RECENT RESEARCH — When the Emperor Norton Memorial Association had a new headstone made for the Emperor in 1934, the Association inscribed the wrong birth date: 1819. For years, The Emperor Norton Trust has traced this error to a falsified claim made by Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942) — a longtime friend and "history associate" of members of the Association — in a 1923 essay for the California Historical Society (CHS). Comes new evidence that Cowan revived and even RAMPED UP his decade-old birth date fakery in early 1934, and did so while he was president of the CHS board — a board that included 2 of the 4 officers of the new Emperor Norton Memorial Association — one of whom was the Association’s president. Seems that — more than we knew: In 1934, the fix was in for a falsified 1819 birth date on the Emperor's headstone.

The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: Telephone Time

“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!, 1945, 1956