From an old photograph.
The Albert Davis Collection. 		From an old photograph.
Courtesy of Mrs. Lou. Devney.
JOSEPH MURPHY JOHN PIPER

“Maum Cre,” which held the stage for one week and in which Belasco acted the small part of Bloater. On August 25, the night before his wedding, he played with Murphy as Bob Rackett, in “Help,” and on September 1 as Baldwin, in “Ireland and America.” Murphy’s engagement ended September 7. The next night Frederick Lyster made his first appearance at Shiels’ (of which A. M. Gray had become “sole proprietor”) in “The Rising Moon,” and I believe that Belasco played in it, though I have not found a record of his doing so. On September 10 Laura Alberta was the star, in “Out at Sea,” Belasco playing with her as Harvey. During the next six weeks he acted at Shiels’—personating Sambo, in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and Major Hershner, in “Twice Saved; or, Bertha the Midget,” with Miss Alberta; Spada, in “The Woman in Red,” with Fanny Cathcart, and Darley, in “Dark Deeds,” with Miss Cathcart and George Darrell. Other plays presented at Shiels’ during the period indicated include “More Blunders Than One,” “Little Katy; or, The Hot Corn Girl,” “The Stage Struck Chamber-Maid,” “Man and Wife” (Darrell’s version), “The Mexican Tigress,” and “Evenings at Home.” It is probable that Belasco appeared in all or most of those plays, but I have not been able to find programmes or other records showing that he did so. On October 18 he participated in a benefit for James Dunbar at Gray’s Opera House (that name was first used on October 3), playing Mons. Voyage, in the Third Act of “Ireland As It Was.”

THEATRICAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA CITY.

After his employment at Gray’s Opera House Belasco obtained an engagement with John Piper and joined the theatrical company maintained by that manager at Piper’s Opera House, Virginia City, Nevada, at that time one of the most disorderly, dissolute, and disreputable towns in the United States. This “Opera House” was built by Maguire, in 1863, and did not become known as “Piper’s” till several years later. It was utilized for all kinds of public meetings, social and political, as well as for theatrical performances, and, judging from the history of Nevada, was, in early days, most noted as the scene of prize pugilistic combats. Piper, who was not only a speculative manager, but also a hotel-keeper, seems likewise to have been a shrewd, hard, unscrupulous person, not, however, devoid of rough kindness. By way of keeping his theatrical company well in hand he pursued the ingenious method of permitting its members to run into debt to him, to the amount of $1,500, and then withholding their salaries, thus, practically, making them prisoners till they had worked off the debt. Charges for everything were extortionate in Virginia City in that period, and Piper readily succeeded in entangling his actors, and he made it exceedingly difficult for them to extricate themselves. “I tried to run away from him,” said Belasco, telling me this story, “but got no further than Reno, where the sheriff, a ’pal’ of his, took me in charge and ’returned’ me for the debt!” In Virginia City he saw much more of that lawlessness, recklessness, and savagery which had already colored his thoughts and served to direct his mind into the lurid realm of sensation melodrama. There, also, he renewed acquaintance with various actors of prominence whom he had previously met in the course of his wanderings, and there he became associated with other performers, then or afterward distinguished. He acted many parts under Piper’s management, among them Buddicombe, in “Our American Cousin,” when Edward A. Sothern, as Lord Dundreary, was the star, and Don Cæsar, in John Westland Marston’s “Donna Diana” (published 1863), a drama based on a Spanish original by Augustin Moreto (1618-1661), which was presented by the once famous Mrs. David P—— Bowers (1830-1895), an actress of great ability and charm, whom persons who saw her in her best days do not forget. Belasco remembers having acted with her, either at Virginia City or elsewhere in the West, as Maffeo Orsini, in “Lucretia Borgia”; Charles Oakley, in “The Jealous Wife”; Richard Hare, in “East Lynne,” and a Page, in “Mary Stuart,” and I have heard him speak of her with an ardor of admiration which I can well understand, and with deep gratitude for kindness shown him in the time of his necessitous youth.

DION BOUCICAULT AND KATHARINE RODGERS.

Another eminent actor whom he met for the first time at Piper’s Opera House,—according to his recollection, in the Winter of 1873,—was Dion Boucicault (1822?-1890), who appears to have noticed him as a youth of talent and promise and to have treated him with favor. Boucicault could ingratiate himself with almost any person, when he chose to do so, and,—whenever they may have met,—he readily won the admiration of young Belasco, who closely studied his acting and the mechanism of his plays, and whose work, as a dramatist and a manager, has been, in a great degree, moulded by his abiding influence. Boucicault,