A singular yet characteristic incident of Belasco’s career was his production of a play called “The Man Inside,” written by a madman who had been the central figure in one of the most notorious murder cases in modern criminal annals,—Roland Burnham Molineux. That poor wretch is the son of a much respected citizen, General Edward Leslie Molineux, who gained rank and honorable distinction in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was arrested, February 7, 1899, charged with the murder of Mrs. Katherine J. Adams, who died, December 28, 1898, of poisoning by cyanide of mercury, which she unwittingly swallowed mixed with a medicine received through the mails and which it was alleged that Molineux had prepared and sent. His trial began, November 14, 1899, before Recorder (now Supreme Court Justice) John B. Goff and continued for fifty-five days, ending, January 7, 1900, with his conviction of murder in the first degree. On February 16 Recorder Goff sentenced Molineux to death and he was then taken to the Sing Sing Prison, where, for many months, he was incarcerated in the “Death House.” His case was carried to the Court of Appeals and, October 15, 1901, he was granted a new trial which began, before Justice Lambert, in Part—of the Supreme Court, October 17, 1902, and ended, November 11, with his acquital,—an issue which, at the time, was regarded by some persons as a miscarriage of justice. The second jury which heard all the testimony, however, found him not guilty and he therefore stands vindicated. Mrs. Adams, meanwhile, certainly was murdered and the guilt of that crime has never been legally placed.

Throughout the ordeal of his trials, his condemnation, and his imprisonment under sentence of death Roland Molineux was sustained by the unwavering support of his devoted parents—his sturdy old father resolutely maintaining the son’s innocence and laboring without remission to establish it. The younger man’s health, however, was hopelessly undermined by the dreadful strain to which he was subjected and after his release he became ill and morose. In 1912 his parents obtained an introduction to Belasco and appealed to him for help. “His mother said to me,” writes the manager, “‘My boy’s life has been ruined. His health is gone—he has never been the same since he was released from prison. He has written a play which he believes will do great good and he has set his heart on getting it acted. If he is disappointed in this, on top of all the rest that he has suffered, we fear that he will die. If his play should be a success it might open a new life to him. Will you read it and help us, if you can?’ They told me other things—dreadful and afflicting things some of them, that I need not repeat. I had been tremendously impressed by General Molineux’s great fight for his son; I felt a great sympathy and pity for them—and I consented to read the young man’s play and to do it, if I found it practicable.

“When the manuscript came to me I found the piece long and crude, but I saw possibilities in it and I told the parents I would produce it. Their gratitude was very touching. Soon afterward, I met young Molineux, gave him several interviews, and went to work to knock his play into shape. At the beginning everything seemed all right and he accepted my first cuts and suggestions in a proper spirit and worked hard. But toward the end, along about August or September [1913], when I put the piece into rehearsal and began to make extensive changes, he turned sullen and very ugly. Sometimes, instead of working, he would sit and roll his eyes or glare at me; and, what was very dreadful, he gave off a horrible, sickening odor like that of a wild beast. I shall never forget the last night I ever had him with me. He was furious because of the changes I was making and I am sure he was going to attack me. Suddenly I stopped arguing with him and, picking up a heavy walking stick, I said: ‘See here, Molineux, stop looking at me like that; I’m not afraid of you. If you had brought me a finished play instead of a lot of words I wouldn’t have had to change your manuscript. Now, it’s hot and I’m tired, so we’ll call the whole thing off for to-night and you can go home and think it over.’ He pulled himself together then and tried to apologize and say how much he appreciated all I was doing, but I wouldn’t have it and just showed him out of my studio as quickly as I could—and I took care he should walk in front, all the way! There wasn’t another soul in the place, except the night watchman, away down at the stagedoor. I never let him come near me again.”

When “The Man Inside” had been made ready for production Molineux was permitted to attend the dress rehearsal in New York, during the first act of which he was self-contained and quiet. But after the curtain had been lowered he became so violently excited and created so much disturbance that Belasco was constrained to order him to be taken out of the theatre. “It was hard to do, but it had to be done,” he writes; “I didn’t know whether to go on or drop the whole thing, and I really expected the man would break out and kill somebody.” Molineux’s unfortunate family and friends were, however, happily able to intervene and restrain him and no act of violence was committed. On November 7, 1914, he was placed in the King’s Park State Hospital, Long Island, and there he is still confined,—hopelessly insane. His brave, devoted old father, worn out and heart broken, died, June 10, 1915: his mother, a few months earlier. [Roland B. Molineux died, in the King’s Park State Hospital for the Insane, on November 2, 1917, of paresis. There is no doubt that he was a dangerous madman when first Belasco met him.—J. W.]

The Man Inside of Molineux’s play is, symbolically, Conscience; and the fundamental idea which it expounds is that Society errs in its treatment of criminals, because crime cannot be prevented by punishment but only by an effective appeal to the self-respecting moral nature and “better self” of the criminal,—who must first be taught to “think right” before he can be made to do right. Sublime discovery! No intimation is made as to what method Society ought to employ in cases—unhappily numerous—of criminals who do not possess any “better selves” and who cannot by any means, not even the threat of death, be restrained from crimes which profit them or gratify their ruling passions. There was, without doubt, an honest altruistic purpose in the distempered, tortured mind of Molineux,—though, since he did not possess the power to elucidate it, there is no need to dwell upon the subject in this place. Belasco, having through kindness undertaken to produce an ill-digested, “talky” and undramatic play, revised it as well as possible in the circumstances, making of it a moderately effective melodrama, dealing with crime and injustice. In that melodrama a philanthropic young man, who is also an Assistant District Attorney of the City of New York, resorts to the haunts of criminals in order to ascertain, if possible, why they persist in crime in spite of efforts to reclaim them. He there becomes deeply interested in a girl named Annie, the daughter of a desperate forger known as Red Mike, and also he becomes so incensed at the viciousness and cruelty of some methods employed by the Police Department and officials from the District Attorney’s Office to insure convictions of accused criminals that he assists Annie in the theft of a forged check, upon possession of which the fate of her father depends,—thus himself becoming party to a crime, and, later, participating in a general bath of “whitewash.” The First Act of “The Man Inside” passes in an opium den of the New York “Chinatown”; the Second, in the office of the District Attorney—with the Tombs Prison visible through the window; the Third, in a squalid tenement house. Belasco placed the play on the stage in a setting of extraordinary verisimilitude and caused it to be acted in a well-nigh perfect manner. It was first produced at the Euclid Avenue Opera House, Cleveland, Ohio, October 27, 1913, and, November 11, was brought forward in New York at the Criterion Theatre. Public interest in it, however, was languid and it did not long survive. This was the original cast: