Belasco, David, 1853-1931; Theater -- United States
Clara Morris made her first appearance in San Francisco at the Baldwin,
November 4, as _Miss Multon_, and continued to act there for about eight
weeks. During that time Belasco was able to bestow some attention and
labor on an original play of his called “The Lone Pine,” in which he had
acted at Sacramento and a few other “interior places” during a brief
starring venture, and which he desired entirely to rewrite. In December,
however, he was compelled to lay aside that work and turn again to hack
playwrighting for the Baldwin company. His election fell on Watts
Phillips’ old spectacle play of “Not Guilty,” which he altered and
adapted in less than one week. It was announced as “The Grand Production
of the Magnificent Musical, Military, Dramatic, and Spectacular (_sic_)
Christmas Piece, which has been given for eight successive Christmas
seasons in Philadelphia,” and it was produced for the first time at the
Baldwin on December 24, 1878. This was the cast:
_Robert Arnold_ James O’Neill.
_Silas Jarrett_ Lewis Morrison.
_Jack Snipe_ C. B. Bishop.
_Isaac Vider_ J. W. Jennings.
_Joe Triggs_ James A. Herne.
_Trumble_ A. D. Bradley.
_St. Clair_ Forrest Robinson.
_Lal Singh_ William Seymour.
_Sergeant Wattles_ John N. Long.
_Polecat_ King Hedley.
_Alice Armitage_ Rose Wood.
_Polly Dobbs_ May Hart.
All the work of adaptation and stage management was done by Belasco--and
for it he received the munificent payment of $12.50 a performance.
Recalling the production, he writes: “A ’stock dramatist’ at that time
was obliged to do his work on short notice, and it was taken as a matter
of course that I should get a play ready for rehearsal in less than a
week, and put it on in less than another week. ’Not Guilty’ was very
spectacular (_sic_), and with my customary leaning to warfare I
introduced a Battle Scene, with several hundred people in an
embarkation, as well as horses and cannon. This embarkation alone used
to take ten minutes. It has all been done in many plays since--the
booming of guns, the padding of the horses’ hoofs on earth and stone,
the moving crowds in sight and larger ones suggested, beyond the range
of vision,--but this was the original, and it was wonderfully effective,
if I do say it myself.” Belasco’s view agrees with that recorded by all
competent observers of the time--one of the most conservative of whom
wrote, in “The San Francisco Evening Bulletin,” that “the Battle Scene,
in the Fourth Act, was about the most realistic ever produced on the
stage.” An operatic chorus of more than eighty voices was employed and
“The Cameron Cadets”--a local military organization--participated “in
full Highland costume.”
WITHDRAWAL FROM THE BALDWIN.--“THE LONE PINE” AND DENMAN THOMPSON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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