But now to go back to the beginning.
It was a night in the summer of 1904 in my dear and fascinating old San Francisco, before the life we all knew and loved had been broken in two, never to be mended, by the disaster of the great fire and earthquake. At the old Alcazar Theatre the now historic stock company was producing Mr. Hall Caine’s drama “The Christian.”
In the first act the fishermaidens made merry in the village square.
Unknown to family or friends, and with little pride in my humble beginning, I mingled as one of the fishergirls. Three dollars and fifty cents a week was the salary Fred Belasco (David’s brother) paid me for my bit of Hall Caine interpretation, so I, for one, had no need to be horrified some four years later when I was paid three dollars a day for playing the same fishermaiden in support of Mary Pickford, who, under Mr. Griffith’s direction, was making Glory Quayle into a screen heroine.
Here at the old Alcazar were wonderful people I could worship. There was Oza Waldrop, and John Craig, and Mary Young, Eleanor Gordon, Frances Starr, and Frank Bacon. Kindly, sweet Frank Bacon whose big success, years later, as Lightnin’ Bill Jones, in his own play “Lightnin’,” made not the slightest change in his simple, unpretentious soul. Mr. Bacon had written a play called “In the Hills of California.” It was to be produced for a week’s run at Ye Liberty Theatre, Oakland, California, and I was to play the ingénue.
One little experience added to another little experience fortified me with sufficient courage to call on managers of visiting Eastern road companies who traveled short of “maids,” “special guests at the ball,” and “spectators at the races.” New York was already beckoning, and without funds for a railroad ticket the only way to get there was to join a company traveling that way.
A summing up of previous experiences showed a recital at Sherman and Clay Hall and two weeks on tour in Richard Walton Tully’s University of California’s Junior farce “James Wobberts, Freshman.”
In the company were Mr. Tully and his then wife, Eleanor Gates, the author; Emil Kreuske, for some years now “Bill Nigh,” the motion picture director; Milton Schwartz, who took to law and now practices in Hollywood; Dick Tully and his wife Olive Vail. Elmer Harris of the original college company did not go. Elmer is now partner to Frank E. Woods along with Thompson Buchanan in Mr. Wood’s new producing company.
The recital at Sherman and Clay Hall on Sutter Street was a most ambitious effort. My job-hunting pal, Harriet Quimby, a girl I had met prowling about the theatres, concluded we were getting nowhere and time was fleeting. So we hit on a plan to give a recital in San Francisco’s Carnegie Hall, and invite the dramatic critics hoping they would come and give us good notices.
The Homer Henley Quartette which we engaged would charge twenty dollars. The rent of the hall was twenty. We should have had in hand forty dollars, and between us we didn’t own forty cents.