The Emperor of the North was a 1973 film about 1933 hobos riding the rails. It was directed by Robert Aldrich and starred two Academy Award winners, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, and future Academy Award winner Keith Carradine. The original title, Emperor of the North Pole, referred to the king of the hobos, meaning that he ruled over a cold wasteland. The title caused some confusion when the movie was released, as some parents thought they were taking their kids to a sweet little Christmas film, not a violent film about a brutal train conductor. The word Pole was taken out of the title as a result.
Oregon Governor Tom McCall’s motion picture and television committee invited producers Kenneth Hyman and Stanley Hough up for a quick trip to the Willamette Valley and they found exactly what they were looking for. A 1972 newspaper article explains why Cottage Grove was selected as the filming site. “This town (pop. 6,000) proved a bonanza, for it boasted the Oregon, Pacific and Eastern Railway—18 miles of vintage track up the Row River, an engine house, lots of cars and a wrecking yard for train parts. Best of all, a highway paralleled the rails for miles, fine for long tracking shots with nary a TV antenna to spoil the ’33 look.” Only one scene in the film was not filmed in Cottage Grove. The huge Buxton Trestle, west of Portland, was used for a dramatic shot.
Preliminary work on the film began in May of 1972. Train cars were borrowed from many different railroads, including Western Fruit Express of Spokane, and some stock cars were brought out all the way from Chicago. They all had to be repainted and made to look as if they were in use in the 1930’s. Temporary water towers and small trestles were built along the OP&E tracks. A “Salem” train depot was built in the OP&E yards because the actual Salem Depot was too modern looking. Filming started in July and lasted all summer long.
Engine #19 was practically a co-star of the movie. The 1915 vintage Baldwin-Mikado was the pride of OP&E. It was called a Mikado because that particular engine type was sold in Japan before being released in the US. According to publicity by 20th Century Fox, #19 started out at a Mexican mine, got shot up in Pancho Villa’s wars, and worked for the McCloud River railroad. It came to OP&E in 1971. The engine currently resides at the World of Steam Roundhouse in Ohio.
OP&E conductor Harold Pennington, engineer George McFadden and fireman Loren Warner taught the crew the ins and outs of running locomotive No. 19. McFadden and Warner appear in the film, playing themselves, but in the cab of locomotive No. 5, pulling the Prairie Special. Both wore 1933-vintage stiff collars to insure realism. Willis Kyle, President of the OP & E allowed the film company to have unlimited access to his company’s rolling stock.
It was ironic that although Ernest Borgnine played a sadistic character in the film, locals found him to be a gentle and polite man, and he was well-liked by all he met. Apparently, he was a little taken aback by how convincingly he played evil. In a 2012 article about the film in Portland Monthly he said “I would go home at night and say to my wife, honey you saw me do a couple of scenes today, am I really that kind of a person? There were things coming out of me that I’d never done in my life. I’m not sure where it was all coming from. But it was kind of frightening.”
Lee Marvin was reputed to be fine while sober, but rumor has it he was 86’d from a number of Cottage Grove taverns after he had too many. Lee Marvin had a connection to Cottage Grove, as the family of his first wife, Betty Ebeling, lived on 1st Street in town for a number of years. Lee thrilled the kids of Culp Creek School one afternoon, when he played a ballgame with them. One student said that he was going to be in trouble for getting home from school so late, so Mr. Marvin knocked on the door and told the boy’s very surprised mother why her son wasn’t home earlier.
Although the characters in the film were all bitter enemies, in real life the actors became very good buddies. Keith Carradine said this in a 2016 interview about his career “...I got a chance to spend eight weeks up in Cottage Grove, Oregon with these two legendary actors. Talk about film school. Talk about acting class. But even more than that it was a class in professionalism and just how you come to work every day and how you do your job. It was an extraordinary opportunity as a young actor, and as I say, I stayed friends with those guys all their lives.”
Many Cottage Grove residents were extras in the film, particularly in the baptism scene. This bit was shot in the Row River, a little way downstream of the Dorena Grange. Cottage Grove Mayor Bill Whiteman and his children Kim, Rob and Jeff were among the church goers in the film. Two lucky local boys, William Jackson and Jody Brockamp, were selected for a scene in which they steal a chicken from with Keith Carradine. The boys got to work with the stunt coordinator to learn how to take a punch and fall convincingly.
Copies of the film can be found online and a long theatrical trailer is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G86I_tp8Z6g