Volume 1 — “TRUE TO THE CORE.”

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:

TruegoldJames O’Neill.

Geoffrey DangerfieldFrederic de Belleville.

Lord High Admiral of EnglandA. D. Bradley.

MarahAdelaide Stanhope.

Mabel TruegoldLillian Andrews.

Queen ElizabethEva 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: