Belasco, David, 1853-1931; Theater -- United States
On August 18 H. J. Byron’s comedy of “The Upper Crust” was played at the
Baldwin, in conjunction with the burlesque opera of “Little Amy
Robsart,” and that double bill held the stage for a fortnight. During
that time Belasco completed an adaptation of the “prize drama” by T. P.
Cooke, entitled “True to the Core,”--first acted at the Bowery Theatre,
New York, December 17, 1866. It had been seen in San Francisco twelve
years earlier, in its original form. I have been able to find only a
mutilated programme of the performance of Belasco’s version, August 30,
1880, which gives part of the cast as follows:
_Truegold_ James O’Neill.
_Geoffrey Dangerfield_ Frederic de Belleville.
_Lord High Admiral of England_ A. D. Bradley.
_Marah_ Adelaide Stanhope.
_Mabel Truegold_ Lillian Andrews.
_Queen Elizabeth_ Eva West.
“True to the Core” is an old-fashioned melodrama, of which the hero,
_Truegold_, is an English pilot who passes through many “moving
accidents by flood and field,” being seized by treasonous conspirators,
placed on board a vessel of the Spanish Armada, which he pilots upon a
rock, instead of into Portsmouth Harbor, and who is in danger,
subsequently, of losing his head on the block rather than break his
word, but who is followed, served, and ultimately saved by a gypsy
woman, _Marah_, whom he has befriended. It was played for one week to
audiences of fair size and was succeeded, in order, by William G. Wills’
“Ninon,”--acted September 6, for the first time in America,--“Aladdin
Number Two; or, The Wonderful Scamp,” “Forget Me Not,” Bartley
Campbell’s “The Galley Slave,” the same author’s “Fairfax,” and “Golden
Game,”--all produced under Belasco’s care, and all, unhappily, performed
to lessening receipts.
The next incident of note at the Baldwin was the coming of William E.
Sheridan, who opened there November 15, playing _King Louis the
Eleventh_, and whose advent brought back a measure of prosperity to the
theatre. Belasco, in his “Story,” records this remembrance and estimate
of Sheridan:
A STERLING ACTOR AND AN INTERESTING ESTIMATE:--WILLIAM E. SHERIDAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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