hobo synonymous with panhandler or beggar (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: hobo synonymous with panhandler or beggar
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> This website is devoted to "A No. 1".   He was a hobo (or tramp -- it
seems
> to use "hobo" and "tramp" interchangeably), active early in the 20th
> C, and famous
> enough to be named in one of Louis Armstrong's records ("Hobo, You
Can't
> Ride This Train").   His right name was Leon Ray Livingston.  He wrote
and
> published a number of books.
> http://www.angelfire.com/folk/famoustramp/
>
> A friend of mine is the head of the Boston chapter of the Industrial
> Workers of the World and is collecting books by hoboes.  I don't know
> whether he has any by A No. 1,  though he does have one illustrated by
> Ernie Bushmiller.
(http://www.drawger.com/kroninger/?article_id=12528)
>

The book was from 1930, which was while Bushmiller was doing the "Fritzi
Ritz" comic strip ("Nancy" didn't come along until later), and after he
was an illustrator on Houdini's (ghostwritten) syndicated "Red Magic"
newspaper supplement section.

The actor Lee Marvin played A No. 1 in the movie "Emperor of the North"
(1973), about hoboes during the depression.  Ernest Borgnine was his
adversary, a railroad worker who doesn't like hoboes riding his train.
It also has Elisha Cook Jr, who always looks like a gunsel, no matter
the role.

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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