  While Belasco, in common with the generality of dramatic authors, has certainly profited by the example and sometimes by the labor of others (a fact which he does not seek to conceal or deny, but which, on the contrary, he has freely and fairly recognized and admitted), there is a per contra aspect of his relation to other play-writers which none of his detractors,—and, for that matter, as far as I am aware, none of his admirers and advocates except myself,—ever mentions,—namely, the immense and direct advantage and profit derived by other play-writers from him. Nor is that indebtedness confined to makers of plays: as theatre manager, stage manager, mechanician, success for others if not always for himself has walked (George Scarborough to David Belasco.) “150 Madison Avenue, Tompkinsville, “My dear Governor:— “Just a brief line before the drop falls on poor little ‘Wetona’ [“The Heart of Wetona”] to-morrow night: “It has been a great honor to sit at your feet the past few months—to go to school to you. An infinite pleasure, also, to have seen you work and known you. “If the play gets over, the great measure of the success will be yours. If it fails, the fault will be with the material which came to you. “Whatever the issue is, I want now to thank you for your many personal courtesies, for your enthusiasm and your friendship. Hereafter, when some would-be author ‘hits the ceiling’ at some change you suggest in his ’script, please have him get me on the telephone and I will cheerfully tell him how many kinds of a d—— fool he is not to know a master touch and not to appreciate the Master’s interest. “May you be preserved to the Theatre for a long, long time. “Affectionately, The scope and variety of his labor as an author are impressively signified in the following partial list of his writings: |
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