Volume 1 — STROLLING AD INTERIM.—BELASCO AS “THE FIRST OLD WOMAN.”

In September, 1877, during “Fair Week,”—24th to 29th,—Belasco was stage manager of a company from the California Theatre, headed by Thomas W. Keene, which performed at the Petaluma Theatre, in the California town of the same name, in “The Lady of Lyons,” “The Young Widow,” “The Hidden Hand” (Belasco’s version), “Robert Macaire,” “The Wife,” “My Turn Next,” “The Streets of New York,” “The Rough Diamond,” “Deborah,” and “The People’s Lawyer.” Belasco, besides directing the stage, acted in those plays, respectively, as Monsieur Deschapelles, Mandeville, Craven Lenoir, Pierre, Lorenzo, Tom Bolus, Dan, Captain Blenham, Peter, and Lawyer Tripper.

Soon after that he joined a company, under the management of Frank I. Frayne, known as the “Frayne Troupe,” of which M. B. Curtis, “Harry” M. Brown, E. N. Thayer, Mrs. “Harry” Courtaine, Gertrude Granville, and Miss Fletcher were also members. He joined that company at Humboldt, Oregon, where the opening bill was “The Ticket-of-Leave Man.” Belasco was to play Melter Moss, but the actress who was cast for Mrs. Willoughby becoming ill, Belasco (who knew all the other parts as well as his own) volunteered to take her place in that character and did so with such success that Frayne kept him in it: “I was scheduled to play all the first ’old women’ that season,” he writes to me, “and I found it for some time difficult to escape my new ’specialty.’”