Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 114 four times. In fact, as the Chaplin Office of Paris, France informed me in an email, there is a good chance that the photos of Chaplin at the Continental Divide are believed to have been on different legs of the tour, suggesting that the English music-hall performers were so taken by the sight that they returned to see it again. According to Chaplin's writings, cities like Billings and Butte "throbbed with the dynamism of the future," and the young man found himself "imbued with it." ough he would return to Eng- land for a season in between the tours, he recorded that he "was not too upset at leaving the States" only because he "had made up my mind to return; how or when I did not know." By 1914 he had done just that, joining the legendary comedy pioneer Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Cops, to work at his studios. Before long, he was directing his own pictures, and had moreover ironed out the details of his persona — the derby hat and the shabby suit, the shambling gate and the dignified sincerity of the Little Tramp. Butte, Montana had touched the Chaplin, who in turn touched the world. Eventually, many of those 14 theaters would convert to cinemas in which were projected the flickering image of Charlie Chaplin's films. Some of those laughing in the dark must have remembered, with pride, having seen him, maybe even met him, in person. Chaplin was not the only artist who found a muse in Butte, America. Some of America (and the world's) brightest and best have found inspiration in her embrace. One of the first was Mary Maclane, enfant terrible and "wild woman of Butte," whose controversial confessionals like I Await the Devil's Coming and The Story of Mary Ma- clane shocked and titillated the nation at the turn of the century. Then Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon and one of the pioneers of the hard-boiled detective novel wrote his own Butte-inspired novel, The Red Harvest, which would eventually influence films as diverse as Kurosawa's Yojimbo and the Bruce Willis action flick Last Man Standing. Years later, author Reif Larsen made the protagonist of his novel The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet hail from Divide, Montana, about 15 miles from Butte, and lets the town serve as the beginning of his hero's journey. Illustration from the Butte Miner, now the Anaconda Standard

• Cover