Gustave Frohman’s lease of the Baldwin Theatre expired on July 1, and on the 3rd Jay Rial, having hired the house for a week, presented “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” there. On July 10 occurred the last event of the first period of Belasco’s theatrical life,--the presentment at the Baldwin of “American Born.” Edward Marble, an actor who had come to San Francisco as a member of the “Hazel Kirke” company, was advertised as lessee of the theatre and the play was brought out under the auspices of Gustave Frohman. It was a free adaptation by Belasco of “British Born,” by Paul Merritt and Henry Pettitt, and was a wild and whirling, spread-eagle, bugle-blowing melodrama, in which the heroine, at a climax of desperate adventure, saves her lover from being shot to death by Bolivian soldiers by wrapping him in a flag of the United States. Its production was chiefly remarkable for handsome scenic investiture and a really impressive portrayal of a volcano in furious eruption. This was the cast of “American Born”:
_Laban Brood_ John W. Jennings. _George Seymour_ Joseph R. Grismer. _Fred Faggles_ John Dillon. _John Hope_ A. D. Bradley. _Captain Jabez Dolman_ M. A. Kennedy. _Constable_ George H. McCormack. _Messenger_ Edgar Wilton.
[Illustration: DAVID BELASCO AS _UNCLE TOM_, IN “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN”
_Mary Hope_ Ada Ward. _Nancy Treat_ Ada Gilman.
_Don Andre de Calderone_ George Osborne. _John Hope_ A. D. Bradley. _George Seymour_ Joseph R. Grismer. _Fred Faggles_ John Dillon. _Sylvester (alias Laban Brood)_ John W. Jennings. _Juddle (alias Captain Dolman)_ M. A. Kennedy. _Tom Morris_ Joseph W. Francœur. _Jumbo_ George H. McCormack. _Landro_ Edgar Wilton. _Mary Hope_ Ada Ward. _Nancy Treat_ Ada Gilman.
Belasco was, during one period of his life, closely allied to Charles Frohman. Later, after Frohman had, with others, formed the iniquitous Theatrical Syndicate, he was, for many years, resolutely and rightly, antagonistic to him. Age and change, however, sometimes wear out antagonisms, and those estranged friends were reconciled not long before Frohman’s death in the Lusitania murder: the last production made by Frohman was a revival, at the Empire Theatre, New York, April 7, 1915, in association with Belasco, of “A Celebrated Case.” The first meeting of those managers occurred in San Francisco, while Belasco was rehearsing “American Born.” He has made this record of that significant incident: