage Tie,” but which
eventually was named “The Wife,”--not a felicitous choice of title,
because it had been several times previously used, and, in particular,
has long been identified with the excellent comedy of that name by James
Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), first produced in 1833, at Covent Garden,
London, and throughout many years by various stars or stock companies in
our Theatre. Belasco has written the following account of the manner in
which their play of “The Wife” was constructed by De Mille and himself:
“A COMMON-SENSE HUSBAND.”
“At last, after many plots were cast aside, I hit upon an idea. In
my varied experience as dramatist and stage manager I had produced
many so-called society plays in which the wife was either guilty of
unfaithfulness or had committed an indiscretion. In the ’big’ scene
it was the conventional thing for the husband to enter the room
at midnight, and say to the woman: ’Of course, after all that has
happened, I must get a divorce.’ Then he threw legal documents on
the desk, and said: ’Here are the deeds to the house. All necessary
provisions have been made for you and the child. But for the sake
of society, etc., etc., we will continue to dwell under the same
roof for a while.’
“‘Let us have a common-sense husband,’ I proposed to De Mille.
’After the husband’s discovery, let him treat his wife in a
perfectly sane, human way. Let him say: “You need me. Turn to
me, for your protection!”’ I had treated a similar situation in
a play which ran in opposition to Bronson Howard’s ’The Banker’s
Daughter’ at Baldwin’s Theatre in San Francisco. [The play was “The
Millionaire’s Daughter.”]
“Mr. De Mille agreed with me that we should use the idea of this
husband as the basis of our Lyceum drama. I knew my ground, for I
had gained my knowledge through experience. And, as we were to see,
that incident saved ’The Wife’ in its hour of need. It has kept
the play alive all these years and made it one of our most popular
stock pieces. Before De Mille and I began the play we had virtually
written our Third Act, jotting down notes and flashes of dialogue.
Then we went to Mr. Frohman with our idea, and in that conference
the Lyceum Theatre Company was born. In fact, it came into being
before the play, and De Mille and I found ourselves obliged to
create characters to fit the personalities of the players Mr.
Frohman had engaged. We could not say: ’Here is our heroine. Find
an actress to suit her’--for Georgia Cayvan was to be the leading
lady, whatever the play might be, and it was for us to see that she
had a womanly woman’s part....
“In the early part of May we began our race against time; night
and day found us turning out experimental pages of dialogue. Every
week we came to the city for a few hours, to see how the scenes of
the play were progressing--for that was another condition imposed
upon us--to decide upon the location of our acts before they were
written. In those days audiences would not have been content with
repetitions of scenes such as we now employ.
“With what eagerness did Mr. Frohman wait our visits to the city
and listen to the new scenes! Towards the latter part of August
we had completed a five-act drama, which we handed in with the
understanding that it might be cut, revised and rewritten. We told
Mr. Frohman that if it did not come up to expectations there was
time for him to look elsewhere for a play.
“It must have been after the reading of the Third Act that Mr.
Frohman’s office door opened and he rushed out crying: ’By Jove,
it’s fine, it’s splendid!’ De Mille and I didn’t stop. We hurried
to the station and were off to Echo Lake for our vacation....”
The play of “The Wife” is in five acts and it involves fourteen
persons. Its scenes are laid in Newport, New York, and Washington,
D. C., about 1887. Its dialogue is written in that strain of
commonplace colloquy which is assumed, with justice, to be generally
characteristic of “fashionable society” in its superficial mood and
ordinary habit. The influence of Bronson Howard’s example is obvious
in it,--that writer’s plan, which had been successful, of catching and
reflecting the general tone and manner of “everyday life” and often
of distressingly “everyday persons”; persons who, nevertheless, are
at times constrained to behave in a manner not easily credible, if,
indeed, possible, whether in everyday or any other kind of life. To
copy commonplaces in a commonplace manner is by some judges deemed
the right and sure way to please the public. That method does often
succeed, since, generally, people like to see themselves. This,
however, was not the method of the great masters of comedy, such as
Molière, Congreve, and Sheridan, who taught, by example and with
results of great value, that a comedy, while it should be a true
reflection of life and a faithful picture of manners, should also be
made potent over the mind, the heart, and the imagination, by delicate,
judicious exaggeration, should be made entertaining by equivoque,
and should be made impressive by the fibre of strong thought, and
sympathetic by trenchant, sparkling dialogue. That old method of
writing comedy, although it has been exemplified by the best writers
and is still attempted, has, to a great extent, been superseded by the
far inferior and much easier method of conventional colloquialism and
chatter.
The ground plan of “The Wife,” though Belasco may have thought it a
novelty, was, even in 1887, mossy with antiquity. A girl, _Helen
Freeman_, parts from her lover, _Robert Grey_, in a moment of pique, and
weds with another man, to whom she gives her hand, but not at first her
heart; she subsequently meets her old flame and finds that she is still
fond of him; causes social tattle by being seen
[Illustration:
From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.
DAVID BELASCO CLAY M. GREENE
In 1887, when, in collaboration, they wrote “Pawn Ticket 210” for
Lotta]
too much in his company; admits to her husband that her juvenile
partiality for this early suitor still lingers in her feelings, and so
causes that worthy man some uneasiness; but she ends by casting her
girlish fancy to the winds and avowing herself a fond as well as a
faithful wife. “The guests think they have seen him before.” They have!
And also they have heard, rather more than twice before, two of the
speeches which are uttered: “As a soldier it is my business to make
widows,” and “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”
This is the story: _Helen Freeman_ loved _Robert Grey_ and by him was
beloved. _Robert Grey_ had jilted _Lucile Ferrant_, of New Orleans.
_Lucile_ informed _Helen_ of this fact, and _Helen_ therefore repudiated
_Robert Grey_ and wedded with _John Rutherford_, of the United States
Senate. _Matthew Culver_, a politician, hostile to _Robert Grey_ in
politics and at the bar, and wishful to defeat _Robert’s_ attempt to
obtain an office, persuaded _Lucile_ to apprise _Rutherford_ that
_Robert_ and _Helen_ had been lovers, and by many persons were thought
to be so still. _Rutherford_, investigating this tale, discovered that
_Culver_ had maliciously and meanly schemed to make mischief and that
the attachment of _Robert_ and _Helen_ was probably one of the
sentimental “flames” which are customary in youth; whereupon he rebuked
_Culver_, talked frankly with _Robert Grey_, advising him to stick to
his legal business, and presently procured his appointment to a
lucrative office, at the same time assuring _Helen_ of his delicate
consideration for her feelings and his intention to take good care of
her. _Culver_ then went to South America and stayed there, while _Miss
Ferrant_ repaired to the South of France, and _Robert Grey_ greatly
distinguished himself by laborious diligence in the public service. This
adjustment might have been expected to content all parties concerned,
but it did not content _Rutherford_. His wife actually had “loved
another” before she loved him, and on that fact he brooded, stating that
his heart contained nothing but “bloodless ashes.” Perhaps _Helen’s_
sentimental fancy had lasted. Juvenile flame was only a phrase. As
sagaciously remarked by _Emilia_ in “Othello,”
“ ... jealous souls will not be answered so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they’re jealous.”
The distressed _Senator_, therefore, sat up till a late hour every
night, grieving for his wife’s “lost love,” until at last _Helen_,
observing his dejection, was moved to discover and avouch that her
juvenile fancy for _Robert Grey_ had been a girlish infatuation and to
declare her “calm, peaceful, and eternal love” for her husband. _Mr._
and _Mrs. Rutherford_ then sailed, aboard the Alaska, for Europe. It
appeared, incidentally, that _Jack Dexter_ and _Kitty Ives_, giddy
things, though bright and good, hovering about the story, were lovers,
but that _Kitty’s_ mother did not approve of their engagement till after
_Jack_ had smirched his face with a bit of smoked glass, and also that
all the persons concerned in these momentous affairs once saw an eclipse
of the sun, which was visible in Washington.
Almost every person in this play is colorless and insignificant. The
proceedings of the characters evince no natural sequence between motive
and conduct. Given two young persons who love each other, they could not
possibly be alienated by conjuring up the bugbear of a previous
attachment. Nothing is so dead as the love that has died, and every
lover instinctively knows it. Moreover, the ladies, practically without
exception, are more pleased than disquieted by discovering that their
lovers have found they could live without others but not without them.
The fabric, in short, is one of elaborate trifling with serious things,
for the sake of situations and effects. The play should have been called
“The Husband” rather than “The Wife,” because it is _Rutherford_ in whom
the interest centres. The best scene in it is the one of explanation
and reconcilement between the husband and wife, and this was the
invention of Belasco, around which and for the sake of which the play
was written. It contains a strain of rational, fine manliness that wins
and holds attentive sympathy.
In studying the plays written by Belasco and De Mille in collaboration
it is essential to bear in mind the apportionment of the labor, in order
correctly to estimate Belasco’s share in them. The writing in that
co-partnership was largely done by De Mille: the dramatic machinery, the
story in action, was supplied almost entirely by Belasco, who acted the
scenes, when the plays were in process of construction, the dialogue
being beaten out between the co-workers.
This was the original cast of “The Wife”,--November 1, 1887:
_Hon. John Rutherford_ Herbert Kelcey.
_Robert Grey_ Henry Miller.
_Matthew Culver_ Nelson Wheatcroft.
_Silas Truman_ Charles Walcot.
_Major Homer_ William J. LeMoyne.
_Jack Dexter_ Charles S. Dickson.
_Helen Truman_, _Mrs. Rutherford_ Georgia Cayvan.
_Lucile Ferrant_ Grace Henderson.
_Mrs. Bellamy Ives_ Mrs. Charles Walcot.
_Mrs. Amory_ Mrs. Thomas Whiffen.
_Agnes_ Vida Croly.
_Mr. Randolph_ W. Clark Bellows.
_Kitty Ives_ Louise Dillon.
“The Wife” was so beautifully set, so perfectly directed, and so well
acted that, though at first the dead weight of the play oppressed its
representation, the public press, even at the first, inclined to accord
it an importance which it did not deserve. Georgia Cayvan’s
impersonation of the wife revealed anew the deep feeling and the
graceful art that had won her recognition as a favorite actress. Grace
Henderson (she was the wife of David Henderson, critical writer and
producer of musical extravaganza), who acted the mischief making, jilted
woman, _Lucile_, played with discretion and sincerity,--but it was
difficult for the spectator to believe that a woman with a face so
beautiful and a voice so delicious would ever have been jilted by any
man not blind and deaf. Henry Miller was loud and extravagant as _Grey_;
Herbert Kelcey was dignified, manly, and fine in feeling and elegant in
manner and movement as _Rutherford_, and LeMoyne was delightfully
humorous as _Major Homer_.
“The Wife” received 239 consecutive performances. Yet the fate of that
play hung, for some time, in the balance. “I knew, even before the
production,” said Belasco to me, “that it was too long and too loosely
jointed, but I felt it could make good; and Mr. Frohman had faith. De
Mille was pretty well discouraged after a week or ten days, and he told
me he expected he’d have to go back to school-teaching [De Mille had
been a school-teacher before he joined the Madison Square Theatre,
where, in 1884, Belasco first met him]. Brent Good, proprietor of
Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and also Stickney protested, in a
directors’ meeting, that the play was a failure and was losing money and
ordered it withdrawn.” The next morning Daniel Frohman instructed
Belasco to put the play of “Featherbrain,” by James Albery, into
rehearsal and prepare it for production as rapidly as possible. “I felt
certain,” Belasco has told me, “that ’The Wife’ could be made a great
money-getter, and I resolved it should have a fair trial: I held back on
the preparations of ’Featherbrain’ all I could,--and, meantime, De Mille
and I altered and cut, day after day, on our play. This procedure was
justified by the result. Writing on this subject, Belasco declares: “It
seemed to us that for every word we cut from ’The Wife’ we gained a
person in the orchestra.” What a pity the necessary pruning and
adjustment could not have been done before the production! Then the
prosperity of a theatre and of many persons would not have been
endangered. The sum of more than $50,000, owed to the Tiffany Studios,
was paid in full, out of the profits of “The Wife,” and the directors of
the corporation, as also Daniel Frohman, were so well satisfied with the
ultimate result that Belasco and De Mille were commissioned to write the
next new play required, for the following season, which was to be one
constructed as a starring vehicle for Edward H. Sothern, who had been
“inherited” by the Lyceum management under a contract with Helen
Dauvray.
REVISION OF “SHE.”
The first dramatic work done by Belasco, after he had dismissed “The
Wife,” was a revision of a drama called “She,” made by William H.
Gillette on the basis of Rider Haggard’s novel of that name. This was
produced, November 29, 1887, at Niblo’s Garden, New York, by Isaac B.
Rich and Al. Hayman.
The signal talent of Haggard is not well displayed in “She,”--in which
the tone is sensual and the literary art inferior, and in which, indeed,
it can fairly be said that the author has collected materials and
outlined a plan for a work of fiction, rather than that he has
adequately utilized his materials and plan. There is in it little
indication of distinctive intellectual character or of scrutinizing
artistic revision, and, although contemporary with both Worcester’s and
Webster’s “Unabridged,” the writer frequently informs his readers that
words are wanting to describe the objects he has undertaken to portray.
“She,” therefore, notwithstanding that it contains attributes of merit,
is, as Haggard left it, a verbose and chaotic narrative, presenting the
apotheosis of woman as a handsome animal. The story, however, presents
melodramatic points tributary to situation and several of those points
were utilized for stage presentment and invested with picturesque
scenery. The play begins with a shipwreck on the coast of Africa. “Set
waves” swung on obvious cordage. A “profile” boat went to pieces on a
rock. Lightnings flashed. A quantity of real water was projected into
the air. And a band of adventurous seekers after the inscrutable and
awful female personality known as _She_ were rescued, to pass through
manifold adventures, including encounters with African cannibals and
terminating with a quest for the Fire of Life, in which, when found, the
mystical _Princess_ was destroyed. Particular recital of the incidents
of the stage adaptation is not requisite here: the novel,
extraordinarily popular in its day, is still accessible to the curious.
The form adopted by Gillette in framing his histrionic synopsis of the
book is that of genuine, old-fashioned melodrama,--the form of
theatrical spectacle interblended with music that was in fashion a
century ago. There is an opening chorus. African savages, auxiliary to
the proceedings, chant. The heroine woos her favorite in a melodious
adjuration, and bursts into song on her lover’s breast. Music is
introduced in the most unlikely places. Even the cannibals utter their
stomachs in harmonious howls, preparatory to a feast on the flesh of
man. “She,” as adapted by Gillette, was in part reconstructed and
improved by Belasco, to whom such curious fabrics of more or less
ridiculous spectacle had been familiar in his early days and who readily
rectified its technical defects. “It was simply a matter of curtailing
and readjusting,” he afterward wrote; “when the scenes and situations
were rehearsed again it was found that we had a very good play”: the
accuracy of the latter statement, of course, depends on the standard of
merit applied in determining what constitutes a “good play.” Belasco did
not revise “She” until near the end of the New York engagement, that is,
about the middle of December, 1887. The play was transferred from New
York to the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, and there, and elsewhere in
the country, it was prosperously presented.
“LORD CHUMLEY” AND E. H. SOTHERN.
During the early part of 1888 Belasco did some work as a teacher of
acting, bestowing, at the request of Daniel Frohman, special attention
on instruction of Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr. (Mary Nevin), a person of
social influence--and therefore potentially valuable to the management
of the Lyceum Theatre--whose aspirations for a theatrical career were
terminated by serious illness. Toward Spring the necessity of executing
the commission to write a new play for the use of Sothern, at the
Lyceum, compelled Belasco to lay aside all other labor, and, about
March-April, in company with De Mille, he repaired to Echo Lake, and
there, after trying and rejecting many dramatic schemes, the co-mates in
authorship finally hit upon one to their liking. By about July 1 (1888)
they had practically completed a new play, entitled “Lord Chumley,” and
they returned to New York in order that Belasco might put it into
rehearsal. In doing this he had to confront an unexpected difficulty:
Sothern, who had expressed himself as satisfied on reading the scenario
of the play, did not like the part of _Chumley_ in the finished work
and, as Mr. Frohman informed the disgruntled authors, was averse to
undertaking it. Belasco writes of this: “‘But the character’s Sothern,’
I said; ’every look, gesture, and exclamation fits him like a glove!’...
Of course, it was the old story all over again; an actor never knows
what is best suited to him.” The latter notion is, I think, extravagant:
for every instance wherein an actor has made a notable success in
playing a part against his judgment and will a dozen could be cited
wherein the actor has known his powers and made his distinctive success
by following his own judgment in selection of the part to be played.
“You are mistaken,” Charles Burke told a friend, who had exclaimed to
him, in a burst of admiration, “You don’t know what a good actor you
are!”, “I know _exactly_ what a good actor I am, and _exactly_ what I
can do on the stage.” Sothern, as his later career has shown, cherished
ambition to act parts of a very different character from _Chumley_, but,
fortunately for all concerned, he consented to undertake that part,
after Belasco had expounded it to him; the rehearsals were carried on
with diligence and, on August 21, 1888, “Lord Chumley” was produced, for
the first time anywhere, at the Lyceum Theatre.
The play of “Lord Chumley” is a mosaic of many old dramatic situations,
culled from various earlier plays, revamped and intercalated so as to
make a sequent story, and it can rightly be designated a comedy, tinged
with melodrama and farce. _Chumley_ is a young English lord, a gentleman
by nature as well as birth; simple, generous, sincere, intrepid, and
acute, but hampered by shyness, an impediment in his speech, and a
superficial aspect of inanity. He impoverishes himself in order to serve
a friend, _Hugh Butterworth_, an imprudent young fellow, an officer in
the British Army, who is being victimized by a specious French rascal.
This malignant person wishes to wed the officer’s sister, _Miranda_, and
by threatening to ruin that young man’s reputation has extorted from her
a promise of marriage. The lady is beloved by _Chumley_, who intervenes
and prevents the marriage, incidentally vindicating himself in her
opinion: she has at first believed him to be a fool and later a
blackguard, but she ends by perceiving his intrinsically fine character
and reciprocating his love. In the course of his variegated experience
he contrives to make himself misunderstood in attempting to tell his
troubles to a sympathetic spinster; he dwells without repining in the
squalor of a miserable lodging, to which his generous
self-impoverishment has reduced him; he confronts a desperate burglar
in the dark and, armed only with a cigarette-holder shaped like a
pistol, he fools, cows, and overcomes him; he exhibits astounding
physical prowess in conflict with a burly antagonist, and he displays
amazing mental acuteness in penetrating and defeating the malevolent
purposes of a villain.