Charlie Chaplin on Butte, America

“Such cities as Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Denver, Butte, Billings, throbbed with the dynamism of the future and I was imbued with it” wrote Chaplin in his book aptly titled “My Autobiography.” Chaplin freely admitted in his book that he spent some time in Butte’s infamous red light district and looked back at that time with fondness. He wrote — “Butte boasted of having the prettiest women of any red-light district in the West, and it was true. If one saw a pretty girl smartly dressed, one could rest assured she was from the red-light quarter, doing her shopping. Off duty looked neither right nor left and were most respectable. Years later, I argued with Somerset Maugham about his Sadie Thompson character in the play Rain. Jeanne Eagels dressed her rather grotesquely, as I remember, with spring-side boots. I told him that no harlot in Butte, Montana could make money if she dressed like that.” The silent film star also shared — “I actually saw gunplay in the street, a fat old sheriff shooting at the heels of an escaped prisoner, who was eventually cornered in a blind alley without harm, fortunately.”