A MASTERPIECE OF STAGECRAFT: THE STORM IN “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST.”
Considered technically, Belasco’s production of “The Girl of the Golden West” was a genuine masterpiece of stagecraft, and it is specially memorable for the perfect example it exhibited of the right use of “realism” in the Theatre,—the use, in this instance, of an artfully created and perfect semblance of Nature in one of her wildest, most terrible moods as a background,—always felt, yet never obtruded,—for dramatic action the effect of which it steadily augmented and enforced. Nothing of the kind which I have ever seen in the Theatre has fully equalled in verisimilitude the blizzard on Cloudy Mountain as depicted by Belasco in the Second Act of this fine melodrama—such a bitter and cruel storm of wind-driven snow and ice as he had often suffered under in the strolling days of his nomadic youth. When the scene, the interior of the Girl’s log-cabin, was disclosed the spectators perceived, dimly, through windows at the back, a far vista of rugged, snow-clad mountains which gradually faded from vision as the fall of snow increased and the casements became obscured by sleet. Then, throughout the progress of the action, intensifying the sense of desolation, dread, and terror, the audience heard the wild moaning and shrill whistle of the gale, and at moments, as the tempest rose to a climax of fury, could see the fine-powdered snow driven in tiny sprays and eddies through every crevice of the walls and the very fabric of the cabin quiver and rock beneath the impact of terrific blasts of wind,—long-shrieking down the mountain sides before they struck,—while in every fitful pause was audible the sharp click-click-click of freezing snow driving on wall and window.
The means by which this effect of storm was produced could easily be specified and described; in themselves they are as simple as those employed by Belasco to make the almost equally impressive tempest in “Under Two Flags”: but it is a capital mistake to take the public behind the scenes of the Theatre and thus uncover the very heart of the players’ mystery and destroy illusion. In this instance it is enough to say, as revealing Belasco’s liberality, thoroughness, and care in placing his plays before the public, that operation of the necessary mechanical contrivances required a force of thirty-two trained artisans,—a sort of mechanical orchestra, directed by a centrally placed conductor who was visible from the special station of every worker. And it will, perhaps, be usefully suggestive to misguided exponents of literal “spontaneity” in Acting to mention that the perfectly harmonious effect of this remarkable imitation of a storm necessitated that at every performance exactly the same thing should be done on the stage at, to the second, exactly the prearranged instant.
A pleasing device utilized by Belasco in the investiture of this melodrama was a variant of the long familiar panorama which, moving from bottom to top of the stage, instead of across it from one side to the other, showed, first, a beautiful and romantic view of Cloudy Mountain and of the Girl’s cabin, perched, like an eyrie, high upon a canyon’s side; next, a winding mountain path leading down to a settlement and ending outside her saloon, the Polka: then, in a fleeting instant of darkness, the scene was changed to the interior of that saloon, where the action of the play begins. In this production, also, Belasco banished the usual orchestra and substituted for it a band of homely instruments,—the concertina, the banjo, and “the bones” of the old-time minstrels,—which discoursed such old, once familiar but now long-forgotten, airs as “Coal Oil Tommy,” “Campdown Races,” “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and “Old Dog Tray.”
THE PARTING OF BLANCHE BATES AND BELASCO.—“THE FIGHTING HOPE” AND “NOBODY’S WIDOW.”
“The Girl of the Golden West” proved to be as successful as its author had expected: also, greatly to the disadvantage of the public, it proved to be the last important production in which, down to the present day (1917), Blanche Bates has appeared,—although she continued to act under the management of Belasco for about seven years. Three of those years were devoted to “The Girl,” which was presented throughout the country. Then, September 7, 1908, at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, Miss Bates was brought out in a new play by Mr. William J. Hurlbut, entitled “The Fighting Hope,” which was acted in New York, September 22, at the Stuyvesant Theatre. It held the stage there until January 16, 1909; was transferred to the Belasco Theatre, January 18, and remained visible there until April 10. This was the cast:
| Burton Temple | Charles Richman. |
| Marshfield Craven | John W. Cope. |
| Robert Granger | Howell Hansel. |
| Anna | Blanche Bates. |
| Mrs. Mason | Loretta Wells. |
“The Fighting Hope” served as a professional vehicle for Miss Bates during two seasons. On October 24, 1910, at the Euclid Avenue Opera House, Cleveland, Ohio, Belasco presented her in “Nobody’s Widow,” by Mr. Avery Hopwood: that play was first acted in New York, November 14, that year, at the Hudson Theatre, with the following cast:
| Roxana Clayton | Blanche Bates. |
| Betty Jackson | Adelaide Prince. |
| Countess Manuela Valencia | Edith Campbell. |
| Fanny Owens | Dorothy Shoemaker. |
| Duke of Moreland | Bruce McRae. |
| Ned Stephens | Rex McDougall. |
| Baron Reuter | Henry Schumann-Heink. |
| Peter | Westhrop Saunders. |
Both those plays, though they enjoyed profitable careers, were, in fact, stop-gaps: they had never been produced but that “the strong necessity of the times enforced”: “Blanche wanted to appear in ‘drawing-room’ drama,” Belasco has said to me; “I was hard pressed and I took what I could get.” Both those plays owed their profitable careers entirely to Belasco,—to his unremitting and unacknowledged diligence in the labor of revising them and making them feasible for stage use and to the perfection of detail with which he invested their production and caused them to be acted. A whimsical remark which he once made to me, in conversation about another play, applies with force to both these ventures: “I have,” he said, “first and last, paid many authors handsome royalties for the privilege of working like a slave on their plays, without credit and generally without thanks, and making them into popular successes. Each time I have solemnly sworn I’ll never do it again—yet, somehow, I do! But I live in hope that some day somebody will bring me a finished play that only needs production.”