Volume 1 — NEW YORK AGAIN.—“LA BELLE RUSSE” AT WALLACK’S.

Maguire, because he had produced Belasco’s play of “La Belle Russe” at the Baldwin and had thereby profited, appears to have considered that also he had thereby acquired a property in it. To this claim the necessitous dramatist assented (making, I suppose, a virtue of necessity), giving Maguire a half-interest. Maguire then decreed that they should go to New York together, in order to place the play with Wallack, if that should prove the most expedient arrangement, or to place it with any other manager from whom it might be possible to exact higher payment. Belasco consented to negotiate with other managers and ascertain what terms might be offered, “even though,” he said, “I had determined that none but Wallack should produce it.” On September 25, 1881, they left San Francisco together and came to New York.

According to Belasco’s statement to me, Augustin Daly wanted the play of “La Belle Russe” for Ada Rehan (to whom the central part would have been peculiarly unfitted), while A. M. Palmer wanted it for Miss Jeffreys-Lewis, at the Union Square, and John Stetson wanted it for Marie Prescott. Belasco had interviews with all of them, and with Wallack. His determination that Wallack should produce his play, if he possibly could arrange to have him do so, was intensified by the kindness of Wallack’s manner toward the young author and by the strong impression made upon him by that actor’s pictorial and winning personality. Maguire, meantime, consorted with Stetson, a person naturally congenial to him, and presently became insistent that the play should be intrusted to that manager. “After I had read the play to Stetson in his office (which I did very unwillingly),” Belasco told me, “the two of them threatened me with all sorts of consequences if I did not turn the manuscript over to Stetson, and I really believe they would have taken it from me by force if I had not buttoned it under my coat and bolted out of the office!” This pair of pilgrims had then been for some time in New York, and Maguire, by agreement, had been paying Belasco’s living expenses; now, by way of practical intimation that his will must prevail and the play be relinquished to Stetson, he stopped doing so. This left Belasco in a familiar but not the less painful plight—stranded—and it also incensed him against Maguire.

At this juncture, when unfortunately he was impecunious, indignant, and excited, he received a visit from Maguire’s nephew, Mr. Frank L. Goodwin, with whom he had already negotiated relative to “La Belle Russe,” and whom he now supposed to have come to him as Wallack’s representative. To this person he imprudently made known his quarrel with Maguire, and hastily inquired, “What will you give me for the play?” “Fifteen hundred dollars, cash,” Goodwin answered, and then, observing that he hesitated, “and a return ticket to San Francisco, and $100 more for your expenses.” “How soon can I have the money?” Belasco rejoined. “In half an hour.” “Then I’ll take it”—and he did, selling his play, outright, not, as he supposed, to Wallack, but to Goodwin, for $1,600 cash and a railroad ticket home! He received the money the same afternoon and left that night for San Francisco. When the play was produced at Wallack’s it was announced as “By arrangement with Mr. F. L. Goodwin, the production of a new and powerful drama by David Belasco, Esq.” Wallack paid Goodwin a high price for the play, which, since then, has been successfully acted throughout the English-speaking world, and, later, when told of the facts of the sale, expressed his profound regret and dissatisfaction that Belasco had not dealt directly with him. Fifty times the amount of money that Belasco received for “La Belle Russe” would have been more like a fair payment for it than the sum he actually received. “I did not particularly care what Maguire might do,” Belasco told me, “when he heard about the matter. I felt that I could get along much better without him than he could without me (I always did for Maguire far more than ever I got paid for!), but he cooled off after he got home, and I resumed work, for a little while, at the Baldwin.”