The play in which Belasco elected to launch Warfield was entitled “The Auctioneer.” He had, at first, intended to write this play himself, calling it “The Only Levi.” But his time and energy were so preoccupied by labor in connection with the establishment of Miss Bates and the direction of Mrs. Carter’s career that he was unable to do so. He, therefore, employed a playwright known as Lee Arthur (Arthur Lee Kahn) to take his ideas and suggestions and weld them into dramatic form. The fabric which Arthur, in fulfilment of this employment, delivered to him was so wholly unfit for use (“an impossible thing, unworthy of production,” Belasco designated it) that he subsequently engaged the late Charles Klein to rewrite it in collaboration with Arthur, and, finally, was compelled himself to rehash and partly rectify it during rehearsals and early performances. It was first acted at the Hyperion Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, September 9, 1901. Warfield, testifying on the subject in court, several years later, made a statement,—which, surely, may be accepted as authoritative,—regarding this piece, as originally produced, which is terse and informing: “When we began to rehearse,” he said, “we had a book filled with words. The play was a frost. It was the biggest failure you ever heard of, the opening night.... Mr. Belasco worked day and night upon the reconstruction of that play, from the time that he started with the rehearsals the week before we left New York [preliminary rehearsals had been conducted by Messrs. Klein and Arthur] until we came to New York and played, three weeks later.” The first performance of “The Auctioneer” in the metropolis occurred September 23, at the old Bijou Theatre, in Broadway, between Thirtieth and Thirty-first streets. The piece, as then made known, is a superficial, insubstantial one, which, however, contrives to illustrate some vicissitudes of fortune, and, in the main part, exemplifies the idea of a right philosophy in bearing them. That main part is a Jewish auctioneer, named Simon Levi, resident in Baxter Street, New York, and conducting an auction-room in the Five Points region. Levi, having inherited a modest but competent fortune, purchases a residence in a fashionable part of the city and invests the balance of his money in a Trust Company. Then, at a festival in celebration of the betrothal of his adopted daughter, a girl named Helga, he is apprized that his stock certificates in the Trust Company are bogus and that Richard Eagan, the affianced husband of

Helga, for whom he has bought a partnership in a Wall Street brokerage firm, is to be arrested, charged with fraud in issuing them. Forced, with his dearly loved and cherished wife, to leave his new home in ignominious circumstances, Levi, though feeble in body and hurt in spirit, bravely begins anew the strife of living,—peddling toys in the streets. He discovers, ultimately, that the actual swindler who has ruined him is one Groode, the partner of his prospective son-in-law, from whom he recovers his wealth, delivering the culprit up to justice and relieving the distress of his own loved ones. This story, notwithstanding Belasco’s strenuous labor, lost little of its trite conventionality in its histrionic relation; but his capital stage management and the highly meritorious performance given by Warfield under his direction made of a flimsy, trivial play a notable and substantial success.

It was a shrewd device, when inducting Warfield into the regular Theatre, to do so not abruptly, but, as it were, by gentle actuation,—to provide for his first essay a character which was little more than an elaboration of his Jewish “specialty,” in which his early success had been gained, with an element of pathetic experience and feeling superadded to it. “I had been watching Warfield for years,” said Belasco, “and I felt sure that, if he would only study, I could make a great character [sic—meaning “eccentric”] actor of him; I told him so, and when I thought he was ready I engaged him.” While I cannot altogether agree with Belasco in his opinion, often and warmly declared, that David Warfield is “a unique and great actor,”—not, that is, in the same sense that, for example, Henry Placide, William Warren, Joseph Jefferson and John Hare were great actors,—there is no question of his rare and fine talent nor of his steady growth in artistic stature. He has revealed in his acting an engaging personality, a genial disposition, a gentle manner, quick sympathy with right ideals, and capability of fervid emotion and simple pathos. Of all the many players, male and female, whom Belasco has guided and helped to develop none, in my judgment, owes more to his fostering care and assistance than Warfield does: it is extremely probable that, without Belasco’s aid, he would have remained to the end of his career a denizen of the music-halls, instead of becoming, as he has become, one of the most loved and admired actors of our Stage. As Simon Levi he presented a genuine, consistent impersonation in the vein of eccentric low comedy, at places touched with tender feeling and momentarily irradiated with pathos. His assumption of the physical attributes of this particular Jew of low life,—the sallow complexion; the thin, wiry hair; the splayfooted, shambling gait; the voluble gestures, the singular dialect; the manner, now aggressive, now fawning,—was quite perfect; but his significant achievement was his success in denoting a steadfast, affectionate, patient nature beneath the mean outside of a petty huckster subjected to cruel disappointment and hardship.—This was the original cast of “The Auctioneer”: