Emperor of the North Pole (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles Emperor of the North Pole is a 1973 American movie starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Keith Carradine. 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 the U.S. state of 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), although both of those books predate the 1930s by a few decades. Carradine's character, Cigaret, uses the same 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 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 reign over a wasteland.