Section 1

embodied their protest in a movement toward a national theater which was erected at Grand Central Park, and for which $1,000,000 was spent. One .of the members of the Trust proved his birth and breeding by saying that this attempt to cleanse the theater was really only a plan to provide a place of vice for the benefit of the millionaire backers. The remark inspired deep rancor, but was more revelatory of the Jewish Trust's es¬ sential conception of the theater, than anything else. Belasco came from San Francisco, where he had done various stunts, including those of an itinerant recitationist, illusionist and actor. James E. Herne took an interest in him as a youth and discovered him to be adept in helping himself to dialogues out of printed plays. Under Herne, Belasco learned much about stage effects, and soon became very successful in touching up defective plays. Coming to New York, Belasco fell in with DeMille, a Jewish writer for the stage, who only needed Belasco’s “sense of the theater" to make his qualities effective.