BUTTE — One-hundred years of applause and standing ovations are firmly embedded inside the walls of the Mother Lode Theatre. Its century of history includes a potpourri of performers, everyone from two-time Academy Award-winning actress Luise Rainer to renowned conductor Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops to popular 1980s band America. All wowed their audiences.
Built as an addition to the Masonic Temple, the Mother Lode opened as the Temple Theatre on Sept. 6, 1924. Butte residents, though, were already wellversed when it came to first class entertainment.
Truth be told, residents had come to expect it. After all, impressing early-day Butte crowds at varied venues included such entertainers as showman Buffalo Bill, performer Fred Astaire, humorist Will Rogers, star of stage and screen Billie Burke, who portrayed Glinda the Good Witch in the classic "The Wizard of Oz," film heartthrob Clark Gable, and "Funny Lady" Fannie Brice. The popular vaudevillian and silent film star Charlie Chaplin was a Butte fan.
Known as "The Little Tramp," Chaplin performed several times in the early to mid-1910s and it made a lasting impression as he would later write about the mining town in his 1964 autobiography simply titled "My Autobiography." He was probably more enamored with Butte's "ladies of the evening" than the town itself. In his book Chaplin wrote that "Butte boasted of having the prettiest women of any red light district in the West, and it was true.
" Fast-forward to 1992 and "Cha.
