Butte, America’s Story Episode 59 - Julian Eltinge
Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m your host, Dick Gibson
Julian Eltinge was perhaps the greatest female impersonator of the 20th Century. Born William Julian Dalton on May 14, 1881, in Newtonville, Massachusetts, he arrived in Butte as a child with his father, a mining engineer, and as a teenager began to perform dressed as a woman or girl in Butte saloons. He ultimately took the name of his Butte friend, the son of William Clark’s clerk Charles Eltinge, who was the first owner of the house at 211 West Quartz.
He returned to Boston in 1899, and his first appearance on Broadway in New York was in 1904. Two years later he gave a command performance for King Edward VII in London, cementing his fame. In 1913 Eltinge returned to Butte, touring with his own production of The Fascinating Widow. The one-night performance, December 15, 1913, was at the Broadway Theater (later the Montana Theater, at Broadway and Montana Streets, and today replaced by the telephone company building). Seats ran 50¢ to $2.00—rather a pretty penny even for a live show in those days, when short films cost from 10¢ to 35¢ for admission.
By 1918, Eltinge was one of the best-paid performers in show business, commanding an amazing $3,500 a week. He worked in films with Rudolf Valentino, Milton Berle, and Ruth Gordon. His sexual orientation was never known publicly, though rumors abounded. One actress who worked with him said he was as virile as anybody, but writer Dorothy Parker created the term "ambisextrous" to describe him.
The stock market crash of 1929 impacted his wealth, and a decline in the popularity of female impersonation as entertainment reduced him to performing in nightclubs. He died in New York in 1941 at age 59 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Films competing in Butte with Eltinge’s production that December of 1913 included The Wreck and The Thrifty Janitor at the Ansonia theater, and The Cavemen’s War: A love tale of the prehistoric days when might was right, at the Orpheum. Live Vaudeville at the Empress included Big Jim the Dancing Bear, Burke & Harrison’s comedy act, virtuoso Luigi Dell’Oro, and more—all for a ticket costing less than 35¢.
Today, the former Julian’s bar on Hamilton street in Butte, home of the Venus Rising coffee shop, commemorates the memory of Julian Eltinge.
As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from." Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.
