The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-05-20
Belasco's Greatest Drama--His Own Life
fThls is che second Of four stories rtlnting i'm dramatic fashion the drama that was the life of David Be-
By GILBERT SWAN NEA Service Writer.

| W1Lh the crudest or stages, anu oNoH cruder audiences. "a dizzy reper- foire cf plays and roles. experi- snces that would crowd shelf with fat volumes. stage managerships, star roles and small roles. barn storming trips into the highways and byways. rises and falls. And then, a list of great names. headed by the Frohmans, Adelaide Nelson and Leslie Carter! A juni- ble of ambitious, youthful gropings, successes and failures.
 As broken and chaotic as a futur- E fst bit of verse were the next half a dozen years in the life of David Be- lasco.
 Let's just skim the high-lights: Into Nevada City had come the greatest Juliet the stage has ever known - Adelaide Nelson. The youthful genius, Belasco, had seen and adored. She had actually given him a role in one of her productions. And he had returned to the Nevada bonanza town to watch and worship.
 Then, with his return from the discouraging Hearts of Oak" tour, Belasco found himself stage director of the Baldwin Theater in San Fran cisco.
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 The lovely Adelaide had an- nounced her farewell perform aflce."
 He must appear! The company was already organized. He cast himself in the lowly role of a super in ballroom stage scene, so that he could share, even in the most modest way, a place on the same platform with Adelaide Nelson.
 That night the curtain rang down on the last performance of a great actress. She never returned to the stage and, dying, she sent Belasco a Rorgeous black pearl from her col lection-one of his most prized gifts.
 Then, from New York. came Gus tav Frohman, who had been in San Francisco but brief time before the young stage director had com pletely sold himself to the big town producers. Together they put on ssThe Octoroon," and with great suc- cess. F'rohman turned two more plays over to Belasco for revision, one of them American Born," which brought Charles Frohman hurriedly to the coast.
 Success-at $35 Week!
 New York began to hear of the coast prodigy. And the Mallory Brothers, operating the Madison Square theater, urged him to rush east on a fiat" contract. He was to get $35 a week, and $10 per night as royalties on any of his own plays. This time David Belasco came to the metropolis as real theater factor! His first effort was Bronson How ards Young Mrs Winthrop"
 Broadway was just coming on the I'M 1< ell Voyu- ly up from the Bowery into lower Broadway, with Madison Square as "far uptown" terminus. Props were creaky, lighting was most antiquated yet the inventive young Belasco began to knock the town cold" as they now put it.
 He shared quarters with the Froh- mans. Each day they were to be found in O'Neil's historic chop house enjoying their soda pop and pie.
 The BelascO Quarrels Begin
 But Belasco was a "one man" snowman. The western fighting sririt was too strong for him. He split with the Mallorys and he split with the Frohmans. and sooner or later he quarreled with almost everyone he had loved.
 And that's where Leslie Carter comes in!
 Before the breaks, however. his trail had crossed those of the famous Lotta Crabtree, sensation of the time; of H. O. De Mile, father of Cecil B. De Mile, with whom he wrote "The Charity Balr'; of Blanche Walsh, then a theater school student; of William Gillette, a coming playwright-and score of other great figures of the theater.
 Out in Chicago Leslie Carter had upset the conventions by daring to get a divorce. She had been a fas- cinating daughter of Kentucky. born Caroline Louise Dudley, and had married into the rich and prominent "Carter's Little Liver Pill" family. Divorce just wasn't being done, and she was a pariah in social circles. The scorching thus received echoed against her stage career. Time and again she came to Belasco, urging him to direct her and train her. She sold her jewelry to get along while waiting for "the big chance"
 A Great Name Rises
 Belasco, to the astonishment of his theatrical fellows, gave her this op- portunity. It came in "The Ugly Duckling," and she was hailed as the greatest actress of her time.
 It was the struggle to transform Mrs Carter into an actress, Belasco has often stated, that forced him from the role of an employe of oth- CTS into the status of a producer in his own right. He quit the Froh- mans flat when theater stockholders denied Mrs Carter the use of stage for rehearsals. She was the person. ality about which his new ambitions
 ~ 1.x% his quick rise to fame.
 Not without struggle, however. He had taken Mrs Carter to Wash ington for an appearance in "Adrea" only to be blocked by theater- owning syndicate. So he leased convention hall, and brought in me- chanics to build stage and prosce- nium arch. The news leaked out. Just as he was about to open, the fire department walked in to con- demn the electric wiring.
 Edison Helps Him
 The young producer was desperate. His investment had taken most of his money. Where to turn?
 As, his friend Thomas Edison, the expert on electrical matters, who had helped him so much in gaining Knowledge of the new lighting gad- gets!
 'It'll be all right" said Edison briefly. don't worry!"
 That night a crew of Edison's men arrived and rewired the hall. The play opened. and ran a week. Be- lasco lost $40,000. but chuckled-al- most to his dying day-over the ',moral victory"
 (To-morrow: Gilbert Swan will tell, in the third of this series, the story of how David BclascO at last conquered Broadway and achieved a legendary glory whose like may never be seen agalii.)
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