David Belasco

David Belasco , 1853-1931, American theatrical manager and producer, b. San Francisco. He was actively connected with the theater from his youth, and while associated with Dion Boucicault in Virginia City, Nev., he was first exposed to scenic realism. At 19 he became stage manager of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco. His first venture as a playwright was when, in 1880, in association with James A. Herne, he toured the country in Hearts of Oak, a play adapted by them from an old melodrama. Connections with the Frohmans brought him to New York City in association (1882-84) with the Madison Square Theatre and later (1886-90) as stage manager of the Lyceum. He became an independent producer in 1895. Known for his minutely detailed and spectacular stage settings, Belasco showed inventiveness in his use of stage lighting. A creator of stars, he was lucratively associated with Mrs. Leslie Carter , David Warfield, Blanche Bates, Frances Starr, Ina Claire, and Lenore Ulric. His plays, mostly adaptations, were vehicles for his actors and for his lavish settings. His most successful writing combinations were with Herne, Franklyn Fyles, Henry C. De Mille, and John Luther Long . In 1907 he built the Stuyvesant Theater, later known as the Belasco, during his fight against the Theatrical Syndicate of the 1890s. The New York Public Library has his collection of theatrical materials. He wrote The Theatre through Its Stage Door (1919, repr. 1969).

Bibliography: See his plays, ed. by R. H. Ball (1940, repr. 1965); biography by W. Winter (2 vol., 3d ed. 1925, repr. 1972).

Belasco, David [ David Valasco] (1859–1931), American actor-manager and playwright, for many years one of the outstanding personalities of the American theatre. On stage as a child, he continued to act as an adult, and also made a success of dramatizing novels, adapting old plays, and devising spectacular melodramas.

In 1882 Daniel Frohman appointed him stage manager of the Madison Square Theatre and in 1886 he became Steele Mackaye's stage manager at the Lyceum in New York where he remained until 1890, continuing to stage a number of his own plays, mainly collaborations. Success came with The Girl I Left behind Me (1893), The Heart of Maryland (1895), with Maurice Barrymore, Zaza (1899), starring Mrs Leslie Carter, and Madam Butterfly (1900), with Blanche Bates. This dramatization of a story by John Luther Long was used by Puccini as the basis of an opera, as was The Girl of the Golden West (1905). Meanwhile Belasco had begun his association with the actor David Warfield in Klein's The Auctioneer (1901). In the following year he opened the first Belasco Theatre, where several of his most famous plays were first seen (see REPUBLIC). Its success enabled Belasco to build a new theatre which opened in 1907 as the Stuyvesant, becoming the Belasco in 1910. Here Belasco remained until his death, his last production being Mima (1928), his own adaptation of Molnár's The Red Mill. Vain and posturing, he contributed little that was original to the American stage, and in no way encouraged national American drama; but he belongs to the great age of American stagecraft. His great contribution to the American scene lay in his elaborate décors and the passion for realism which led him, in his melodrama The Governor's Lady (1912), to place an exact replica of a Child's restaurant on the stage. He was a meticulous stage director, and made good use of the mechanical inventions of his time, as well as interesting and far-reaching experiments in the use of light. His long fight against the stranglehold of the Theatrical Syndicate involved the freedom of the American theatre.