BELASCO AND GUSTAVE FROHMAN.—THEY REVIVE “THE OCTOROON.”
Nobody, however, seems to have been eager to rush in where so many others had recently failed, and the Baldwin, except for a couple of benefits (the first, a performance of “Chispa,” May 18, given for Phœbe Davis, under direction of J. R. Grismer; the second, given May 27, a revival of “The New Magdalen,” for the public favorite Mrs. Judah), remained closed for about two months. During that period Gustave Frohman, the eldest of three brothers influentially associated with the American Stage, came to San Francisco, as representative of the proprietors of the New York Madison Square Theatre, in charge of a company headed by Charles Walter Couldock and Effie Ellsler, presenting “Hazel Kirke.” With Gustave Frohman Belasco immediately formed a friendly acquaintance which vitally affected his subsequent career. “Hazel Kirke” was brought forward at the California Theatre on May 30—and even before that presentment had been made Belasco had suggested to Frohman another venture. This was a “sensation revival” of the old play of “The Octoroon.” Calender’s Colored Minstrels had just concluded an engagement at Emerson’s Standard Theatre, and it was part of Belasco’s scheme to employ that negro company and make use of it as auxiliary to performance of Boucicault’s play. Gustave Frohman acceded to Belasco’s suggestion, arranged for the proposed appearance of Callender’s Minstrels, leased the Baldwin Theatre, and there revived “The Octoroon,” on June 12, at low prices,—twenty-five to seventy-five cents. This shrewdly conceived enterprise was, because of Belasco’s felicitous treatment of old material and his skilful direction of the players, an instant popular success. A contemporaneous commentator writes about it as follows:
“The present management has engaged the best professional talent the city affords, and has put it under the direction of a stage manager who can make the most of it.... Without a single strong feature in the cast, with possibly the exception of the Wah-no-tee of George Osborne, there were effects introduced which give more than their ordinary interest to the performance. The clever pen of Mr. Belasco had evidently elaborated the auction scenes, and the scene in which Salem Scudder saves the Indian from the mob....”
This was the cast:
| Jacob McCloskey | Harry Colton. |
| Salem Scudder | Edward Marble. |
| Wah-no-tee | George Osborne. |
| George Peyton | W. T. Doyle. |
| “Uncle” Pete | Edward Barrett. |
| Mr. Sunnyside | R. G. Marsh. |
| Lafouche | Mr. Foster. |
| Paul | Kitty Belmour. |
| Ratts | Joseph W. Francœur. |
| Colonel Poindexter | Thomas Gossman. |
| Julius Thibodeaux | Logan Paul. |
| Judge Caillou | George Galloway. |
| Jackson | George Stevens. |
| Solon | Mr. McIntosh. |
| Zoe, the Octoroon | Mrs. F. M. Bates. |
| Dora Sunnyside | Abbie Pierce. |
| Mrs. Peyton | Jean Clara Walters. |
| Grace | Lillie Owen. |
| Dido | Mrs. Weston. |
| Minnie | Kate Foust. |
In making this revival of “The Octoroon” Belasco employed the “altered and retouched” version of it, prepared by him, which had been acted under his direction at the Baldwin July 8, 1878,—still further varying and expanding several scenes of the original. The most popular variety features, dances, “specialties,” and songs of the minstrel show were deftly interwoven with the fabric of the drama, being utilized with pleasing effect in an elaborate representation of the slave quarters by moonlight, and in the first and fourth scenes of the Last Act: in the latter the slaves were shown, slowly making their way homeward, at evening, through the cotton fields, singing as they went, and the result was extraordinarily picturesque and impressive. More than 150 persons, besides the actors of the chief characters, participated in the performance, and the slave sale and the burning of the river steamboat Magnolia were portrayed with notable semblance of actuality. Writing to me, Belasco says: “I used a panorama, painted on several hundred yards of canvas, and I introduced drops, changing scenes in the twinkling of an eye, showing, alternately and in quick succession, pursued and pursuer,—Jacob McCloskey and the Indian,—making their way through the canebrake and swamp, and ending with the life and death struggle and the killing of McCloskey. I must say the people were wildly enthusiastic and I was proud of the whole production. I thought the acting very good.”
“AMERICAN BORN.”
“The Octoroon” was played for two weeks and then, June 26, gave place to “Caryswold,” an inconsequential play which Belasco tinkered,—introducing into it a “Fire Scene, showing the destruction of a Mad-House,” suggested by the terrible passage in Reade’s “Hard Cash,” descriptive of the burning of an asylum for the insane and the escape of Alfred Hardy. Ada Ward, an English actress, who came from Australia, acted the principal part in it.
Gustave Frohman’s lease of the Baldwin Theatre expired on July 1, and on the 3rd Jay Rial, having hired the house for a week, presented “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” there. On July 10 occurred the last event of the first period of Belasco’s theatrical life,—the presentment at the Baldwin of “American Born.” Edward Marble, an actor who had come to San Francisco as a member of the “Hazel Kirke” company, was advertised as lessee of the theatre and the play was brought out under the auspices of Gustave Frohman. It was a free adaptation by Belasco of “British Born,” by Paul Merritt and Henry Pettitt, and was a wild and whirling, spread-eagle, bugle-blowing melodrama, in which the heroine, at a climax of desperate adventure, saves her lover from being shot to death by Bolivian soldiers by wrapping him in a flag of the United States. Its production was chiefly remarkable for handsome scenic investiture and a really impressive portrayal of a volcano in furious eruption. This was the cast of “American Born”: