Butte’s Famous Female Impersonators

New York City’s Eltinge Theatre on 42nd Street opened amid much fanfare in 1912. Its history includes some interesting ties to Butte. It was named for Julian Eltinge, America’s first famous female impersonator. Eltinge, whose real name was William Dalton, spent much of his youth in Butte in the 1890s. When he began his stage career in 1904, Dalton took Julian Eltinge as his stage name. The Eltinges were neighbors of the Daltons in Butte, and Charles Eltinge was Dalton's boyhood friend.

Via Wikipedia

During Dalton’s youth in Butte, friends recalled that he possessed a good pair of fists and was not shy about using them. Those who knew him as a youngster would never have guessed the direction his career would take. Women adored him for his wardrobe, and his performances sent men “to the smoking room.” At the height of his international career, Julian Eltinge was one of the highest paid performers in the business. In 1907, he gave a performance for England’s King Edward VII. He also starred in silent movies. Eltinge returned to Butte to perform several times throughout his career, perhaps most notably to capacity audiences in the mid-1920s, recreating his dual male/female role in The Fascinating Widow. Poet Dorothy Parker coined the term “ambi-sextrous” in referring to Julian Eltinge. His career faded in the 1930s when a crackdown on cross dressing prevented appearances in costume.  He died in New York in 1941.

Via Wikipedia

Mansel Boyle, who also had ties to Butte, was a popular female impersonator and a contemporary of Julian Eltinge. Boyle was working at a Butte liquor store when he got his start in 1902 with the Overland Minstrels, an amateur theatrical company. Boyle left Butte to find success in the business. Critics claimed that Boyle, under the stage name M. Vardaman, was “the cleverest impersonator ever seen on the stage.” Coincidentally, Boyle later was the manager of the Eltinge Theatre.

In 1998, the long-closed Eltinge Theatre was moved 170 feet down 42nd Street to form the façade and lobby of the new multiplex AMC Empire Theatre.

W. A. Clark Theater

When W. A. Clark died in 1925, he was one of the fifty richest men in the United States. His wealth endowed the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, the School of Law at the University of Virginia, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In Montana where he made most of his fortune, Clark built Columbia Gardens—a state-of-the-art amusement park—in 1899. Built for the people of Butte with uncharacteristic generosity, the park promoted Clark’s political ambitions. What little else of Clark’s vast fortune that came back to Montana went to the prison at Deer Lodge. He endowed the prison library and band in exchange for convict labor for his ranches and mines. Warden Frank Conley cultivated Clark’s friendship and that of his son. It paid high dividends. In 1919, the younger Clark gave the prison $10,000 for the construction of the W. A. Clark Theatre.

The W. A. Clark Theater opened in 1920 and was the first theater in the United States to be built inside a prison.
J. M Cooper photograph from Baumler and Cooper, Dark Spaces.

Clark’s state-of-the-art theatre was the first constructed within a prison in the United States. James McCalman—veteran builder of the prison wall and cell blocks—designed the building and oversaw the inmate laborers. Completed in 1920, the building’s white facade of brick and simulated stone was strikingly out of character within the prison yard. There was seating for one thousand in leather-covered seats and an ample stage and orchestra pit that could accommodate the most elaborate productions. The formal opening was on March 21, 1920, included a matinee for the male inmates and then an evening show for the public and women inmates. The traveling cast of the musical comedy My Sunshine Lady, starring Gudrun Walberg, brought down the house.

The theater included seating for one thousand, art painted by inmates, an orchestra pit, and a state-of-the-art projector system for moving pictures. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives.

Warden Conley’s pride was short lived. Governor Joseph Dixon removed him as warden and ended his career. The theater served inmates and the community until 1975 when arson left it a burned out shell. The inmates responsible were never identified.

Thomas Marlow

The transcript of a speech given in 1989 by Peggy Marlow Guthrie outlines the life of her grandfather, Thomas Marlow. He was a prominent banker and businessman and owner of principal fundraiser for Helena’s beloved Marlow Theatre, named in his honor. As a young man in Helena, he was on the eve of marriage to Katherine Sligh, daughter of an Anaconda physician, when she died of a heart ailment. The community mourned with her bridegroom and Marlow erected a huge angel as a monument to her memory at Forestvale Cemetery.

Photo via Find a Grave

The beautiful sculpture is a dominant feature in the cemetery. Marlow later married Agnes McNamara Louise Miltz, and they had five children. The Marlows employed a Chinese cook at the family home at 626 Harrison. Peggy Guthrie writes that after many years working for the family, the elderly cook approached Marlow and asked if it would be possible to bring his nine-year-old grandson to Helena from China before he was too old to care for him. Marlow brought the youngster to Montana. The following year, the grandfather died, and the boy became the Marlows’ cook. He was small boy and could hardly see over the kitchen counter when he became the family’s head chef, but he made the best cherry pie in the entire capital city. After some years it was time for the young man to go to college. Marlow offered to pay his way, but the young man did not want to go to school; he only wanted to be a chef for the Marlow family. And so Marlow and the young man parted ways. Peggy writes that in time they reconciled and eventually the young man wanted to open his own restaurant. Marlow generously financed the young man’s venture. His name was Jerry Wong and the restaurant was the House of Wong, one of Helena’s several premier Chinese restaurants.

Update: thanks to Peggy Marlow Guthrie for the corrections.

Jim Kiskadden’s Famous Connection

James Henry Kiskadden and his older brother were well known in the earliest days in Virginia City, Montana. Before they came to Montana, the brothers operated mercantiles in Kansas, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Kiskadden & Co transported the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers from Denver to Fort Union in the Territory of New Mexico in 1862 for one of the few major military engagements between the Confederacy and the Union in the west. James accompanied the forced march and served as informant to the newspapers. The Kiskadden brothers built the Kiskadden Barn, one the key early buildings on Wallace Street in Virginia City, and opened a grocery/mercantile there. The building has recently been one of the state’s major stabilization projects. James Kiskadden was several times on the fringes of fame. On March 22, 1865, he married Virginia Slade, the widow of Jack Slade, the last man hanged by the Virginia City vigilantes. The couple was divorced in 1868. In 1870, Kiskadden married famous actress Annie Adams. Their daughter, Maude, born in in 1872, was only eleven when her father died in of pneumonia in San Francisco. He is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City. Maude Kiskadden, under the stage name of Maude Adams, became one of the most famous and highly paid actresses of the early twentieth century.

Maude Adams as Peter Pan, October 1916
From Charles Frohman: Manager and Man via Wikipedia

One of her best-loved roles was that of Peter Pan in the first American production of the play, The Boy That Would Not Grow Up. It opened on Broadway in 1904, and until her retirement in 1916, she often recreated that role in theaters across the country.

Gary Cooper’s Last Movie

On June 28, 1961, Helena’s Marlow Theater hosted the world premiere of hometown actor Gary Cooper’s last movie, The Naked Edge.

Marlow Theater manager Gene Brown on the day of the premiere of The Naked Edge. Note the Gary Cooper movie posters at left. Photo via Helena As She Was.

Local press touted the murder mystery as one of the best money makers in the industry and noted that earnings had been earmarked for cancer research. It was a bittersweet celebration since Cooper had died of lung cancer the month before. The affair was dignified and a departure from the usual movie premieres. The final 13 minutes of the film had the audience gripping the edges of their seats and the ending, according to the Helena newspapers, “left them limp in the air conditioned theater.”

Via Wikipedia.com

Acquaintances of Cooper noted that the actor appeared wan and old. Little wonder, they said, since he had to muster tremendous strength to complete filming the final scenes. Before the screening of the film, Alfred “Pee Wee” Weber and his Last Chance Gulch Serenaders presented a new song entitled My Montana Memories. The song, dedicated to Cooper, expressed sentiments about Montana that were in keeping with Cooper’s nostalgic feelings about his native state. Acting Governor Tim Babcock read the Cooper Day proclamation. The festivities were recorded for Cooper’s mother who was in Los Angeles and too ill to attend. Secretary of State Frank Murray called the day historic, noting that the dark spot was that Montana’s own native son was not there to celebrate. As the credits flashed on the screen at the end of the film, the crowd burst into applause in a sincere tribute to a Helena man who made good. Gary Cooper is still remembered by his hometown.

In the Marlow lobby at the premiere of The Naked Edge. Photo via Helena As She Was.

Yucca Theater

An optimistic, cheerful nature and a keen sense of humor helped make Treasure County legislator David Manning instrumental in getting Montana “out of the mud.” An engineer and contractor, Manning did much for Montana’s rural communities, initiating improvements such as electricity, paved roads, dams, and irrigation systems in sparsely populated areas. Known for his clever solutions to difficult problems, Manning was fair and patient and often crossed political party lines when others could not. Upon his retirement, Manning had served in the Montana House and Senate from 1932 to 1985, longer than any other legislator in the nation. Just before he entered politics, Manning and his brother, Jim, designed and built the Yucca Theater in Hysham.

Photo courtesy Montana State Historic Preservation Office

The landmark theater well represents the huge popularity of talking pictures. Typical of Manning’s visionary intuition, its construction in 1931 raised community morale, assuring the community of Hysham’s survival during the Great Depression. Attached living quarters served as Manning’s family home during his long political service. In 1992, the Manning heirs donated the facility to the Treasure County ’89ers. It is now a fantastic museum.

P.S. Remember this renowned theater?

William A. Clark

Historian Joseph Kinsey Howard said that a dollar never got away from Copper King William A. Clark except to come back stuck to another. Clark was intelligent, ambitious, and obsessed with his own vanity. Butte was his stronghold. Clark gave his miners there a magnificent park and an eight-hour workday.

Clark with his daughters, Andrée (left) and Huguette, c. 1917.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Clark spared no expense on his 1880s mansion in Butte. The thirty-plus rooms had electric as well as incandescent and gas lighting, and a fifteen-hundred-gallon tank on the third floor supplied the household with running water. The home’s beveled French plate glass windows with blinds of hardwood that folded into pockets and frescoed ceilings had no equal in the West.

Today, Clark's mansion is a bed and breakfast.

Montana saw little of Clark after 1900, when he served an undistinguished six years in the U.S. Senate. Clark endowed a library and built a theater at the prison in Deer Lodge—the first prison theater in the United States—to thank the warden for the use of convict labor on his ranches and in his mines. But Clark took his vast fortune elsewhere. His wealth endowed the University of Virginia’s law school, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and the University of California’s library. None of it ever came back to Montana.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Check out this menu for a banquet given by Clark.

Ming Opera House/Consistory Shrine

In celebration of Easter...

Masons have been a dynamic force in Montana since early territorial days, playing key roles in events that shaped the state’s history. Helena Masons first came together in 1865 for the funeral of Dr. L. Rodney Pococke, for whom Rodney Street was named. The fraternal organization has since been closely intertwined with the Helena community. The Masons acquired the former Ming Opera House in 1912. Built by John Ming in 1880 and renowned throughout the Pacific Northwest, the theater followed a circular plan model after fashionable European opera houses. It featured thirty-two sets of elaborate scenery, seating for 900, gas lighting in the house, and state-of-the-art stage lighting which included twenty-six movable border lights. Rubber tubing delivered gas to the house and stage lights from a plant in the stone cellar. The Ming hosted such famous performers as Otis Skinner, Eddie Foy, Marie Dressler, and Katie Putnam. Patrons’ safety was not a consideration until 1887. John Ming renovated the opera house after 100 people literally roasted alive in an opera house fire in Exeter, England. Ming added ample exits and updated the gas lighting system.



Ming Opera House, left, 1898. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 953-833

In the early 1900s, the Ming hosted the first silent movies. In 1915, noted Helena architects George Carsley and C. S. Haire redesigned the building, transforming the theater into a more functional, modern auditorium. Under the Masons’ care, the original hand painted 1880s scenery remains in occasional use. For the past sixty-three years, the Scottish Rite of the Freemasons have performed an Easter Tableaux, reenacting scenes from the Last Supper to the Ascension. The free performance utilizes the historic 1880s scenery and is the only time the public can view these exquisite remnants of 1880s Helena. The landmark building at 15 North Jackson in Helena survives thanks to the Masons’ stewardship and continues to serve as a meeting place for members of all the Masonic orders.