Much the most interesting person and much the ablest performer who has appeared under the management of Belasco is Blanche Bates. At the zenith of her career she exhibited a combination of brilliant beauty, inspiriting animation and impetuous vigor quite extraordinary and irresistibly winning. Her lovely dark eyes sparkled with glee. Her handsome countenance radiated gladness. She seemed incarnate joy. Her voice was clear, liquid, sweet; her enunciation distinct, her bearing distinguished, her action free and graceful. I have seldom seen an actress whose mere presence conveyed such a delightful sense of abounding vitality and happiness. In the last ten years no actress in our country has equalled her in brilliancy and power. She might have grasped the supremacy of the American Stage, alike in Comedy and Tragedy, personating such representative parts as Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Cleopatra and taking by right the place once occupied by Ada Rehan and afterward by Julia Marlowe. While under Belasco’s management she did give three performances which deservedly are remembered among the best of her time,—namely, Cigarette, in “Under Two Flags”; Yo-San, in “The Darling of the Gods,” and The Girl, in “The Girl of the Golden West.” But, although incontestably she possesses intellectual character, a strain of capricious levity is also among her attributes; she has weakly acquiesced to the dictates of vacuous social taste and sordid commercial spirit, paltered with her great talents, thrown away high ambition and golden opportunity, and so came at last to mere failure and obscurity. Her nature and her artistic style require for their full and free arousal and exercise parts of romantic, passionate, picturesque character, admitting of large, bold, sparkling treatment. She acted under Belasco’s direction for about twelve years: since leaving it, in 1912, she has done nothing in the Theatre of importance. “The modern, ’drawing-room drama’ in which she aspired to play,”—so Belasco once remarked to me,—“is not, to my mind, suited to her, and so we parted.”

Blanche Bates is a native of Portland, Oregon, born August 25, 1872; her father was manager of the Oro Fino Theatre, Portland, at the time of her birth. Her youth was passed in San Francisco, where she was well educated. She went on the stage in 1894, appearing at Stockwell’s Theatre (later called the Columbia), in that city, in a play called “This Picture and That.” Her novitiate was served chiefly under the management of T. Daniel Frawley. For several years she acted in cities in the Far West, playing all sorts of parts. At one time, in California, she was professionally associated with that fine comedian Frank Worthing (Francis George Pentland, 1866-1910), who materially helped to develop and train her histrionic talents. Belasco first became acquainted with her while she was yet a child, at the time of his professional alliance with her mother, Mrs. F. M. Bates. In 1896, during Mrs. Carter’s first season in “The Heart of Maryland,” Blanche visited New York, witnessed that performance, and applied to Belasco for employment. At the moment it was not possible for him to engage her, but he was neither forgetful of an old promise of his made to Mrs. Bates that he would assist her daughter, if ever he should be able to do so, nor unmindful of the beauty, talent, and charming personality of the applicant, and he assured her that she “should have a chance” at the first opportunity. That opportunity did not present itself for nearly three years. Meanwhile, Miss Bates returned to California and acted there, for about two years more, with the Frawley company. In the Spring of 1898 she was engaged by Augustin Daly and for a short time she acted under his management. On February 9, 1899, she made a single brilliantly successful appearance, at Daly’s Theatre, as the Countess Mirtza, on the occasion of the first presentment in this country of the popular melodrama of “The Great Ruby.” She disagreed, however, with the autocratic Daly and immediately retired from his company. On March 13, 1899, acting at the Broadway Theatre, New York, in association with Belasco’s old friend and comrade

James O’Neill, she distinguished herself as Milady, in “The Three Guardsmen,” and on October 19, that year, at the Herald Square Theatre, she gave a notably fine performance,—splendidly effective in the principal scene,—of Hannah Jacobs, in Israel Zangwill’s stage synopsis of his novel of “The Children of the Ghetto.” A few weeks later Belasco informed Miss Bates that if she were willing to begin in a farce which he did not much esteem he was ready to undertake her management preparatory to “giving her her chance.” “The Children of the Ghetto” had proved a failure, and the actress joyfully accepted the manager’s proposal.

Blanche Bates first acted under Belasco’s management, December 25, 1899, at the Columbia Theatre, Washington, D. C., appearing as Cora, the principal person in Belasco’s “Naughty Anthony”: on January 8, 1900, she appeared in it at the Herald Square Theatre, New York. The title of that farce is not altogether felicitous, because possibly suggestive of impropriety, but there is nothing mischievous in the fabric itself. The piece is incorporative of one scene, varied and rewritten, from an unremembered farce of other days, and, with its freightage of old but always effective stage subterfuges and comic “business,” it reminded experienced observers of such plays, far and forgot now, as “Flies in the Web,” “My Neighbor’s Wife,” “Playing with Fire,” “To Oblige Benson,” etc. In it Belasco made use of one of the oldest theatrical expedients for creating comic confusion and mirthful effect,—the expedient of a mistaken identity. The chief male in it is Anthony Depew, a moral professor of the Chautauqua brotherhood, who becomes enamoured of a coquettish girl, in the hosiery business, and whose exploits in osculation lead him into a troublesome dilemma, from which he endeavors to escape by pretending to be somebody else. This kind of perplexity has been common on the stage since the distant days of “The Three Singles; or, Two and the Deuce.” Such themes do not require much comment. The chief fact to be recorded in this case is the uncommon felicity of the cast and the excellence of the stage direction. But such an actor as Frank Worthing (who was essentially a light comedian, and, as such, the most conspicuous local performer of the day, in his particular line) and such an actress as Miss Bates were practically wasted in so ephemeral a trifle. This was the cast in full:

Belasco’s serious purpose, in this play, underlying the quest of laughter, was to satirize moral humbug, and that good purpose he accomplished. Anthony Depew is an amiable impostor, established at Chautauqua, New York, to give lessons in moral conduct to persons who deem themselves tempted to go astray. He goes astray himself, as far as compromising osculation, and he causes all manner of disturbance, in several households, by fixing the guilt of a kiss upon an innocent booby, who is his landlord. Worthing embodied that humbug in an admirable manner. His plan was definite, his execution firm and true, his satire cumulative; and from first to last he never swerved from that demeanor of perfect gravity which makes absurd proceedings irresistibly amusing. Miss Bates, even more than usually beautiful as Cora, made the tempter of Anthony a compound of demure simplicity and arch, piquant glee, and, in her complete frustration of the Professor’s moral heroics, she was a delightful incarnation of honest, healthful, triumphant woman nature. A colloquy of these two players, as preceptor and pupil, has seldom been surpassed for pure fun. Specification of the fantastic situations in which the Professor involves himself and his landlord, Adam Budd,—abundantly comical in the seemingly unpremeditated humor, the soft, silky manner, and the grotesque personality assumed by Le Moyne,—would be a tedious business. Good acting, however, did not suffice to sustain the play in public favor. Writing about this venture Belasco says: