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 7 112 by JOSEPH SHELTON C HARLES CHAPLIN WROTE IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY THAT DURING HIS FIRST TOUR OF NORTH AMER- ICA WITH A TRAVELING COMEDY TROUPE, "the farther west we went the better I liked it." ese words were pub- lished in 1964, when Chaplin was 75 years old. e journey he was describing, which brought him to the East Coast by ship and then across the continent by train, began when he was 21 years old. Chaplin's autobiography lingers on a particular stop along his tour, an American city which, even from the distance of a half a century on and a continent away, he was able to recall vividly: Butte, Montana. Several years before he worked in mo- tion pictures, he had traveled across the country with a comedy troupe led by the impresario Fred Karno, a major figure in the history of English music-hall per- formers and the man popularly credited with inventing the "pie in the face" gag. e theatrical company had begun their tour in the major metropolitan areas of the Eastern seaboard before taking their show to the American West. e spaces between the towns grew farther apart, and urban sprawl gave way to fields, and farms, rolling hills, deserts, and snowy mountains. Chaplin, more used to the environs of the United Kingdom, would admit that he sometimes found the "vast stretches of wild land… drear and somber," though he also wrote that they "filled me with promise." Ultimately, he reflected, "it is broad- ening. My outlook was larger." It is easy to imagine that for young Chaplin, who had surely read dime novels about the exploits of cowboys, bandits, and frontier heroes, Butte was a revelation. e Mining City in 1910, Chaplin wrote, was still rough and tumble, "with miners wearing top boots and ten-gallon hats and red neckerchiefs." He even witnessed a "fat old sheriff shooting at the heels of an escaped prisoner, who C H A R L I E C H A PL I N ' S B U T T E , A M E R I C A . Charlie Chaplin (far left) and friends on the Continental Divide FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ROY EXPORT COMPANY LTD. SCAN COURTESY CINETECA DI BOLOGNA.

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