The Return of Peter Grimm written by David Belasco
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David Belasco >> The Return of Peter Grimm
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9 THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM
[Illustration: DAVID BELASCO]
DAVID BELASCO
(Born, San Francisco, July 25, 1853)
The present Editor has had many opportunities of studying the theatre side
of David Belasco. He has been privileged to hear expressed, by this Edison
of our stage, diverse opinions about plays and players of the past, and
about insurgent experiments of the immediate hour. He has always found a
man quickly responsive to the best memories of the past, an artist naively
childlike in his love of the theatre, shaped by old conventions and
modified by new inventions. Belasco is the one individual manager to-day
who has a workshop of his own; he is pre-eminently a creator, whereas his
contemporaries, like Charles Frohman, were emphatically manufacturers of
goods in the amusement line.
Such a man is entitled to deep respect, for the "carry-on" spirit with
which he holds aloft the banner used by Boucicault, Wallack, Palmer, and
Daly. It is wrong to credit him with deafness to innovation, with
blindness to new combinations. He is neither of these. It is difficult to
find a manager more willing to take infinite pains for effect, with no
heed to the cost; it is impossible to place above him a director more
successful in creating atmosphere and in procuring unity of cooperation
from his staff. No one, unless it be Winthrop Ames, gives more personal
care to a production than David Belasco. Considering that he was reared in
the commercial theatre, his position is unique and distinctive.
In the years to come, when students enter the Columbia University Dramatic
Museum, founded by Professor Brander Matthews, they will be able to judge,
from the model of the stage set for "Peter Grimm," exactly how far David
Belasco's much-talked-of realism went; they will rightly regard it as the
high point in accomplishment before the advent of the "new" scenery, whose
philosophy Belasco understands, but whose artistic spirit he cannot
accept. Maybe, by that time, there will be preserved for close examination
the manuscripts of Belasco's plays--models of thoroughness, of managerial
foresight. The present Editor had occasion once to go through these
typewritten copies; and there remains impressed on the memory the detailed
exposition in "The Darling of the Gods." Here was not only indicated every
shade of lighting, but the minute stage business for acting, revealing how
wholly the manager gave himself over to the creation of atmosphere. I
examined a mass of data--"boot plots," "light plots," "costume designs."
Were the play ever published in this form, while it might confuse the
general reader, it would enlighten the specialist. It would be a key to
realistic stage management, in which Belasco excels. Whether it be his own
play, or that of some outsider, with whom, in the final product, Belasco
always collaborates, the manuscripts, constituting his producing library,
are evidence of his instinctive eye for stage effect.
The details in the career of David Belasco are easily accessible. It is
most unfortunate that the stupendous record of his life's accomplishment
thus far, which, in two voluminous books, constituted the final labour of
the late William Winter, is not more truly reflective of the man and his
work. It fails to reproduce the flavour of the dramatic periods through
which Belasco passed, in his association with Dion Boucicault as private
secretary, in his work with James A. Herne at Baldwin's Theatre, in San
Francisco, in his pioneer realism at the old New York Madison Square
Theatre, when the Mallory Brothers were managers, Steele Mackaye was one
of the stock dramatists, Henry DeMille was getting ready for collaboration
with Belasco, Daniel Frohman was house-manager and Charles Frohman was out
on the road, trying his abilities as advance-man for Wallack and Madison
Square successes. Winter's life is orderly and matter-of-fact; Belasco's
real life has always been melodramatic and colourful.
His early struggles in San Francisco, his initial attempts at playwriting,
his intercourse with all the big actors of the golden period of the
'60's--Mr. Belasco has written about them in a series of magazine
reminiscences, which, if they are lacking in exact sequence, are measure
of his type of mind, of his vivid memory, of his personal opinions.
Belasco has reached his position through independence which, in the '90's,
brought down upon him the relentless antagonism of the Theatrical Trust--a
combine of managers that feared the advent of so individualistic a
playwright and manager. They feared his ability to do so many things well,
and they disliked the way the public supported him. This struggle,
tempestuous and prolonged, is in the records.
A man who has any supreme, absorbing interest at all is one who thrives on
vagaries. Whatever Belasco has touched since his days of apprenticeship in
San Francisco, he has succeeded in imposing upon it what is popularly
called "the Belasco atmosphere." Though he had done a staggering amount of
work before coming to New York, and though, when he went to the Lyceum
Theatre, he and Henry DeMille won reputation by collaborating in "The
Wife," "Lord Chumley," "The Charity Ball," and "Men and Women," he was
probably first individualized in the minds of present-day theatregoers
when Mrs. Leslie Carter made a sensational swing across stage, holding on
to the clapper of a bell in "The Heart of Maryland." Even thus early, he
was displaying characteristics for which, in later days, he remained
unexcelled. He was helping Bronson Howard to touch up "Baron Rudolph,"
"The Banker's Daughter" and "The Young Mrs. Winthrop;" he was succeeding
with a dramatization of H. Rider Haggard's "She," where William Gillette
had failed in the attempt.
"The Heart of Maryland" established both Belasco and Mrs. Carter. Then he
started on that extravagant period of spectacular drama, which gave to the
stage such memorable pictures as "Du Barry," with Mrs. Carter, and "The
Darling of the Gods," with Blanche Bates. In such pieces he literally
threw away the possibilities of profit, in order to gratify his decorative
sense. Out of that time came two distinctive pieces--one, the exquisitely
poignant "Madame Butterfly" and the other, "The Girl of the Golden West"--
both giving inspiration to the composer, Puccini, who discovered that a
Belasco play was better suited for the purposes of colourful Italian opera
than any other American dramas he examined.
Counting his western vicissitudes as one period, and the early New York
days as a second, one might say that in the third period David Belasco
exhibited those excellences and limitations which were thereafter to mark
him and shape all his work. There is an Oriental love of colour and effect
in all he does; but there is no monotony about it. "The Darling of the
Gods" was different from "The Girl of the Golden West," and both were
distinct from "The Rose of the Rancho." It is this scenic decorativeness
which has enriched many a slim piece, accepted by him for presentation,
and such a play has always been given that care and attention which has
turned it eventually into a Belasco "offering." None of his collaborators
will gainsay this genius of his. John Luther Long's novel was unerringly
dramatized; Richard Walton Tully, when he left the Belasco fold, imitated
the Belasco manner, in "The Bird of Paradise" and "Omar, the Tentmaker."
And that same ability Belasco possesses to dissect the heart of a romantic
piece was carried by him into war drama, and into parlour comedies, and
plays of business condition. I doubt whether "The Auctioneer" would read
well, or, for the matter of that, "The Music Master;" Charles Klein has
written more coherent dialogue than is to be found in these early pieces.
But they are vivid in mind because of Belasco's management, and because he
saw them fitted to the unique figure of David Warfield.
But a Belasco success is furthered by the tremendous public curiosity that
follows him in all he does. There is a wizardry about him which
fascinates, and makes excellent reading in the press. Long before I saw
the three-winged screen upon which it is his custom to sort out and pin up
his random notes for a play, it was featured in the press. So were
pictures of his "collection," in rooms adjoining his studio--especially
his Napoleonic treasures which are a by-product of his Du Barry days. No
man of the theatre is more constantly on the job than he. It is said that
old John Dee, the famous astrologer whom Queen Elizabeth so often
consulted, produced plays when he was a student at Cambridge University,
with stage effects which only one gifted in the secrets of magic could
have consummated. Belasco paints with an electric switchboard, until the
emotion of his play is unmistakably impressed upon the eye. At a moment's
notice he will root out his proscenium arch, and build a "frame" which
obliterates the footlights; at another time he will build an "apron" to
his stage, not for its historical significance, but merely to give depth
and mellowness to such an ecclesiastical picture as Knoblauch's
"Marie-Odile." He has spent whole nights alone in the theatre auditorium
with his electrician, "feeling" for the "siesta" somnolence which carried
his audience instantly into the Spanish heat of old California, in "The
Rose of the Rancho;" and the moving scenery which took the onlooker from
the foot-hills of the Sierras to the cabin of "The Girl of the Golden
West" was a "trick" well worth the experiment.
Thus, no manager is more ingenious, more resourceful than David Belasco.
But his care for detail is often a danger; he does not know fully the
value of elimination; the eye of the observer is often worried by the
multiplicity of detail, where reticence would have been more quickly
effective. This is the Oriental in Belasco. His is a strange blend of
realism and decorativeness.
"A young man came to me once," he said to me, "with the manuscript of a
new play, which had possibilities in it. But after I had talked with him
awhile, I found him preaching the doctrines of the 'new' art. So I said to
him, 'My dear sir, here is your manuscript. The first scene calls for a
tenement-house set. How would you mount it?'"
He smiled, maybe at the recollection of Gordon Craig's statements that
"actuality, accuracy of detail, are useless on the stage," and that "all
is a matter of proportion and nothing to do with actuality."
"I felt," Mr. Belasco continued, "that the young man would find difficulty
in reconciling the nebulous perspectives of Mr. Craig with the squalor of
a city block. I said to him, 'I have been producing for many years, and I
have mounted various plays calling for differing atmospheres. I don't want
to destroy your ideals regarding the 'new art', but I want you to realize
that a manager has to conform his taste to the material he has in hand. I
consider that one of the most truthful sets I have ever had on the stage
was the one for the second act of Eugene Walter's 'The Easiest Way'. A
boarding-house room on the top floor cannot be treated in any other way
than as a boarding-house room. And should I take liberties with what we
know for a fact exists in New York, on Seventh Avenue, just off Broadway,
then I am a bad producer and do not know my business. I do not say there
is no suggestion in realism; it is unwise to clutter the stage with
needless detail. But we cannot idealize a little sordid ice-box where a
working girl keeps her miserable supper; we cannot symbolize a broken jug
standing in a wash-basin of loud design. Those are the necessary evils of
a boarding-house, and I must be true to them'."
One will have to give Mr. Belasco this credit, that whatever he is, he is
_it_ to the bent of his powers. Had he lived in Elizabeth's day, he would
have been an Elizabethan heart and soul. But his habit is formed as a
producer, and he conforms the "new" art to this habit as completely as
Reinhardt Reinhardtized the morality play, "Everyman," or Von Hofmannsthal
Teutonized "Elektra."
"The Return of Peter Grimm" has been chosen for the present collection. It
represents a Belasco interest and conviction greater than are to be found
in any of his other plays. While there are no specific claims made for the
fact that_ PETER _materializes after his death, it is written with
plausibility and great care. The psychic phenomena are treated as though
real, and our sympathy for_ PETER _when he returns is a human sympathy for
the inability of a spirit to get his message across. The theme is not
etherealized; one does not see through a mist dimly. There was not even an
attempt, in the stage production of the piece, which occurred at the
Belasco Theatre, New York, on October 17, 1911, to use the "trick" of
gauze and queer lights; there was only one supreme thing done--to make the
audience feel that_ PETER _was on a plane far removed from the physical,
by the ease and naturalness with which he slipped past objects, looked
through people, and was unheeded by those whom he most wanted to
influence. The remarkable unity of idea sustained by Mr. Belasco as
manager, and by Mr. Warfield as actor, was largely instrumental in making
the play a triumph. The playwright did not attempt to create supernatural
mood; he did not resort to natural tricks such as Maeterlinck used in
"L'Intruse," or as Mansfield employed in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He
reduced what to us seems, at the present moment, a complicated explanation
of a psychic condition to its simple terms, and there was nothing strange
to the eye or unusual in the situation. One cannot approach the theme of
the psychic without a personal concern. Sardou's "Spiritisme" was the
culmination of years of investigation; the subject was one with which
Belasco likewise has had much to do during the past years.
It is a privilege to be able to publish "Peter Grimm." Thus far not many
of the Belasco plays are available in reading form. "May Blossom" and
"Madame Butterfly" are the only ones. "Peter Grimm" has been novelized--in
the day, now fortunately past, when a play was novelized in preference to
perpetuating its legitimate form. And excerpts from the dialogue have been
used. But this is the first time the complete text has appeared and it has
been carefully edited by the author himself. In addition to which Mr.
Belasco has written the following account of "Peter's" evolution, to be
used in this edition.
The play, "The Return of Peter Grimm," is an expression in dramatic
form of my ideas on a subject which I have pondered over since
boyhood: "Can the dead come back?" _Peter Grimm_ did come back. At
the same time, I inserted a note in my program to say that I
advanced no positive opinion; that the treatment of the play allowed
the audience to believe that it had actually seen _Peter_, or that
he had not been seen but existed merely in the minds of the
characters on the stage. Spiritualists from all over the country
flocked to see "The Return of Peter Grimm," and I have heard that it
gave comfort to many. It was a difficult theme, and more than once I
was tempted to give it up. But since it has given relief to those
who have loved and lost, it was not written in vain. Victorian
Sardou dealt with the same subject, but he did not show the return
of the dead; instead, he delivered a spirit message by means of
knocking on a table. His play was not a success, and I was warned by
my friends to let the subject alone; but it is a subject that I
never can or never have let alone; yet I never went to a medium in
my life--could not bring myself to do it. My dead must come to me,
and have come to me--or so I believe.
The return of the dead is the eternal riddle of the living. Although
mediums have been exposed since the beginning of time, and so-called
"spiritualism" has fallen into disrepute over and over again, it
emerges triumphantly in spite of charlatans, and once more becomes
the theme of the hour.
The subject first interested me when, as a boy, I read a story in
which the dead "foretold dangers to loved ones." My mother had
"premonitions" which were very remarkable, and I was convinced, at
the time, that the dead gave these messages to her. She personally
could not account for them. I probably owe my life to one of my
mother's premonitions. I was going on a steamboat excursion with my
school friends, when my mother had a strong presentiment of danger,
and begged me not to go. She gave in to my entreaties, however, much
against her will. Just as the boat was about to leave the pier, a
vision of her pale face and tear-filled eyes came to me. I heard her
voice repeating, "I wish you would not go, Davy." The influence was
so strong that I dashed down the gang-plank as it was being pulled
in. The boat met with disaster, and many of the children were killed
or wounded. These premonitions have also come to me, but I do not
believe as I did when a boy that they are warnings from the dead,
although I cannot explain them, and they are never wrong; the
message is always very clear.
My mother convinced me that the dead come back by coming to me at
the time of her death--or so I believe. One night, after a long,
hard rehearsal, I went to bed, worn out, and fell into a deep sleep.
I was awakened by my mother, who stood in my bedroom and called to
me. She seemed to be clothed in white. She repeated my name over and
over--the name she called me in my boyhood: "Davy! Davy!" She told
me not to grieve--that she was dying; that she _had_ to see me. I
distinctly saw her and heard her speak.
She was in San Francisco at the time--I, in New York. After she
passed out of the room, I roused my family and told what I had heard
and seen. I said: "My mother is dead. I know she is dead;" but I
could not convince my family that I had not been dreaming. I was
very restless--could not sleep again. The next day (we were
rehearsing "Zaza") I went out for luncheon during the recess with a
member of my company. He was a very absent-minded man, and at the
table he took a telegram from his pocket which he said he had
forgotten to give me: it announced the death of my mother at the
time I had seen her in my room. I am aware that this could be
explained as thought transference, accompanied by a dream in which
my mother appeared so life-like as to make me believe the dream
real. This explanation, however, does not satisfy me. I am sure that
I did see her. Other experiences of a kindred nature served to
strengthen my belief in the naturalness of what we call the
supernatural. I decided to write a play dealing with the return of
the dead: so it followed that when I was in need of a new play for
David Warfield, I chose this subject. Slight of figure, unworldly,
simple in all his ways, Warfield was the very man to bring a message
back from the other world. Warfield has always appeared to me as a
character out of one of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was, to my mind, the
one man to impersonate a spirit and make it seem real. So my desire
to write a play of the dead, and my belief in Warfield's artistry
culminated in "The Return of Peter Grimm." The subject was very
difficult, and the greatest problem confronting me was to preserve
the illusion of a spirit while actually using a living person. The
apparition of the ghost in "Hamlet" and in "Macbeth," the spirits
who return to haunt _Richard III_, and other ghosts of the theatre
convinced me that green lights and dark stages with spot-lights
would not give the illusion necessary to this play. All other
spirits have been visible to someone on the stage, but_ PETER _was
visible to none, save the dog (who wagged his tail as his master
returned from the next world) and to _Frederik_, the nephew, who was
to see him but for a second._ PETER _was to be in the same room with
the members of the household, and to come into close contact with
them. They were to feel his influence without seeing him. He was to
move among them, even appear to touch them, but they were to look
past him or above him--never into his face. He must, of course, be
visible to the audience. My problem, then, was to reveal a dead man
worrying about his earthly home, trying to enlist the aid of
anybody--everybody--to take his message. Certainly no writer ever
chose a more difficult task; I must say that I was often very much
discouraged, but something held me to the work in spite of myself.
The choice of an occupation for my leading character was very
limited. I gave_ PETER _various trades and professions, none of
which seemed to suit the part, until I made him a quaint old
Dutchman, a nursery-man who loved his garden and perennials--the
flowers that pass away and return season after season. This gave a
clue to his character; gave him the right to found his belief in
immortality on the lessons learned in his garden.
"God does not send us strange flowers every year,
When the warm winds blow o'er the pleasant places,
The same fair flowers lift up the same fair faces.
The violet is here ...
It all comes back, the odour, grace and hue,
... it IS the THING WE KNEW.
So after the death winter it shall be," etc.
Against a background of budding trees, I placed the action of the
play in the month of April; April with its swift transitions from
bright sunlight to the darkness of passing clouds and showers. April
weather furnished a natural reason for raising and lowering the
lights--that the dead could come and go at will, seen or unseen. The
passing rain-storms blended with the tears of those weeping for
their loved ones. A man who comes back must not have a commonplace
name--a name suggestive of comedy--and I think I must have read over
every Dutch name that ever came out of Holland before I selected the
name of "_Peter Grimm_." It was chosen because it suggested (to me)
a stubborn old man with a sense of justice--whose spirit _would_
return to right a wrong and adjust his household affairs.
The stage setting was evolved after extreme care and thought. It was
a mingling of the past and present. It was _Peter's_ sitting-room,
with a mixture of furniture and family portraits and knick-knacks,
each with an association of its own. It was such a room as would be
dear to all old-fashioned, home-loving people--unlike a room of the
present, from which every memento of parents and grand-parents would
be banished in favour of strictly modern or antique formal
furniture. In this room, the things of _Peter's_ father mingled with
those of _Peter's_ boyhood and young manhood. This was done in order
that the influence of his familiar belongings might be felt by the
people of the play. When his niece stood with her hand on his chair;
when she saw the lilies he loved; when she touched his pipe, or any
of the familiar objects dear to her because of their associations,_
PETER _was brought vividly back to her mind, although she could not
see him.
_Peter's_ clothing was selected with unusual care so that it would
not catch the reflection from the lights. Months of preparation and
weeks of rehearsal were necessary.
One detail that was especially absorbing was the matter of lighting;
catching the high lights and shadows. This was the first time the
"bridge of lights" was used on any stage. Lighting has always been
to me more than mere illumination. It is a revelation of the heart
and soul of the story. It points the way. Lights should be to the
play what the musical accompaniment is to the singer. A wordless
story could be told by lights. Lights should be mixed as a painter
mixes his colours--a bit of pink here, of blue there; a touch of
red, a lavender or a deep purple, with shadows intervening to give
the desired effect. Instead of throwing a mysterious light upon the
figure of _Peter_, I decided to reverse the process and put no
lights on him. The light was on the other people--the people still
in life, with just enough amber to give them colour.
The play was cut and cut until there was not a superfluous line in
it. Every word was necessary, although it might not have seemed so
when read. It was only after the play was recalled as a whole, that
the necessity for everything could be seen. The coming of the circus
with the clown singing "Uncle Rat has come to town," and the noise
of the drums, are instances of this. It seemed like halting the
action to bring in a country circus procession, but its necessity is
shown in the final scene when the little boy, _William_, passes
away. It is always cruel to see a child die on the stage. The
purpose of the coming of the circus was to provide a pleasant memory
for the child to recall as his mind wandered away from earth, and to
have his death a happy one. This was made more effective when Peter
took up the refrain of the song as though he knew what was passing
in the dying boy's mind, showing that the dead have their own world
and their own understanding.
No company of players ever had situations so fraught with danger of
failure. They were very nervous. Mr. Warfield appeared in the part
for several weeks before he felt at ease as the living man who
returns as his own spirit.
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