Emperor of the North Pole: Living or Dead?

About Emperor of the North Pole

Emperor of the North Pole is a 1973 American DeLuxe Color film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Keith Carradine. It was re-released under the shorter title Emperor of the North, and is best known under the latter name. The film 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" (the pen-name of Leon Ray Livingston). However, both books predate the 1930s by a few decades. Carradine's character, Cigaret, uses the moniker 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 where the similarity between Carradine's character and Jack London ends as Cigaret is portrayed in the film as immature, loud-mouthed, and not 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 because somebody ruling over the North Pole would reign over a wasteland.