From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.
BELASCO’S PARENTS
Humphrey Abraham, and Reina Martin, Belasco, About 1865
and Belasco is not one of them. His recollections of his boyhood and specially of his early association with the Theatre in San Francisco are sometimes interesting and in a general way authentic, and certainly they are believed by him to be invariably correct; but careful research of San Francisco newspapers of the period implicated, and of other records, discovers that frequently they are hazy, confused, and erroneous. “He who has not made the experiment,” says Dr. Johnson, “or is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery.” How much more must the lapse of many years take from memory! According to Belasco’s recollection, his first formal appearance on the San Francisco Stage was made while he was yet a pupil at the Lincoln Grammar School in that city, when Mary Wells (Mrs. Richard Stœples, 1829-1878) was (as he alleges) filling an engagement at the Metropolitan Theatre, in a play called “The Lioness of Nubia.” Mary Wells was an English actress, well known and much respected on the New York Stage about fifty years ago. She made her first appearance in this country at Albany, in 1850, and in 1856 she appeared at Laura Keene’s Theatre, New York, as Mme. Deschapelles, in “The Lady of Lyons.” She did not figure as a star: her “line” was old women: there is no record of her appearance at the Metropolitan Theatre, nor of her appearance anywhere in San Francisco, until April 4, 1874, when she acted with “The Lingard Combination,” at the Opera House (opened as Shiels’ Opera House), playing Mme. Dumesnil, in an English translation of Octave Feuillet’s “La Tentation.” There is, moreover, no play entitled “The Lioness of Nubia.” There is, however, a play called “The Lion of Nubia,” and there was an actress, of the soubrette order, named Minnie Wells, who appeared in that play at the Metropolitan Theatre, December 16, 1872, acting the central part, Harry Trueheart. The play was billed as “The Great Eastern Sensational Military Drama, ’The Lion of Nubia,’ introducing Banjo Solos, Banjo Duets,” etc. This play was thus advertised in San Francisco newspapers, December 16 to 22, 1872. John R. Woodard and Frank Rea, both of whom Belasco specifies as having been in the performance he supposes to have been given by “Mary Wells,” were members of the company supporting Minnie Wells at the Metropolitan in December, 1872, and it was with the latter and in “The Lion of Nubia” that Belasco made the appearance which he has misremembered and inadvertently misstated in his published “Story.” The part that he played, Lieutenant Victor, was practically that of a super. He was billed on that occasion as “Walter Kingsley,” the name of the circus clown who had befriended him in his childhood. It was a common expedient of the time for actors to adopt names not theirs when embarking on a theatrical career, and it pleased Belasco, for no special reason beyond a boyish whim, to do likewise. He used the name of Walter Kingsley for a little while, but his doing so distressed his mother and therefore he presently dropped it and wisely reverted to his own. In the early records that I have found it generally appears as “D. Belasco,” and often various superfluous initials are inserted through compositors’ errors. Belasco’s account of the appearance with Miss Wells, as given to me, specifies that he had one line to speak, which was “Perhaps the stress of the weather has driven them further up the coast”; that his schoolmates, in large number, were in the gallery; that his appearance was hailed by them with applause; that they clamorously demanded he should recite “The Maniac”; that their boisterous behavior interrupted the performance and annoyed the actress, and that she caused Woodard to discharge him.
It certainly is true that Belasco was carried on the stage, in childhood, at Victoria, that later he there “went on” for the little Duke of York, in “King Richard III.,” with Charles Kean,—as previously mentioned,—and that he made informal appearances, as declaimer and as super, in the theatres of San Francisco, while yet a schoolboy,—all those juvenile essays being cumulative toward his final embarkation on the career of actor, dramatist, and theatrical manager: thus, on December 20, 1868, he participated in a public entertainment, given at Lincoln Hall, by pupils of the Lincoln Grammar School, reciting “The Banishment of Catiline” and “The Maniac” (the latter a recitation he was often called on to make and with which, at one time or another, he won several prizes); in the “Catiline” recital he appeared in a costume comprising his father’s underdrawers and undershirt and a toga of cheap cloth. On November 24, 1869, he appeared, for a night or two, with Mme. Marie Methua-Scheller (18—-1878), at Maguire’s Opera House, as one of the newsboys, in Augustin Daly’s “Under the Gas-Light,” and in the course of that performance he played on a banjo and danced: on November 27 he “went on,” at the same theatre, as an Indian Brave, in a presentment by Joseph Proctor (1816-1897) of “The Jibbenainosay.” “I was much too small,” he told me, “but Proctor kept me because I gave such fine warwhoops.” On March 17, 1871, at the Metropolitan Theatre, he assumed the character of an Indian Chieftain, in “Professor Hager’s Great Historical Allegory and Tableaux, ’The Great Republic,’” which prodigy was performed by a company of “more than 400 young ladies and gentlemen” of various schools in the city, and for the benefit of those schools: it was several times exhibited: in the Second Part thereof he personated War. On June 2, following, he figured prominently in “competitive declamations” given at Platt’s Hall, by pupils of the Lincoln School, and also in an amateur theatrical performance, on the same occasion, appearing as High-flyer Nightshade, in “The Freedom of the Press.” Hager’s “The Great Republic” was a pleasing entertainment of its kind, and, after the close of the Lincoln School, Hager arranged to give it in Sacramento, and obtained permission to take with him to that city young Belasco and his friend, James O. Barrows, who were considered the bright particular stars of the performance. They appeared there, in the “Allegory,” April 15, 1871, “for the benefit of the Howard Association.” “I consider Professor Hager to have been my first manager,” says Belasco,—why, I do not know.
On August 23, 1869, Lotta (Charlotte Crabtree, whom John Brougham described as “the dramatic cocktail”) acted, for the first time in San Francisco, Fire-Fly, in a play of the same name by Edmund Falconer, based on Ouida’s novel of “Under Two Flags.” She was, then and later, exceedingly popular in it. Belasco and other stage-smitten youths organized an amateur theatrical association, called, in honor of the elfin Lotta, “The Fire-Fly Social and Dramatic Club.” As a member of that association Belasco played several parts. On June 22, 1871, he appeared with other fire-flies, at Turnverein Hall (Bush Street, near Powell), in—— Sutter’s drama of “A Life’s Revenge; or, Two Loves for One Heart,”—acting Fournechet, Minister of Finance. “The San Francisco Figaro,” noting this entertainment (the fifth given by the “Fire-Flies”), remarked, “Among those who will take part in its representation is David Belasco, his first appearance in leading business”; and in a review of the performance a critical writer in the same paper recorded that “David Belasco displayed much power.”
AN EARLY FRIEND.—W. H. SEDLEY-SMITH.
Soon after the opening of the California Theatre (1869) Belasco, who attended every theatrical performance to which he could gain admission, had the good fortune to meet John McCullough, and, pleasing