Movies - Emperor of the North Pole

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	Movies - Emperor of the North Pole

Emperor of the North Pole is a 1973 movie starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Keith Carradine.

The original title of the movie was Emperor of the North Pole. It was re-released under the shorter title Emperor of the North, and is better known under the latter name.

The movie is about hobos during the 1930s and is set in Oregon. It is based, in part, on the books The Road by Jack London and From Coast to Coast with Jack London by "A-No.-1", although both of those books predate the 1930s by a few decades. Carradine's character, Cigaret, uses the same monicker that Jack London used on the road, and like London, is portrayed as a young traveling companion to the older A-No.-1 (played by Marvin), but that is otherwise where the similarity between Carradine's character and Jack London ends, as Cigaret is portrayed in the film as immature, loud-mouthed, and none too bright.

The title is a reference to a joke among hobos during the Great Depression that the world's best hobo was "Emperor of the North Pole", a way of poking fun at their own desperate situation since somebody ruling over the North Pole would be ruling over a wasteland.

Synopsis

Ernest Borgnine plays Shack, a sadistic railroad conductor who takes it upon himself to forcibly remove all hobos from his train. As the movie opens, he has just thrown a hobo off his train to his death. Another hobo, A-No.-1, manages to hop his train with Cigaret following not far behind. At the next stop, A-No.-1 evades Shack and escapes into the hobo jungle, but Cigaret is caught. Shack threatens to kill Cigaret but is distracted when he gets the message that A-No.-1 has announced that he will be the first hobo to ride Shack's train all the way to Portland. The other hobos agree that the first hobo who can successfully ride Shack's train will earn the title of "Emperor of the North Pole". The railroad workers place bets whether A-No.-1 can do it, and they spread the news of the bet far and wide over the telegraph lines, as Shack is widely known and disliked among other railroad workers.

The rest of the film has A-No.-1 riding the train trying to stay clear of Shack, pulling a series of pranks with the help of other hobos, such as running Shack's train into a siding, and trying to rid himself of the company of Cigaret, who is tagging along on the same train and making a general pest of himself. Shack succeeds in ejecting the two from his train once, but the two board a fast passenger train which overtakes Shack's train, and ride it to Salem, Oregon. In Salem they have several farcical encounters, including one with a policeman who chases the two into the Salem hobo jungle, accusing them of stealing a turkey, and with a Holiness minister holding an outdoor baptism service. They reboard Shack's train after it arrives in Salem. The film ends with a fight to the death aboard the train between A-No.-1 and Shack. After A-No.-1 wins the fight, he proceeds to toss Cigaret off the train while lecturing him on his immaturity.

Category:1973 films Category:Rail transport in fiction Category:The Salvation Army in Films

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