David Belasco

David Belasco (1853-1931), American theatrical director-producer and playwright, attempted to bring veracity to the popular melodrama through meticulous detail in setting and lighting. He led in the movement that made the director the theater's dominant personality.

David Belasco was born in San Francisco, Calif., on July 22, 1853. He was educated in a monastery, which may have prompted the quasi-clerical garb he wore in later life—a style that earned him the name "the Bishop of Broadway." He fled the monastery and joined a circus. By the age of 12 he was an actor on the San Francisco stage and had begun writing plays. In the following few years he joined companies barnstorming through the mining camps. In Virginia City, Nev., he served as secretary to Dion Boucicault, who inspired Belasco to try playwriting again. From 1873 to 1881 he was associated with several San Francisco theaters. His first play to attract attention was a collaborative effort with James A. Herne, Hearts of Oak. At 29 Belasco left for New York City, having acted more than 170 roles and written or adapted more than 100 plays.

His first position in New York was as a stage manager of the Madison Square Theater. In 1886 he became dissatisfied and joined the Frohmans as stage manager and house playwright. In 1890 he became an independent producer; his first real success was his own The Heart of Maryland, a melodrama inspired by the poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight." Belasco took unknowns and turned them into stars. The first of these, Leslie Carter, had suffered through a sensational divorce. Penniless, a social outcast, she came to Belasco, who trained her and then starred her in Maryland. It played for three seasons and was then taken to London.

During the 1890s the Theatrical Syndicate gained control of the theatrical world and individuals who refused to join found themselves with no theaters. In Washington, D.C., Belasco was forced to rent the barnlike Convention Hall, leaky roof and all, for his production of Andrea with Carter. During the fourth act there was a violent rainstorm, and the audience observed the play from under their umbrellas. In 1902 Belasco gained control of the Republic Theater in New York. In 1906 he began work on a new building on West 44th Street, which eventually became the Belasco Theater.

In addition to Carter, Belasco elevated David Warfield (a vaudeville entertainer), Lenore Ulric, Frances Starr, and Blanche Bates to stardom. Most of these stars had natural ability, but Belasco was also a master at handling publicity campaigns. Certainly Carter's past was in part responsible for her success. Belasco also preferred to work with unknown playwrights. He collaborated with John Luther Long to write Andrea, Madam Butterfly, and Darling of the Gods; and with Henry C. DeMille on Lord Chumley and The Wife, among others. Madam Butterfly and Belasco's own The Girl of the Golden West were later adapted as the librettos for the Puccini operas.

Belasco claimed to have been associated with the production of nearly 400 plays, most of them written or adapted by himself; but his writing, in a time when lbsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov were introducing realism, remained filled with sensational melodrama or maudlin sentiment. His plays have virtually no lasting value. His advances in realism were in technical aspects of theater; his settings were accurate to minute detail, for rather than recreate a specific setting he preferred to buy it and then move it on stage. He particularly excelled in spectacular effect and in amazing mechanical contrivances. In lighting, he pioneered the use of color silks and gelatin slides, loving to create "real" sunsets. Also, in a day when productions were hurriedly put together, Belasco took time to perfect his work; even his most severe critics admit a "tidiness" not often found on the American stage. He excelled in creating a mood and tension in his crowd and mob scenes. Moreover, whatever was seen on stage was Belasco and the other artists were the instruments of his will. He died in New York on May 14, 1931.

Further Reading

Belasco presents his ideas in The Theatre through Its Stage Door (1919) and in a chapter in Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinou, eds., Directors on Directing (1963). Craig Timberlake, The Bishop of Broadway: The Life and Work of David Belasco (1954), is an objective biography. The theater conditions Belasco knew are described in George R. McMinn, The Theater of the Golden Era in California (1941), and Robert Grau, The Business Man in the Amusement World (1910). Alan S. Downer, ed., American Drama and Its Critics (1965), contains material about Belasco. □

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.

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).