When TCM was showing films concerning The Great Depression last month, I'm still wondering how this one didn't rate a viewing. Emperor Of The North Pole concerned people at the very bottom of the economic scale, the jobless hobos of which the Bible admonishes that the poor will always be with us. Just in those years they increased exponentially in the USA and around the World.
They always seem to create their own societal pecking order, look at the Prince And The Pauper which records a society of the poor and the outlaw of which there wasn't much of a dividing line in Tudor England. Things haven't changed much in 400 years. In this society Lee Marvin is A-No.1, he's earned that by challenging all the train bosses for his right to thumb a ride on any train going anywhere in the 48 states.
Years ago I remember reading a biography of Jack Dempsey who in his youth was a hobo like Marvin, probably one about Keith Carradine's age who rode the rails as you see Carradine and Marvin do. You met all kinds of conductors, some as mean as Ernest Borgnine, some who let you 'ride the rods' as you see how Marvin and Carradine ride on the underbelly of the train holding on to those control rods. Some really nice ones actually would let you ride in the comfort of a freezing freight car.
But there's none as mean as Ernest Borgnine, the conductor known as Shack who boasts no one rides his train for free. He's not satisfied with just throwing them off after some roughing up. This film opens with him killing a hobo with a hammer he carries for the job and then throwing him off the train. Who's to know it's a homicide and who'll care if forensics would prove it?
Is Marvin up to the challenge however both from Borgnine and from young Carradine who thinks he's tough enough to live in the hobo camps and ride the rails as well?
For that you have to watch Emperor Of The North Pole. It's a fine depiction of life at the lowest levels in the Depression. Though Marvin does a fine job, I wonder if this film had been offered to Robert Mitchum? He was a Hollywood star who actually did live this existence in his late teens and early twenties. I really think Mitchum could have brought something special to A-No.1 that no other star could have.
They always seem to create their own societal pecking order, look at the Prince And The Pauper which records a society of the poor and the outlaw of which there wasn't much of a dividing line in Tudor England. Things haven't changed much in 400 years. In this society Lee Marvin is A-No.1, he's earned that by challenging all the train bosses for his right to thumb a ride on any train going anywhere in the 48 states.
Years ago I remember reading a biography of Jack Dempsey who in his youth was a hobo like Marvin, probably one about Keith Carradine's age who rode the rails as you see Carradine and Marvin do. You met all kinds of conductors, some as mean as Ernest Borgnine, some who let you 'ride the rods' as you see how Marvin and Carradine ride on the underbelly of the train holding on to those control rods. Some really nice ones actually would let you ride in the comfort of a freezing freight car.
But there's none as mean as Ernest Borgnine, the conductor known as Shack who boasts no one rides his train for free. He's not satisfied with just throwing them off after some roughing up. This film opens with him killing a hobo with a hammer he carries for the job and then throwing him off the train. Who's to know it's a homicide and who'll care if forensics would prove it?
Is Marvin up to the challenge however both from Borgnine and from young Carradine who thinks he's tough enough to live in the hobo camps and ride the rails as well?
For that you have to watch Emperor Of The North Pole. It's a fine depiction of life at the lowest levels in the Depression. Though Marvin does a fine job, I wonder if this film had been offered to Robert Mitchum? He was a Hollywood star who actually did live this existence in his late teens and early twenties. I really think Mitchum could have brought something special to A-No.1 that no other star could have.