All That Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway, 1919-1959 by Ethan Mordden
Authors: Ethan Mordden
Ads: Link
the entire cast is onstage as the telephone rings. This particular outlet connects only with other rooms in the house, so:
THE LADY OF THE MANOR: But we’re all here!
As the others look suitably nervous, perplexed, or guilty, the mistress picks up the receiver, listens, gasps, and allows an expression of terror to seize her features. And the curtain falls.
And here’s a canny way to launch Act Two: the curtain goes up on the very next moment . Then, too, after the bad guy—the detective, as it happens—is outsmarted, the curtain comes down only to rise again on a nineteenth-century device relegated by this age to only the corniest fare, a kind of eleven o’clock pantomime. The Bat ’s was devoted to May Vokes, an audience favorite as the maid, who was seen poking open a door, looking around in fear, then backing out of sight as the public presumably let out an appreciate chuckle.
* * *
As we range through the content of Broadway in the early 1920s—searching, especially, for signs of evolution—we must note the surprising staying power of one manager who would appear to represent the most old-fashioned of theatres, David Belasco. However, this former actor who by the late 1890s had established himself as playwright, manager, and director was in fact as inventive as he was conservative. Though he worked in a variety of forms, by the early 1900s he was emphasizing melodrama. Some may call it damning that two of Belasco’s offerings turned so easily into Puccini operas; and his The Darling of the Gods (1902) is Tosca in Japan. Then, too, there is Belasco the fraudulent “realist,” rationalizing these melodramas with crudely naturalistic decor. This only stresses the humbug, by looking real in an unreal context. And what of Belasco the starmaker? Isn’t the ridiculous Svengali of Twentieth Century (1932) inspired in part by Belasco?
Even so, all this ignores Belasco’s ability to organize acting ensembles for his shows even while centering those precious stars of his, such as Mrs. Leslie Carter, Blanche Bates, and David Warfield. Other directors treated the extras as if they were bric-à-brac; Belasco individualized them. (No wonder he was called in to unify the sprawling Aphrodite .) Further, Belasco rehearsed more meticulously than other directors, searching (and rewriting) the text for characterological honesty in a shockingly modern way. History’s verdict is that Belasco was a gifted but antique show-off. Yet critics of his first nights saw it differently: Belasco put on good shows.
The difference in perception lies, obviously, in the ephemeral nature of performance. All that survives of Belasco today is the unimpressive scripts. Of Belasco’s collaboration with writer George Scarborough, The Son-Daughter (1919), the Evening Sun observed “a paste jewel put into a handsome gold setting.” Too often, the play wasn’t the thing: Belasco’s execution of it was. The Son-Daughter set forth the latest Belasco discovery, Lenore Ulric, as a young woman of New York’s Chinatown who avenges her father’s murder and an attempt on her fiancé’s life by agreeing to give herself to the bad guy. She despatches him instead in an elaborate murder scene. It’s more Tosca . There was also the customary Belasco pageantry, in a set-piece wedding in The Chamber of the Smiling Joss.
Ulric is a “son-daughter” because she loves like a woman, with filial respect, but counters outrages with rough justice, like a man. More conventionally, Ulric went on to Belasco’s French backstager Kiki (1921), as a chorus girl on the rise, thence to Belasco’s production of a Hungarian sex comedy, The Harem (1924). Returning to the unconventional, Ulric got into blackface for one of Belasco’s biggest successes, Lulu Belle (1926), written by Edward Sheldon and his nephew Charles MacArthur. 5
Lulu Belle is Carmen, set in Manhattan and Paris and anticipating more than slightly what Oscar Hammerstein did in Carmen Jones
THE LADY OF THE MANOR: But we’re all here!
As the others look suitably nervous, perplexed, or guilty, the mistress picks up the receiver, listens, gasps, and allows an expression of terror to seize her features. And the curtain falls.
And here’s a canny way to launch Act Two: the curtain goes up on the very next moment . Then, too, after the bad guy—the detective, as it happens—is outsmarted, the curtain comes down only to rise again on a nineteenth-century device relegated by this age to only the corniest fare, a kind of eleven o’clock pantomime. The Bat ’s was devoted to May Vokes, an audience favorite as the maid, who was seen poking open a door, looking around in fear, then backing out of sight as the public presumably let out an appreciate chuckle.
* * *
As we range through the content of Broadway in the early 1920s—searching, especially, for signs of evolution—we must note the surprising staying power of one manager who would appear to represent the most old-fashioned of theatres, David Belasco. However, this former actor who by the late 1890s had established himself as playwright, manager, and director was in fact as inventive as he was conservative. Though he worked in a variety of forms, by the early 1900s he was emphasizing melodrama. Some may call it damning that two of Belasco’s offerings turned so easily into Puccini operas; and his The Darling of the Gods (1902) is Tosca in Japan. Then, too, there is Belasco the fraudulent “realist,” rationalizing these melodramas with crudely naturalistic decor. This only stresses the humbug, by looking real in an unreal context. And what of Belasco the starmaker? Isn’t the ridiculous Svengali of Twentieth Century (1932) inspired in part by Belasco?
Even so, all this ignores Belasco’s ability to organize acting ensembles for his shows even while centering those precious stars of his, such as Mrs. Leslie Carter, Blanche Bates, and David Warfield. Other directors treated the extras as if they were bric-à-brac; Belasco individualized them. (No wonder he was called in to unify the sprawling Aphrodite .) Further, Belasco rehearsed more meticulously than other directors, searching (and rewriting) the text for characterological honesty in a shockingly modern way. History’s verdict is that Belasco was a gifted but antique show-off. Yet critics of his first nights saw it differently: Belasco put on good shows.
The difference in perception lies, obviously, in the ephemeral nature of performance. All that survives of Belasco today is the unimpressive scripts. Of Belasco’s collaboration with writer George Scarborough, The Son-Daughter (1919), the Evening Sun observed “a paste jewel put into a handsome gold setting.” Too often, the play wasn’t the thing: Belasco’s execution of it was. The Son-Daughter set forth the latest Belasco discovery, Lenore Ulric, as a young woman of New York’s Chinatown who avenges her father’s murder and an attempt on her fiancé’s life by agreeing to give herself to the bad guy. She despatches him instead in an elaborate murder scene. It’s more Tosca . There was also the customary Belasco pageantry, in a set-piece wedding in The Chamber of the Smiling Joss.
Ulric is a “son-daughter” because she loves like a woman, with filial respect, but counters outrages with rough justice, like a man. More conventionally, Ulric went on to Belasco’s French backstager Kiki (1921), as a chorus girl on the rise, thence to Belasco’s production of a Hungarian sex comedy, The Harem (1924). Returning to the unconventional, Ulric got into blackface for one of Belasco’s biggest successes, Lulu Belle (1926), written by Edward Sheldon and his nephew Charles MacArthur. 5
Lulu Belle is Carmen, set in Manhattan and Paris and anticipating more than slightly what Oscar Hammerstein did in Carmen Jones
Similar Books
