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Girl of the Golden West, The
Girl of the Golden West, The (1905), a play by David Belasco. [Belasco Theatre, 224 perf.] Minnie Falconer ( Blanche Bates) may be the owner of the Polka Saloon in a California mining camp called Cloudy Mountain, but she is also the town's respected schoolmarm, and she is courted by the gentlemanly but dangerous sheriff Jack Rance ( Frank Keenan). While the town seeks a bandit named Ramerrez, she falls in love with a handsome young man named Dick Johnson ( Robert Hilliard), who she soon discovers is none other than the hunted bandit. When Johnson is shot by Rance, Minnie hides Johnson in her loft, but his whereabouts are revealed to Rance by blood dripping from the ceiling. She agrees to play a game of poker with Rance, Johnson's fate to be determined by the winner. She cheats to win, pulling a pair of aces from her petticoat after distracting the sheriff. However, the miners would still hang Johnson, and only Minnie's pleas spare him. Reluctantly she agrees to leave her beloved golden hills, and she and Johnson ride off to find a new life. Responding to criticism about the mechanics of his plot, especially the dripping blood, Belasco wrote, “I know the period of Forty‐nine as I know my alphabet, and there are things in my The Girl of the Golden West truer than many of the incidents [in the stories by] Bret Harte.” However, Belasco's biographer, Craig Timberlake, has suggested the many debts the dramatist owed Harte, among them a heroine who ran a Polka Saloon. Typical of producer‐director's Belasco's striking theatrical effects was his opening, in which a vertically moving panorama took audiences from Minnie's cabin high in the hills down a path to the front of the saloon. The rest of the stage was then lit to reveal the first act set. The play was made into a popular opera by Puccini in 1910.
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Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html |
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Girl of the Golden West, The
Girl of the Golden West, The, play by Belasco, produced in 1905 and published in 1925. It became the libretto of an Italian opera by Puccini (1910).
“The Girl,” saloon keeper and schoolmistress in a Far Western mining community, falls in love with Dick Johnson, an outlaw who loves her too. Johnson, wounded, is tracked to her cabin by the sheriff, Jack Rance, who also loves the Girl but accepts her offer to decide by a game of poker whether he shall have her or, if he loses, discontinue his search for her lover. The sheriff is bested by her cheating, but Johnson is captured when he leaves the cabin. When the miners see how much she loves her outlaw, they free him, and Johnson and “The Girl” start eastward to a new life. |
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Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html |
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Girl of the Golden West, The
Girl of the Golden West, The ( Puccini). See Fanciulla del West, La.
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Cite this article
MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O76-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Girl of the Golden West, The." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O76-GirloftheGoldenWestThe.html |
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