David Belasco

David James Belasco was born in San Francisco to Reyna (Nunes-Martinez) and Abraham Humphrey Belasco, British Sephardic immigrants who came to the United States with the Gold Rush. In 1864 he performed as a child actor in Charles Kean’s Richard III and started writing his first play, Jim Black, or The Regulator’s Revenge, which premiered in San Francisco in 1872. Belasco developed expertise in the theater in San Francisco as an actor, manager, and adapter of plays before moving to New York in 1880. He worked as manager of the Madison Square Theater, and ten years later, he leased a theater and became an independent producer. He used unknown actors, giving them a chance to achieve fame. His first success was Men and Women (with Henry C. de Mille, in 1890). Belasco, who wrote and adapted more than three hundred plays, was known for his lavish and realistic sets, attention to detail, mechanical effects, and innovative stage lighting. He rebuilt the Stuyvesant Theater on Broadway in 1907, later renamed the Belasco Theater. The composer Giacomo Puccini turned several of Belasco’s works, including Madame Butterfly (1900) and The Girl of the Golden West (1905), into operas.