David Belasco (
July 25, 1853 -
May 14, 1931) was an
American playwright, director and
theatrical producer.
Born in
San Francisco, California, to which his
Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from
London, England during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs such as call boy and script copier. He eventually was given the opportunity to act and serve as a stage manager, learning the business inside out. A gifted playwright, Belasco went to
New York City in 1882 where he worked as stage manager for the Madison Square Theater while writing plays. By 1895, he was so successful that he set himself up as an independent producer.
During his long career between 1884 and 1930, Belasco either wrote, directed, or produced more than 100
Broadway plays including
Hearts of Oak,
The Heart of Maryland, and
Du Barry, making him the most powerful personality on the New York city theater scene. Although he is perhaps most famous for having penned
Madame Butterfly and
The Girl of the Golden West for the stage, both of which were adapted as operas by
Giacomo Puccini, more than forty
motion pictures have been made from the many plays he authored, including
Buster Keaton's Seven Chances.
Belasco is also recognized for bringing a new standard of
naturalism to the American stage. Supposedly he put appropriate scents to set scenes in the ventilation of the theaters while his sets paid great attention to detail, and sometimes spilled out into the audience area. In one play, for instance, an operational laundromat was built onstage. In another, there was a reproduction of a
Childs Restaurant kitchen where actors actually cooked and prepared food. He is even said to have purchased a room in a flop-house, cut it out of the building, brought it to his theater, cut out one wall and presented it as the set for a production. Belasco's original scripts were often filled with long, specific descriptions of props and set dressings. Interestingly, though, he has not been noted for producing unusually naturalistic scenarios.
Belasco was further known for his advanced lighting techniques and use of color to evoke mood and setting. He was one of the first directors to eschew the use of footlights in favor of follow spots and realistic lighting. Often, Belasco tailored his lighting configurations to compliment the complexions and hair of the actors. In his own theatres, the dressing rooms were equipped with lamps of several colors, allowing the performers to see how their makeup looked under different lighting conditions.
Both of Belasco's New York theatres were built on the cutting edge of their era's technology. When Belasco took over the Republic Theatre he drilled a new basement level to accommodate his machinery; the Stuyvesant Theatre was specially constructed with enormous amounts of flyspace, hydraulics systems and lighting rigs. The basement of the Stuyvesant contained a working machine shop, where Belasco and his team experimented with lighting and other special effects. Many of the innovations developed in the Belasco shop were sold to other producers.
David Belasco was married to Cecilia Loverich for over fifty years; they had two daughters, Reina and Augusta. He died in 1931 at the age of 77 in
New York City and was interred in the Linden Hills Cemetery in
Queens, New York. 
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