The Emperor Norton Cartoon That Got the Jump on Jump

March 28, 2024 / John Lumea

Ask any careful student of the Emperor Norton story to name the most famous early cartoonist of the Emperor and they are likely to single out Edward Jump (1832–1883). They would be right about that.

They might go on to credit Jump as the first artist to depict Emperor Norton with the dogs Bummer and Lazarus. About this they would be wrong.

It's true that, in the early 1860s, Jump created three cartoons that featured the Emperor and the dogs in the same scene — and that these cartoons have been influential in associating the Emp with Bummer and Lazarus in the popular imagination.

But, Jump was not the first artist to make this connection.

That distinction goes to someone who was not even a cartoonist by profession — but whose lithographed and published cartoon, apparently sold as a standalone sheet, showing Bummer and Lazarus sitting near Emperor Norton predates by as much as a year or more Jump's earliest cartoon showing these characters together.

This is the story of the artist and the cartoon that appear to be Edward Jump's conceptual influencer.

That we are aware, this is the first time the story has been told.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, artist, comic, cartoon, caricature, R.M. Evans, Edward Jump, Benjamin Franklin Butler, Benjamin F. Butler, B.F. Butler, Tompson in a Quandary, lithograph, lithographer, Bummer & Lazarus, George Washington II, Frederick Coombs, James Tompson, 1861, 1862, 1863

Emperor Norton Was a San Francisco Fixture Within 3 Years of Declaring His Reign

January 16, 2024 / John Lumea

From the time that Joshua Norton publicly declared and signed himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States” in his Proclamation published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of 17 September 1859, there was a more or less steady pulse of newspaper publications of his subsequent Proclamations — as well as newspaper reports of activities and sightings of the new Emperor.

But, at what point was there evidence of a separate public consciousness that this “Emperor Norton” might be a new character that was here to stay — a public awareness of the Emperor’s early ubiquity and fame?

When did Emperor Norton start to go meta?

Here, we document the earliest signs of local awareness that a new player had arrived on the urban stage.

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categories / Research, ARENA, Original sources
tags / fame, reputation, newspaper, report, editorial, humor, Art, cartoon, sketch, lithograph, T. Grob, Edward Jump, 1859, 1861, 1862, 1863

Emperor Norton Does Art Criticism With a Borrowed Jackknife — And the Crowd Loves It

December 28, 2023 / John Lumea

By 1861 — and for the 18-plus-year remainder of his reign — Emperor Norton was a favorite and enduring subject for San Francisco cartoonists and theater troupes, who found that local audiences enjoyed the good-natured lampooning of their Emperor.

The Emperor himself was less amused — and, there are a couple of oft-cited examples of the Emperor’s expressing his royal displeasure over how he was portrayed in these contexts.

Recently, we uncovered an “episode of displeasure” that is even better documented than the familiar examples.

The occasion was the mounting of an advertisement using Emperor Norton’s image on a construction fence at Montgomery and California Streets. The Emperor borrowed a jackknife; cut out the image of himself; and sliced the image to shreds.

The crowd, as they say, “went wild.”

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, cartoon, comic, caricature, photograph, theater, depiction, portrayal, Safe Deposit Building, Montgomery Street, California Street, advertisement, ad, George Frederick Keller, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Jump, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Reese, 1861, 1863, 1869, 1873, 1874, 1875

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

May 30, 2023 / John Lumea

It’s well known that souvenir photographs and lithographs of Emperor Norton were sold in San Francisco shops during the Emperor’s lifetime.

Norton biographer William Drury takes it considerably further to claim that, by the early 1870s, there was a whole cottage industry of “Emperor Norton statuettes, Emperor Norton dolls, Emperor Norton mugs and jugs, Emperor Norton Imperial Cigars” — and even that there were peddlers hawking Emperor Norton merch at his funeral.

I find no evidence to support much of what Drury asserts — but…

In 1877 — a couple of years before Emperor Norton died in 1880 — a German immigrant jeweler and sculptor in San Francisco created a highly accomplished statuette of the Emperor that deserves a much closer look than it has received.

Although there is no ready evidence that this nearly-two-foot-tall statuette was sold in shops, there is evidence to suggest that it was a fixture in San Francisco saloons — and even that the Emperor himself had a copy in his apartment.

Among other things, I document here the three known copies of the statuette and offer a glimpse into the life and work of the sculptor.

There even are cameo appearances from historians of Ancient Rome and the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a fascinating story, previously untold.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / Art, sculpture, statue, statuette, figurine, Herman J. Brand, Jonas Brand, jeweler, sculptor, plaster, medallion, token, charm, gold, saloon, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Society of California Pioneers, Wells Fargo History Museum, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, photograph, cabinet card, painting, lithograph, terra cotta, Pantheon, pantheonic, Rome, Oxford English Dictionary, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, 1906, 1921, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1986, 2021

A Closer Look at an Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt Medallion

June 14, 2022 / John Lumea

The Emperor Norton Treasure Hunts, produced by the San Francisco Chronicle between 1953 and 1962, loom large in modern Nortonian lore.

The central symbol and talisman of these treasure hunts is an elaborate 7” medallion. When winning competitors discovered and dug up a plastic version of this medallion, they were gifted with a keepsake bronze “original” that was struck by Shreve & Co., the legendary jeweler established in San Francisco in 1852.

But, it’s never been clear exactly what these medallions looked like — front and back — until now.

New close-up photographs of one of the original 1953 medallions is on the flip.

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categories / Research, Projects, ARENA
tags / Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt, San Francisco Chronicle, Scott Newhall, medallion, Shreve & Co., Palace of Fine Arts, Tilden Park, Dan Sullivan, 1953

The Mid-Century Advertising Origins of an Emperor Norton Illustration That Still Is Finding New Life After 50 Years

September 07, 2021 / John Lumea

There’s a familiar and popular illustration of Emperor Norton that most Nortonians know because it appeared on a Discordian flyer created by Greg Hill a.k.a. Malaclypse the Younger.

Hill wasn’t just any Discordian. He was one of the two co-founders of Discordianism, the mystical “anti-religion” that reveres Emperor Norton as a saint. It is Hill qua Malaclypse who is credited with the oft-quoted aphorism: “Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Hermann Hesse. Hardly anybody understands Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton."

But, it wasn’t Hill who drew the Emp that is featured on his flyer. He cribbed the illustration from one of the most influential corporate advertising firms in the United States. The illustration was work the firm had just done for an Old West banking client that has been a household name for generations.

The ad firm already had a connection of sorts to the Emperor. Soon — 50 years ago this past July — the firm would create what now is regarded as one of the most legendary ads in the history of the discipline.

The obscure origins of the firm’s portrait of the Emperor have remained hidden for decades.

Read on to see what’s under the rock. It’s a fascinating story.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Greg Hill, Malaclypse the Younger, Discordianism, flyer, McCann Erickson, Death Valley Days, Wells Fargo, advertising, advertisement, newspaper, Mark Twain, Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Black Bart, Terrance Ryan, Lil Tuffy, 1956, 1970, 2020

Early 1950s Push to Find a Home for Storied But Snubbed Emperor Norton Plaque

July 07, 2021 / John Lumea

When the fraternity of E Clampus Vitus sought in 1939 to place a plaque honoring Emperor Norton at the Transbay Terminal, in San Francisco, the California Toll Bridge Authority — the developer and de facto owner of the Terminal — said No.

Finally, in 1955, the plaque was installed at the Cliff House. But, a lingering question has been: What did the Clampers do to find a home for the plaque in the 16 years between 1939 and 1955?

Certainly, World War II made it difficult to push the project forward. But, even allowing for that, we’ve uncovered some news accounts suggesting that there was more behind-the-scenes activity than previously thought.

It appears that the Clampers continued to make appeals to the Bridge Authority for at least 18 months in 1939 and 1940.

And, the effort that resulted in getting the plaque at the Cliff House in 1955 started at least 5 years earlier, in 1950 — with several brick walls on the path to the first proper dedication.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Bay Bridge, ARENA
tags / plaque, E Clampus Vitus, William Gordon Huff, Transbay Terminal, Commercial Street, Downieville, Cliff House, Molloy's Tavern, Colma, Eric A. Falconer, 1939, 1940, 1950, 1953, 1955

Life and Death of an Emperor Norton Mural (Bottle Caps Edition)

July 08, 2020 / John Lumea

A fondly regarded public artwork — a mural-sized rendering of Emperor Norton in bottle caps — came on the scene in The Mission, San Francisco, in late 2011.

It left quietly a few months ago.

Photographs and Google street views from 2009 to the present document the rise, fade and fall.

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categories / Places, Tributes, Legacy, ARENA
tags / Art, public art, mural, bottle caps, Scott Bowers, Mission, Bryant Street

Emperor Norton in the Artistic Taxonomy of Antonio Sotomayor

May 06, 2020 / John Lumea

The Emperor Norton mural in The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco — painted by the city’s longtime “artist laureate,” Antonio Sotomayor (1904–1985) — is one of the best-known and -loved Emperor-themed works of art.

A newly discovered art-historical survey done for the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1953 offers an elusive date for the painting — and a new way of seeing it.

Includes rarely seen photographs.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA, Tributes, Legacy, Places
tags / art, mural, Antonio Sotomayor, Palace Hotel, Pied Piper, Happy Valley Room, San Francisco Arts Commission, Martin Snipper, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, The Great Unknown, Lotta Crabtree, Frederick Coombs, George Washington II, 1935, 1953

Of Medals and Medallions: Four Artifacts of Mid-20th-Century “Norton Culture”

April 17, 2020 / John Lumea

The period of the 1950s and ‘60s was a high-water mark of the Norton Cultural Complex in San Francisco.

Probably the best-known engine of “Emperor Norton awareness” during this time was the San Francisco Chronicle’s Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt. But, there were many other Norton-related projects, too — and some of them left behind beautiful physical traces.

At least three — perhaps all four — of the Nortonian artifacts discussed here trace their origins, production and promotion to the Chronicle.

And, two of them — a medallion and a medal — are relics of a “Grand Order of the West” that remains very mysterious indeed.

Includes rarely seen photographs.

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categories / Research, Tributes, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt, Grand Order of the West, Thanksgiving Day Parade, Playland at the Beach, medallion, medal, note, souvenir, San Francisco Chronicle, Shreve & Co., 1953

Emperor Norton & Denis Kearney, Together in 1879 — On the Back Cover of The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp

August 21, 2019 / John Lumea

Emperor Norton and the fear-mongering, violence-inciting demagogue Denis Kearney were on opposite sides of California’s “Chinese question.” But, in December 1879, the two men were depicted together on the back cover of The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, in a cartoon by George Frederick Keller.

The cartoon spoke volumes about the Emperor’s moral stature.

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categories / Original sources, ARENA, Research
tags / cartoon, San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, George Frederick Keller, Denis Kearney, 1879

Emperor Norton & The Great Unknown: Two Eccentrics Meet in a Rare Illustration from 1871

May 15, 2019 / John Lumea

By the time Max Cohnheim arrived in San Francisco in 1867, at around age 41 — Cohnheim had immigrated to the United States in 1851 — he already was a noted German-language writer, editor, playwright and sometime actor of political satire.

On 17 June 1871, Cohnheim debuted his latest satirical magazine, the San Francisco Humorist. The inaugural issue featured a comic illustration of the Emperor Norton conferring with another well-known street character of the day — a dandy who styled himself The Great Unknown.

It seems likely that the Emperor and the Unknown at least would have been acquainted with one another.

Read on to learn more about the Great Unknown and to see this early illustration of Emperor Norton — an illustration, drawn during the Emperor’s lifetime, that probably has lain in obscurity for decades and probably has seen by very few people at all since it first was published nearly 150 years ago.

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categories / Original sources, ARENA, Research
tags / San Francisco Humorist, Max Cohnheim, The Great Unknown, Friedrich Wilhelm Frohm, William Fromm, Charles Fromm, George Daniels Morse, Morse's Palace of Art, California Theater, William Horace Lindgard, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Kathleen Neils Conzen, comic, 1871

Emperor Norton's Hunch: "Lu Watters Original" or Variation on an Earlier Theme?

April 17, 2019 / John Lumea

Many who follow Emperor Norton are fond of a Dixieland revival tune, “Emperor Norton’s Hunch,” that was performed, recorded and popularized in the late 1940s by Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band.

For decades, Lu Watters has been credited as the composer of the song. But, on a 1950 album released by Watters and the band, the composer credit went to someone else.

Getting under the surface of that exception suggests that, perhaps, Watters is not the original composer of “Emperor Norton’s Hunch” but is better understood as an arranger who produced a variation on an existing theme — and who also, in this case, was a self-promoter who was able to brand himself as the composer simply by being the first to say so in a public, official way, gambling that the risk of a serious challenge was low.

Read on to learn the fascinating story of the sometime composer Wilbur Watkins Campbell — and about why there is reason to believe that the roots of “Emperor Norton’s Hunch” lie in an earlier work by him.

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categories / Original sources, ARENA, Research
tags / Emperor Norton's Hunch, Wilbur Watkins Campbell, Lu Watters, Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Mercury Records, copyright, Dawn Club, Hambone Kelly's, ragtime, Dixieland, New Orleans, Turk Murphy, Bob Scobey, West Coast Recordings, Down Home Records, Fairmont Records, Los Angeles Times

Campaign Receives Major Pledge to Help Fund Limited-Edition Compilation Album of "Emperor Songs"

March 29, 2019 / The Emperor Norton Trust

On the eve of a crowdfunding campaign in support of its project to produce a compilation album of “Emperor songs” — songs about, or in some way inspired by, Emperor Norton — the Campaign has received a pledge of $3,000 for the project — which represents one-half of the projected $6,000 needed to pay for all costs associated with producing and distributing the album, including engineering, design, vinyl pressing, shipping materials and postage.

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categories / ARENA, Projects, Tributes, Legacy, News
tags / Imperial Majesty: Songs & Stories of Emperor Norton, Emperor songs, album, compilation album, LP, vinyl, mp3, Steven Short

In the Wake of the Emperor’s Death, A Literary Tribute and a Woodcut Illustration Appears in Illinois

March 18, 2019 / John Lumea

Richard D. Faulkner — of Bodega, in Sonoma County, Calif. — was an 1877 graduate of Illinois Industrial University, now known as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While at the university, Faulkner was the business manager of the student newspaper, The Illini.

In its March 1880 number — two months after the death of Emperor Norton — The Illini published Faulkner’s literary profile-in-tribute to the Emperor, including Faulkner's memories of having met the Emperor several times on an earlier trip to San Francisco.

The profile was accompanied by a lovely new woodcut illustration of the Emp.

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categories / Original sources, ARENA, Research
tags / art, woodcut, print, illustration, The Illini, Illinois Industrial University, Richard D. Faulkner, Petaluma Weekly Argus, 1880

“The Old Boy Doped It Out Pretty Damn Well” — Notes on an Early "Emperor's Bridge" Campaigner

January 15, 2019 / John Lumea

A May 1956 episode of the television series Telephone Time is one of the four films currently included in The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign’s digital ARchive of Emperor Norton in Art, Music & Film (ARENA).

The series was created, produced and hosted by John Nesbitt. And the episode is titled “Emperor Norton’s Bridge,” although the Bay Bridge — the Emperor’s bridge — appears nowhere in the story.

As it happens, though, Nesbitt — starting years before the airing of the episode — was a lifelong advocate for naming the Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton.

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categories / Original sources, Bay Bridge, Outside Observations, Film, ARENA, Research
tags / John Nesbitt, Telephone Time, Passing Parade, radio, television, San Francisco Examiner, Strange As It Seems, Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Time-Traveling With One of the Earliest Comic Illustrations of Emperor Norton

May 14, 2018 / John Lumea

A wonderful illustration of Emperor Norton featured by the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper in 1913 and the California Review monthly in 1904 got its start as part of a triptych of “Prominent Men of San Francisco” drawn by George Frederick Keller (1846–1927) in c.1874, as the Emperor was reaching the height of his imperial influence and becoming a nationally known figure.

Not long after this, in 1876, Keller came to prominence as the chief artist of the new San Francisco Wasp, a position that briefly would earn him both fame and notoriety as one of the leading political cartoonists of his day.

The full story is in the flip — including high-resolution wonders that The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign is pleased to present online for the first time.

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categories / Original sources, ARENA, Research
tags / art, George Frederick Keller, Thistleton's Jolly Giant, San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Francis Korbel, California Review, San Francisco Bulletin

The Emperor's Bridge Campaign Contributes Four Rare Emperor Norton Films to the Internet Archive

April 18, 2017 / John Lumea

The Emperor's Bridge Campaign has contributed four rare Emperor-themed films to the Internet Archive, the nonprofit library that collects published works and makes them available in digital formats.

These films are rarely seen outside the domains of film screening societies and, occasionally, subscription cable television — and sometimes not even then.

The Campaign is delighted and grateful to have the Internet Archive as a partner in making these films available for viewing by a broader audience — both via the Internet Archive and via the Campaign's own ARchive of Emperor Norton in Art, Music & Film (ARENA).

This collaboration with the Internet Archive includes the Archive's new high-resolution scan of the Campaign's 16mm copy of a 1936 theatrical film short that appears to feature the earliest dramatic portrayal of Emperor Norton extant on film.

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categories / ARENA, Film, Projects, News
tags / Internet Archive, Dimitrios Latsis

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