Volume 1 — A MASTERPIECE OF STAGECRAFT: THE STORM IN “THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST.”

Considered technically, Belasco’s production of “The Girl of the Golden West” was a genuine masterpiece of stagecraft, and it is specially memorable for the perfect example it exhibited of the right use of “realism” in the Theatre,—the use, in this instance, of an artfully created and perfect semblance of Nature in one of her wildest, most terrible moods as a background,—always felt, yet never obtruded,—for dramatic action the effect of which it steadily augmented and enforced. Nothing of the kind which I have ever seen in the Theatre has fully equalled in verisimilitude the blizzard on Cloudy Mountain as depicted by Belasco in the Second Act of this fine melodrama—such a bitter and cruel storm of wind-driven snow and ice as he had often suffered under in the strolling days of his nomadic youth. When the scene, the interior of the Girl’s log-cabin, was disclosed the spectators perceived, dimly, through windows at the back, a far vista of rugged, snow-clad mountains which gradually faded from vision as the fall of snow increased and the casements became obscured by sleet. Then, throughout the progress of the action, intensifying the sense of desolation, dread, and terror, the audience heard the wild moaning and shrill whistle of the gale, and at moments, as the tempest rose to a climax of fury, could see the fine-powdered snow driven in tiny sprays and eddies through every crevice of the walls and the very fabric of the cabin quiver and rock beneath the impact of terrific blasts of wind,—long-shrieking down the mountain sides before they struck,—while in every fitful pause was audible the sharp click-click-click of freezing snow driving on wall and window.

The means by which this effect of storm was produced could easily be specified and described; in themselves they are as simple as those employed by Belasco to make the almost equally impressive tempest in “Under Two Flags”: but it is a capital mistake to take the public behind the scenes of the Theatre and thus uncover the very heart of the players’ mystery and destroy illusion. In this instance it is enough to say, as revealing Belasco’s liberality, thoroughness, and care in placing his plays before the public, that operation of the necessary mechanical contrivances required a force of thirty-two trained artisans,—a sort of mechanical orchestra, directed by a centrally placed conductor who was visible from the special station of every worker. And it will, perhaps, be usefully suggestive to misguided exponents of literal “spontaneity” in Acting to mention that the perfectly harmonious effect of this remarkable imitation of a storm necessitated that at every performance exactly the same thing should be done on the stage at, to the second, exactly the prearranged instant.

A pleasing device utilized by Belasco in the investiture of this melodrama was a variant of the long familiar panorama which, moving from bottom to top of the stage, instead of across it from one side to the other, showed, first, a beautiful and romantic view of Cloudy Mountain and of the Girl’s cabin, perched, like an eyrie, high upon a canyon’s side; next, a winding mountain path leading down to a settlement and ending outside her saloon, the Polka: then, in a fleeting instant of darkness, the scene was changed to the interior of that saloon, where the action of the play begins. In this production, also, Belasco banished the usual orchestra and substituted for it a band of homely instruments,—the concertina, the banjo, and “the bones” of the old-time minstrels,—which discoursed such old, once familiar but now long-forgotten, airs as “Coal Oil Tommy,” “Campdown Races,” “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and “Old Dog Tray.”