give it properly, as I would now, but the ‘old boys’ wouldn’t have it. They began to catcall and cry ‘Nix! Nix!’ ‘The old way! the old way!’ and they made me get up on one of the tables and begin all over again and give it in the good old way, raving and shrieking and tearing my hair, as I used to do when a boy, when the audiences used to say I’d break a blood-vessel if I kept on! So I went through with it, though it was pretty hard work, and they were so delighted they made me give ‘The Vagabonds’ for an encore, but I ‘stuck’ dead, halfway through that, and couldn’t go on to save my soul, so they let me off....
“I didn’t know the names of all those who came, but by and by I would recognize a glance of an eye or the turn of a head and recall that I knew that fellow when he was a boy. They were so much altered—one of the greatest scamps of the school was a staid, respected banker, and another was a portly physician of the highest standing, and so on. It was all very interesting to me—and at times very pathetic and touching....
“My night at the Bohemian rather overwhelmed me—when I looked about and saw many of the leading men of San Francisco and remembered the days when I couldn’t even get into that club! They gave a play in my honor, by Dr. Shiels, and there were many charming speeches and I made my acknowledgments as well as I could, and then they gave me a cartoon, painted by Neuhaus. It shows me kneeling at the shrine of The Owl [the symbol of the Bohemian Club], presenting my offering, ‘The Rose of the Rancho,’ to their patron bird of Bohemia.”
I have endeavored to obtain reports of the speeches at these festivals but have been unable to do so. At the Lincoln Grammar School Dinner the speakers were Professor Marks, Charles A. Miller, Joseph Greenberg, James I. Taylor, Charles F. Gall, and J. J. McBride, all of San Francisco, and Arthur L. Levinsky, of Stockton. Among the speakers at the Bohemian Club supper were Dr. J. Wilson Shiels, Joseph D. Redding, Charles J. Fields, Willis Polk, Waldemar Young, and Mackenzie Gordon.—Belasco left San Francisco for New York on March 2 and arrived there on the 7th.
In the spring of 1909, soon after he returned from his visit to San Francisco, the Theatrical Syndicate practically surrendered in its fight to exclude Belasco from the theatres which it dominated. The reason for this surrender was, of course, purely selfish. The Belasco theatrical productions were not only the best that were being made in America but, also, they were among the most profitable. He had long been firmly established in public favor: he was managing two splendid theatres in New York: he controlled, directly or indirectly, others in other cities: each season he had grown more influential: it was a manifest impossibility to crush him: many janitorial managers of theatres in different parts of the country were bitterly dissatisfied because his popular and remunerative productions were not “booked” in their theatres: the obvious course of commercial expediency was to terminate a losing conflict and utilize and prosper by the leading theatrical manager in America: to the Syndicate, as to Petruchio in Grumio’s description of him, “nothing comes amiss so money comes withal,” and the greatest wonder is not that it forgave Belasco the heinous crime of working for his own advantage but that, at heavy financial loss, it so long debarred him from the “first-class territory.” The upshot of the various considerations indicated was an understanding between the parties in opposition (namely, the booking agency of the Messrs. Klaw & Erlanger, representing the Syndicate, on the one side, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Grey Fiske and Belasco, on the other), whereby,—as set forth in a statement issued by Fiske,—it was arranged that “Klaw & Erlanger and Fiske and Belasco will hereafter, whenever mutually agreeable, play attractions in each other’s theatres.” Since that understanding was reached, April 29, 1909, they have, as far as I know, done so.
I am far from regarding any association between Belasco and the Theatrical Syndicate as being either for his best interest or for that of the American Stage. Belasco, however, thinks differently, and in a recent conversation with me he summed up his feeling about the Syndicate in these words: “In the conferences initiated by our lawyer Mr. Gerber [David Gerber was attorney for Belasco as well as for Klaw & Erlanger] it was found that we could enter upon business relations for the betterment of the American Stage without any sacrifice of principle or integrity, and I think our arrangement has been beneficial for the Stage. I am older than I used to be; I have no ill-feeling; our relations are very friendly, and I am satisfied to ‘let the dead past bury its dead.’” That is very well—but, as it happens, all that was truly urged by Fiske and Belasco (among others) in opposition to the Theatrical Syndicate before the business understanding above recorded remained equally true after it; newspaper files and many legal instruments are accessible and anybody can consult them who wishes to do so; the public record cannot be evaded. I am thoroughly familiar with the annals of the Syndicate and I do not agree with Belasco in his present friendly and favorable attitude. On the contrary, I am satisfied that the influence of the Syndicate upon matters of dramatic art must, in the nature of things, remain vulgar and degrading, and in matters of business oppressive and sordid, to the end of the chapter. Public opinion, however, and that of the newspaper press has long been indifferent on this subject, and I am now convinced that it is only by the passing away of the men who compose the Syndicate (in whom, happily, “nature’s copy’s not eterne”) and the accession to theatrical management of men of higher character and ideals and finer intellect that the American Theatre will be measurably redeemed from its impaired estate.
Belasco’s course, meanwhile, in dealing with the Syndicate has been incorrectly described as “a surrender” on his part and he has been much misrepresented therein. From the first of difference and dispute he maintained his right to independence in the conduct of his managerial business. In various conversations with me, many years before the arrangement with his opponents was reached, he declared, in substance, half-a-score of times or more: “I have no wish to try to interfere with these people [meaning the Syndicate] in their business. What I am fighting for is my right to book my productions with whatever managers want to book them, for my best advantage.”
A newspaper intimation that Belasco, while booking through the Syndicate agency, would “fear to offend the Trust” brought from him (1909) the following specific disclaimer of subserviency:
“Please deny for me, emphatically, the statement that I ‘hesitate to give offence to the Theatrical Trust.’ My position regarding the Theatrical Trust is too well known, I hope, for anyone to believe that!”