Exit a Character

Of the hundreds of characters which Producer David Belasco created and presented during his more than 50 years in the U. S. theatre, the greatest by far was David Belasco. For all the time that he was bringing new realities to the stage-- placing live roses at the heroine's bed, using real antiques for historical settings-- he was busy fictionizing himself. When he died in Manhattan last week, debilitated by a severe attack of pneumonia in November, his last words were: "Doctor, I am fighting for my life." So well had Producer Belasco warped the web of legend about himself that his age could only be approximated at 77. The Belasco legend begins with his father. Humphrey Abraham Belasco, a descendant of Portuguese Jews who fled their native land because of religious persecution. Abraham Belasco emigrated in 1852 from England to San Francisco. The records of Son David's birth, a year later in San Francisco, were presumably destroyed by the earthquake-fire of 1906. David Belasco's theatrical record is less hazy. In 1882 he went from California to New York with enough stage experience to obtain work as lighting expert and stage manager for the old Madison Square Theatre. He claimed to have been the first to sink footlights into the stage. Later he began writing and producing plays with Daniel Frohman. In 1889. Caroline Dudley Carter was sensationally divorced by her husband Leslie of the Little Liver Pills family. Wise theatrical heads shook dubiously a year later when Producer Belasco had the temerity to star Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Ugly Duckling. The show and its leading lady were outstanding successes. Mrs. Carter worked for Belasco for the next 16 years, quarreling with and leaving him when she married again. Thereafter no star, once wedded, could shine in the Belasco firmament. The suggestion of ruptured romance between Actress Carter and Producer Belasco helped the latter's legend. Successively he discovered, developed, dropped Blanche Bates, Frances Starr, Ina Claire, Lenore Ulrich. Leo Dietrichstein and David Warfield also owe their careers to Producer Belasco. As carefully as he cultivated his famed Anglican clerical costume,* Producer Belasco fostered the properties, attitudes, legends which identified him. At times he was apt to croon about himself and his profession: "I am a mother at heart." At other times he was obsessed with a persecution mania, declaiming against imaginary slanderers: "I'd like to know who started all that talk. I'm sick and tired of it. I'd kick him around the town!" Equally extravagant are the tales about him. Once he stuck a pin in Frances Starr to get her to scream correctly. Once he took an axe to a set which Ina Claire had criticized. Once in Washington, he heard an audience wildly applauding at one of his shows, was bitterly vexed when he learned it was an ovation for President Wilson. Further evidence of his personal showmanship was his propensity for surrounding Character Belasco with the proper dramatic setting. Visitors at the studio above his theatre were shown his fireplace from the Alhambra, his chair made from a pew in a church at Stratford-on-Avon, his collection of 300 watches, knick-knacks and curiosities of all sorts. In his apartment in a quiet family hotel (the Gladstone) he had a miniature cathedral chancel in one of the closets. It is not likely that any of the 43 plays he wrote, collaborated on or revised (among them: The Girl Of The Golden West, A Grand Army Man, Kiki) are sufficiently significant for immortality. The glamour and daring of his earlier productions has been imitated and surpassed by more youthful competitors, making some of his most recent productions seem merely the queasiness of an old man. But as a character of the U. S. theatre. David Belasco has a good chance of enduring. He saw to that.

* He was buried, last week, from Manhattan's Central Synagogue.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.