David Belasco and William Winter were friends for thirty-odd years. They did not always agree as to the course which should be followed in theatrical management; but their disagreements on that subject, such as they were, never estranged them nor lessened their mutual sympathetic understanding, respect, and regard. Belasco, undoubtedly, is what my father called him, “the last of the real managers,” the heir of all the theatric ages in America that have been led by Dunlap, Caldwell, Gilfert, Wood, the Wallacks, Booth, McCullough, Ford, Palmer, and Daly, and it is fitting that his Life should have been written by the one man in all the world best qualified to perform the task. Belasco’s feeling about the matter, at once modest and appreciative, is shown in a letter from which I quote the following:
(David Belasco to William Winter.)
October 18, 1916.
My dear William Winter:—
I am greatly honored to know that you are really going to write the history of my life! I will not say “It is an honor that I dreamed not of,” because I have dreamed of it. But I never thought you would really undertake it. Of course I will, as you ask, very gladly do anything and everything I can to assist you.
But though my life has not been altogether an easy or uneventful one, in all sincerity I can hardly think of it as worthy of your brilliant pen. Yet you know how I have always looked up to you, and so you will know how much this means to me and how much I appreciate it. And because “I hold every man a debtor to his profession” I am more than delighted that you think the public will be interested in the life of a theatrical manager,—and that manager me. If only I had been able to do all that I wanted to, then there would have been a career worthy even of your pen.
It pleases me so much whenever there comes a real, worthwhile tribute to the profession I adore—the Stage! It is great and wonderful to think that my name is to be written in the records of the American Theatre by you: that hereafter the name of Belasco (just a stroller from California in the dear old days of the pioneers) will be found written by you along with the names of those who made our Theatre possible as well as great. I mean the men and women who gave my profession of their best—long, arduous, weary years of hard, hard work, at the sacrifice of personal comfort; who studied and toiled and played their parts uncomplainingly night after night in the changing bills; the friends who were never too tired to learn something; who lived simply and poorly and yet had the courage to marry and bring up their children and give the Stage a new generation; the friends who found joy in the few hours they held sacred in the home—often a barren room or two. Beautiful! Those are the boys and girls I love—our pioneers. What pathetic figures—what noble examples many of them were! Such men and women I reverence—I salute them! And I thank you for the compliment you pay me, as a humble follower of the Theatre, when you write my name with theirs.... We must meet soon and have good, long talks about the golden days in California,—my California. Facts I can give you: exact dates I will not promise. I have never kept a “Diary.”... As far as I possibly can I will make my convenience to suit yours....
Faithfully,
David Belasco.
Many readers may suppose, because Belasco is still living and at the zenith of his career, that it was an easy task to compile and arrange a complete record of his life. The truth is far otherwise. There was once a vast amount of invaluable material for such a record,—comprising a copy of every programme in which his name appeared from 1871 to the end of the theatrical season of 1897-’98, together with every important article about him or his work in the same period, several scores of photographs of him in dramatic characters and many hundreds of interesting letters. But that unique collection, the property and pride of his mother, was destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake-fire, April 18, 1906; and his dubiosity about exact dates proved to be more than justified. The comprehensive and authoritative Chronology of Belasco’s life which is included in this Memoir is, therefore, chiefly the product of Mr. Winter’s indefatigable, patient original research and labor: such parts of it as were not made by him were made entirely according to his plan and by his direction, specifying the sources of information to be consulted. And I would specially emphasize the fact that wherever this Memoir may be found to differ from, or conflict with, other accounts of Belasco’s career those other accounts are erroneous.