“La Belle Russe” received its final performance at the Baldwin Theatre on Saturday evening, July 30. On August 1 “Adolph Challet” was produced there, under Belasco’s direction, and on August 8 a revival of “Diplomacy” was effected, Tearle acting Henry Beauclerc, Gerald Eyre Julian, and Miss Jeffreys-Lewis the Countess Zicka. It had been intended to divide the week between “Diplomacy” and “Camille,” but “to my delight,” Belasco said, “the former was strong enough to fill the whole week and I could give all the time to final preparation of my new play.” That new play was a dramatic epitome of “The Stranglers of Paris” (“Les Étrangleurs de Paris”), by Adolphe Belot, for the production of which much effort had already been made. It was modestly announced by Maguire (who, I surmise, did not thereby greatly distress Belasco) as “The great dramatic event of the nineteenth century,” and it was brought out on August 15. Belasco’s name was not made known as that of the adapter. This play is, in fact, an extravagant and, in some respects, a repulsive sensation melodrama. The story relates some of the experiences of an intellectual pervert named Jagon, a huge hunchback, of remarkable muscular strength, especially in the digits, resident in Paris, and gaining a livelihood for himself and a cherished daughter (whom he keeps in ignorance of her actual relationship to himself) by the gentle art of strangling persons in order to rob them. A specially barbarous murder is committed by Jagon and an accomplice named Lorenz,—an ex-convict who has ingratiated himself with the daughter, Mathilde, and who marries her. Jagon and an innocent man, Blanchard, are arrested, tried for this crime, and sentenced to transportation to New Caledonia. The convict-ship bearing them to that destination is wrecked and they escape together upon a raft and return to Paris. Mathilde, having discovered the criminality of her husband, frees her mind on that subject with such pungency that Lorenz is moved to practise upon her the professional dexterity learned from her revered father and promptly chokes her to death. Jagon arrives at this juncture, attended by police officers, denounces Lorenz to them as his actual accomplice in the crime for which Blanchard has been convicted with him, and then, in the manner of Robert Macaire in somewhat similar circumstances, being determined to escape the guillotine, leaps through a convenient window, thus giving the police an opportunity, which they improve, of shooting him to death. The play is immensely inferior to the story upon parts of which it is based, but it serves its purpose as a “shocker.” The escape of the two convicts on the raft at sea provides an effective scene, not the less so because of its resemblance to a similar scene in the earlier melodrama of “The World”: the expedient, however, was an old one long before “The World” was produced: it is employed with great skill and effect in Reade’s fine novel of “The Simpleton.” Belasco’s mature opinion of this play of his has been recorded in four words which cover the case: “What buncombe it was!” A notably good performance was given in it by Osmond Tearle as Jagon—a part which he expressed himself to the dramatist as delighted to undertake as a relief from acting the repressed “leads” to which he had for some time been restricted. It ran for two weeks. This was the original cast:

Jagon Osmond Tearle.
Joseph Blanchard Gerald Eyre.
Robert de Meillant Joseph R. Grismer.
Lorenz Max Freeman.
Captain Jules Guérin Walter Leman.
Mons. Claude A. D. Bradley.
Bontout John W. Jennings.
Papin Charles Norris.
Dr. Fordien J. P. Wade.
Mons. Vitel George McCormack.
Mons. Xavier E. N. Thayer.
Governor of Prison George Galloway.
Longstalot R. G. Marsh.
Grégoire Logan Paul.
Jacquot G. L. May.
Cabassa John Torrence.
Pierre—Convicts—G. McCord.
ZalabutJ. Higgins.
LamazonCharles Robertson.
ZorgesG. Holden.
JacquesS. Chapman.
Commander of Prison ShipW. T. Day.
First LieutenantE. N. Neuman.
Second LieutenantE. Webster.
First MarineJ. Sherwood.
Mathilde Jeffreys Lewis.
Jeanne Guerin Ethel Arden.
Sophie Blanchard Jean Clara Walters.
Zoé Lacassade Mrs. Elizabeth Saunders.
La Grande Florine Eva West.

“The Stranglers” was superbly mounted, it delighted the public for which it was intended, and was played for two weeks, attracting large and enthusiastically demonstrative audiences.

NEW YORK AGAIN.—“LA BELLE RUSSE” AT WALLACK’S.

Maguire, because he had produced Belasco’s play of “La Belle Russe” at the Baldwin and had thereby profited, appears to have considered that also he had thereby acquired a property in it. To this claim the necessitous dramatist assented (making, I suppose, a virtue of necessity), giving Maguire a half-interest. Maguire then decreed that they should go to New York together, in order to place the play with Wallack, if that should prove the most expedient arrangement, or to place it with any other manager from whom it might be possible to exact higher payment. Belasco consented to negotiate with other managers and ascertain what terms might be offered, “even though,” he said, “I had determined that none but Wallack should produce it.” On September 25, 1881, they left San Francisco together and came to New York.

According to Belasco’s statement to me, Augustin Daly wanted the play of “La Belle Russe” for Ada Rehan (to whom the central part would have been peculiarly unfitted), while A. M. Palmer wanted it for Miss Jeffreys-Lewis, at the Union Square, and John Stetson wanted it for Marie Prescott. Belasco had interviews with all of them, and with Wallack. His determination that Wallack should produce his play, if he possibly could arrange to have him do so, was intensified by the kindness of Wallack’s manner toward the young author and by the strong impression made upon him by that actor’s pictorial and winning personality. Maguire, meantime, consorted with Stetson, a person naturally congenial to him, and presently became insistent that the play should be intrusted to that manager. “After I had read the play to Stetson in his office (which I did very unwillingly),” Belasco told me, “the two of them threatened me with all sorts of consequences if I did not turn the manuscript over to Stetson, and I really believe they would have taken it from me by force if I had not buttoned it under my coat and bolted out of the office!” This pair of pilgrims had then been for some time in New York, and Maguire, by agreement, had been paying Belasco’s living expenses; now, by way of practical intimation that his will must prevail and the play be relinquished to Stetson, he stopped doing so. This left Belasco in a familiar but not the less painful plight—stranded—and it also incensed him against Maguire.

At this juncture, when unfortunately he was impecunious, indignant, and excited, he received a visit from Maguire’s nephew, Mr. Frank L. Goodwin, with whom he had already negotiated relative to “La Belle Russe,” and whom he now supposed to have come to him as Wallack’s representative. To this person he imprudently made known his quarrel with Maguire, and hastily inquired, “What will you give me for the play?” “Fifteen hundred dollars, cash,” Goodwin answered, and then, observing that he hesitated, “and a return ticket to San Francisco, and $100 more for your expenses.” “How soon can I have the money?” Belasco rejoined. “In half an hour.” “Then I’ll take it”—and he did, selling his play, outright, not, as he supposed, to Wallack, but to Goodwin, for $1,600 cash and a railroad ticket home! He received the money the same afternoon and left that night for San Francisco. When the play was produced at Wallack’s it was announced as “By arrangement with Mr. F. L. Goodwin, the production of a new and powerful drama by David Belasco, Esq.” Wallack paid Goodwin a high price for the play, which, since then, has been successfully acted throughout the English-speaking world, and, later, when told of the facts of the sale, expressed his profound regret and dissatisfaction that Belasco had not dealt directly with him. Fifty times the amount of money that Belasco received for “La Belle Russe” would have been more like a fair payment for it than the sum he actually received. “I did not particularly care what Maguire might do,” Belasco told me, “when he heard about the matter. I felt that I could get along much better without him than he could without me (I always did for Maguire far more than ever I got paid for!), but he cooled off after he got home, and I resumed work, for a little while, at the Baldwin.”

AN OPINION BY BRONSON HOWARD.—WALLACK IN THE THIRTIETH STREET HOUSE.

Belasco’s published recollections of the circumstances of Wallack’s removal from the Thirteenth Street house and of the importance to that manager of his presentation of “La Belle Russe” require revision to make them accurate. He says: