Volume 1 — WITHDRAWAL FROM THE BALDWIN.—“THE LONE PINE” AND DENMAN THOMPSON.

Belasco withdrew from the Baldwin Theatre company immediately after the “run” of “Not Guilty.” He was in danger of becoming exhausted by over-work and he was resentful of mean treatment to which he had been subjected. Lewis Morrison, who had suggested Phillips’ old spectacle for alteration, and Frederick Lyster, who had caused the introduction in it of music selected from the opera of “Carmen,” by connivance with Maguire, charged a “royalty” of twelve per cent. against the gross receipts from representations of that play, although Belasco was paid for his service only about one per cent. This injustice, coming to the knowledge of Baldwin, greatly incensed him, and in order to remedy it he gave to Belasco $1,000. With that sum added to his savings he felt at liberty to desist for a time from the exacting requirements of employment under Maguire, but in about two months he had resumed his old position, going back at the earnest request of Herne. In his “Story” he gives the following account of his experience in the interim:

“J. M. Hill, the pioneer of page advertising, brought Denman Thompson to the Bush Street Theatre in ’Joshua Whitcomb,’ startling San Francisco by a lavish press work, which had never been heard of before. ’Young man,’ Hill said to me, ’I want you to see Thompson, and to study him. If you find him a play, there may be a fortune in it for you.’ When I met Thompson afterwards and he suggested that we collaborate, I told him that such a proposition was quite impossible, but that I had been working on a play not yet finished, [“The Lone Pine”] and that I would send it to him. I told him and Hill the gist of the story, and then and there the latter drew up a contract, giving me a retainer of $1,000 and tempting me with the proposition that were the piece a success I might get eight hundred a week out of it. In due course of time I completed two acts and sent them on to him in New York. Soon I received a message: ’We like your manuscript. Bring acts three and four yourself. Railroad fares arranged.’ When I reached New York I went to the Union Square Hotel and there met Hill and Thompson again. It was like giving a part of myself when I handed over the Third Act of ’The Lone Pine.’ To my dismay, Thompson began to give suggestions, explaining what he intended to do, making of his part a youthful Joshua Whitcomb, with a fine sprinkling of slang and curses, and although I knew that if I could give this man a successful play I could make a fortune—thirty-two hundred a month, perhaps more!—I could not bring myself to do it. I went to my hotel and wrote Hill a letter, explaining the conclusion I had come to, and returning the thousand dollars retaining fee. But Hill would hear none of this and grew very angry trying to make me see Thompson’s point of view and sending back the retainer. To avoid any further discussion, I boarded a train and left New York, having seen very little of the city. Hill’s parting message was: ’If I don’t produce that play, no one shall.’ They never returned my manuscript, and years after, when I was stage-manager at the Madison Square, I thought that it would be a fitting successor to my ’May Blossom,’ which I had just produced. So I went to Dr. Mallory and told him of the Thompson-Hill episode. He had a streak of the fighter in him, and suggested that I sue Hill for the recovery of the manuscript. After some preliminary proceedings we were persuaded that Hill had actually lost the manuscript, even though he still refused to release me from my contract. So the suit was withdrawn, for there was nothing to go upon.

“During the days when Hill was manager of the New York Standard Theatre we met again, and I did some work for him. It was then that he returned me my contract. Then, a miracle of miracles happened, at the time of the razing of the Union Square Hotel. The clerk sent for Mr. Ryan (who afterwards played in ’Naughty Anthony’), and told him that in one of the back rooms he had found a bundle of papers behind some old books. My lost manuscript was at last found! Some day I may finish it for David Warfield.”