This was the theater where Charlie Chaplin appeared. The March 25, 1911, newspaper ad for the Karno Company's appearance in Duluth. This image and the next are courtesy of Dave Kirwan, Grand Sheik of the Duluth-Superior "Busy Bodies" Tent of the national Laurel & Hardy appreciation society "The Sons of the Desert." Dave was asked to research the Duluth leg of the Karno tour, since, in addition to Chaplin, the Karno Company included another young British comedian named Stanley Jefferson (later known as Stan Laurel). On this tour, Stan was Chaplin’s understudy and room-mate!
  

A 1911 photo of the Karno Company in transit over the sea. It was not all that glamorous a life. In his book My Autobiography, Chaplin writes: 

We were 12 days on the high seas in terrible weather, bound for Quebec ... We travelled via Canada on a cattle boat, and though there were no cattle aboard there were plenty of rats and they perched arrogantly at the foot of my bunk until I threw a shoe at them. 
Chaplin is framed by the life-saver, and that's Stan Laurel kneeling to the far left.
  

A 1911 photo of a rather glum-looking 22-year-old Chaplin taken in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the tour. "Living was cheap," Chaplin writes. "At a small hotel one could get a room and board for $7 a week, with three meals a day ... for a nickel one could get a glass of beer and the pick of a whole delicatessen counter." 

Chaplin's salary was $75 a week. As a young man in his early 20s with money to spend, Chaplin was hardly a puritan when it came to wine, women, and song -- but prudently did manage to bank most of the $75 he earned each week while on tour.

Chaplin does not mention Duluth in his autobiography, but does write: "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." He also mentions making friends with a millionaire realtor in Minneapolis and having a "romantic weekend" with a young lady from St. Paul.