The legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Mouron Belli (1907–1996) was — among many other things — an enthusiast of the Emperor Norton.
No doubt, this — and Melvin Belli’s way with a pen — is why William Drury enlisted Belli to write the Foreword for his 1986 biography of the Emperor.
Throughout his very public life, Belli repeatedly and habitually associated himself with Emperor Norton.
As shown in the scenes documented here...
an Emperor Norton cosplayer who "knighted" Belli at the 1960 Belli-staged dedication of two Gold Rush-era buildings that Belli had restored — one of which he would use for his law office
Belli's own cosplaying of the Emperor for a San Francisco Examiner magazine feature in 1987
Belli's interviews comparing public birthday parties he threw for himself in 1982 and 1987 to imagined birthday celebrations for Emperor Norton in the Emperor's day
...Belli invoked the Emperor in ways that suggested a link between his fight for justice and his flair for the eccentric.
Indeed, Belli's Norton-flavored theatrics helped his audiences to see that — as with Emperor Norton — his own eccentricity was a key to his influence.
Click below for stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, and video.
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The best-known vista of the 245-foot-tall clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building is from along Market Street, looking northeast.
The best-known street vista — but not the only one.
The clock tower also rises as the eastern visual terminus of Commercial Street.
On today’s Commercial Street, the tower is most readily seen from the 2-block stretch between Montgomery Street to the east and Grant Avenue to the west. This is the stretch adjacent to, and near, the former site of 624 Commercial between Montgomery and Kearny Streets — where Emperor Norton lived from 1864/65 until his death in 1880.
The view of the Ferry Building clock tower from here is one reason why The Emperor Norton Trust has proposal that the tower be named Emperor Norton Tower. You can read our proposal and commentaries by clicking the Learn More button at EmperorNortonTower.org.
Click through for a series of seven views of the clock tower photographed from the 7-block stretch of Commercial Street between Drumm Street and Grant Avenue during the first half of the tower’s 125-year life-so-far — the period between c.1900 and 1960.
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Sixty years ago today — on 1 July 1959 — Judy Garland started an 11-night stand at the War Memorial Opera House, in San Francisco.
During this stand, Garland introduced a transformative new version of the 1936 song “San Francisco.”
The song had been written and composed for her by her longtime accompanist, musical director and mentor, Roger Edens.
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In 1959, "the Society of California Pioneers in cooperation with the San Francisco Chronicle" proposed an Emperor Norton memorial plaque at the intersection of California Street and Grant Avenue — where the Emperor collapsed and died on 8 January 1880. A design for the plaque was created by Hubert Buel, the Chronicle's art director. Indeed, the design and text for the plaque were approved by resolution of the San Francisco Arts Commission on 1 June 1959.
And yet, today, there is no Emperor Norton plaque at California and Grant. In fact, it appears that the project never made it before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — which typically would have to have given final approval for a project like this in order for it to move forward.
How did an Emperor Norton plaque with the collaborative backing of two storied institutions like the Society of California Pioneers and the San Francisco Chronicle get pushed off the tracks — and who did the job?
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