The Belasco Theatre is one of Broadway’s oldest theatres at 111 West 44st Street where The Girl from the North Country is currently running. I already reported on the recent excitement there last weekend. But the ghost situation… that’s something else. I first heard about the ghost from a retired electrician who had worked in the Belasco many times over the years. He agreed to talked to me, off the record. (It’s very hard to get people to tell you stuff when they know you are writing an article that is going to be online. What does that say about the current climate around information, the media and so on?)

Anyway…

This electrician told me, “Around 11:30 every night, a woman with a kind of blue glow crosses stage.”

Whaaaat? 

I said, “Take me over there right now, I need to see this shit.” The Shubert organization owns the Belasco, he said, and retired electricians can’t exactly come and go as they please. Also, the Shubert Organization is pretty quiet about the ghost.

Or GHOSTS…

What’s that now?

It is widely known and oft remarked upon that many people have also had a run in with the ghost of Mister Belasco. David Belasco was a hugely prolific theatre producer and director from the 1880s until his death in the 1930s – directing close to 100 shows there during that time. (Back then, Broadway shows did not run for years like they do today, they were more like movies with new ones coming out every couple of months.) Belasco was such a pimp that he built an apartment upstairs in the theatre along with his offices as well as some kind of a steam room, depending on where you get your information…

Several actors have claimed over the years to have seen him from the stage during performances and he is regularly spotted on stage afterward and in the dressing rooms, the cad, especially if he likes the show they say. And if the show sucks, legend has it, things start to wrong around the theatre.

One woman who is currently an usher at the Belasco talked to me about it.

“I did not believe in any of that, then one night, we were cleaning up in the mezzanine, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy sitting in one of the box seats. But when I turned, he was gone, but if I looked away again, I could kind of see him out of my peripheral vision. One of the other ushers was watching me and said, ‘You seeing that too?’ We both got out of there.” 

But back to the Blue Lady. No one knows for sure who she was, some say she is the ghost of an actress who tragically fell to her death down the elevator shaft that leads up to Belasco’s duplex apartment. Yeah, that’s right. It was a duplex. Chorus girls could take a ride right up elevator to his apartment after the show. 

Dude was a legend.

Others say she was a stripper from the vaudeville days who hanged herself. Also a bummer, but hey, there’s no fun way to become a ghost.

What is the Belasco apartment used for today? Nothing. It’s virtually untouched – a lot of his furniture and belongings are still sitting up there under an inch of dust because that’s not spooky at all. One of the stage managers whose been in the apartment said that a lot of the paint is peeling and it’s covered in mold. Over the years some saucy show-folk have written their names in the dust, and if that ain’t a metaphor I don’t know what is.

There are also some extra dressing rooms up there that no one uses because for some reason the current owners want to leave it undisturbed.

Had this stage manager ever seen the ghost of Mister Belasco?

Yes! He, and some stagehands were backstage after a tech rehearsal for Girl from the North Country when someone walked around the curtain. They thought it was the props person… But the props person had left!

There was no one there!

The last big, group sighting of Belasco’s ghost was him walking out of a performance of Oh Calcutta! a 1971 – a show who’s only claim to fame was that it featured mostly naked people in comedy sketches. Many people saw his ghost walking out of his usual seat in the balcony on opening night. Sounds like I would have joined him.

Guess he liked to keep the naked stuff up in the apartment.

I do believe in ghosts, I really want to see one, and I hope that Belasco continues to enjoy his theatre with it’s rare Tiffany lights in the ceilings for many years, and maybe starts inviting people upstairs for a tour of his swanky duplex, or maybe we’ll open a speakeasy up there!