Hallelujah I'm a Bum

A bum named Bumper and his pals named Acorn and Egghead live a pleasant life in New York with a philosophy that it is better to be a bum than to work for a living. They just happen to be acquaintances with the mayor of New York who is a bit of a playboy.

When the mayor and his lady friend have a quarrel, she despairs and jumps off a bridge to end her life. Bumper happens to see her jump and rescues her from the river. The result of her trauma is that she has temporary amnesia, and she falls in love with Bumper while he is taking care of her.

This is a charming film, with many attributes that make it commendable. "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" is first and foremost a musical with some drama and comedy added in. Al Jolson's voice and singing are simply wonderful and this movie is good enough to see for the songs alone. The songs are snappy and cheery and if you'd like to be introduced to the famous Al Jolson, this is a good choice. There is also quite a bit of rhythm and rhyme to much of the dialogue in the film which is unique and fascinating. The credits on the film for 'Songs and Musical Dialogue' go to one of the most famous teams of songwriters in the history of film, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Their musical brilliance is in evidence in this film.

The cinematography is very good, and it takes us back to 1933 with a 'feel' for what the atmostphere would have been to be bum living in a park in New York, albeit a very happy go lucky bum in a very idealistically happy world. Lewis Milestone, who directed the film is an extremely well known director from the 1930's and 1940's and his skill is evident here.

Al Jolson is a great fit for his role in this movie as the good natured bum, Bumper. His friends Egghead (Harry Langdon) and Acorn (Edgar Connor) are also delightfully cast; these two actors light up the screen anytime they are present. Harry Morgan is terrific as the mayor (He would later be immortalized as the wizard in 1939 in "The Wizard of Oz." Madge Evans is beautiful as the rejected girl friend of the mayor.

This movie is just plain fun to watch and to listen to. I think you might be surprised to find out that this is one of the early 'talking films' which may still have appeal for many film lovers today. There is something timeless about "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" which makes it well worth watching. I give it a 9/10.

The idea of rhythmic dialogue seems strange today, but was a short-lived fad in the early 30s (best example is the 3 Stooges first Columbia short: "Woman Haters")It works well in Halleleujah, I'm a Bum, since rhyming is only done in parts of the picture.

This was my first introduction to 30s musicals, and is now released on DVD. The "mistress situation" of the Mayor of New York keeping lovely Madge Evans in an apartment in the same building as his is rather interesting as well. Although a "dud" at the boxoffice in 1933, this picture has developed a cult following over the years. Jolson's starring movie career was over by the late 30's due to his ego, but he still has a major reputation as one of the greatest entertainers in history. This picture is a wonderful example of the wild enthusiasm of Hollywood's early talkie musicals with a moral to the story.

Slap-happy musical film that tries to use music and images together to meld a new format -- and ends up entertaining and likeable. Many of the songs are "recited" in operatic fashion, as when Jolson, the "Mayor of Central Park" (a famous bum) sings his case in court against a singing tribunal that he's been brought before on chargest of betraying his office by taking a job at a bank. A wonderful tracking shot introduces his job through sucessive levels of importance, beginning with high rollers and ending up with lyricist Lorenz Hart telling a customer he doesn't have a dime to give him. After we see all the varying levels of importance in the bank, we finally come on Jolson and his friend, doing the banking equivalent of peeling potatoes. Wonderful charm of Jolson and Langdon is dulled slightly by Morgan and Evans' stiff leads.

Rodgers music and Hart's lyrics are splendid, making this one of the most original, best written original musicals of all time. It should be noted that in his years later working with Oscar Hammerstein, Rodgers only wrote one original play for film (excluding the televised "Cinderella") -- "State Fair" -- which in my opinion, though charming, has got nothing on "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!" After the failure of this and several other Rodgers/Hart film projects, the duo returned to Broadway to become almost its only reliably successful writers in the later 30s. They left behind this little Hollywood gem to be rediscovered.

It's hard for most of today's audience to imagine why Al Jolson was once considered the world's greatest entertainer. The well-known clips from THE JAZZ SINGER are more of an embarrassment today than something to be proud of, and he hasn't had much of his recorded legacy in print recently, and what is often tends to be later re-recordings. HALLELUJAH I'M A BUM is one of the best examples of Jolson's charm and wit as a performer and although the film is a quirky period piece, it should be of interest to anyone who appreciates musical theater. While the film features "songs," it also features dialog that is spoken to a beat and to a musical background. It's difficult to describe, but it's charming. Jolson plays Bumper, unofficial "Mayor" of the "bums" of New York. He's accompanied by a short Black sidekick named Acorn played by Edgar Connor, a very talented man (also seen in the infamous "Rufus Jones For President" short with the young Sammy Davis Jr. and Ethel Waters). Other colorful characters include the great Harry Langdon as the Marxist trash collector (his scenes with Jolson are wonderful...I think I read once that his part had been cut down somewhat. A shame the outtakes don't survive), and silent comedy legend Chester Conklin as Sunday, who operates a horse and carriage. Frank Morgan as the mayor of the REAL New York City, and Madge Evans as the mayor's amnesia-suffering girlfriend (whom Jolson saves from drowning herself) represent the "Straight" non-bum world, which Bumper and Acorn briefly join, but cannot find happiness in. I'm don't know a lot about the Rodgers and Hart team, but their songs and dialog are still fresh sounding today, and they created a wonderful vehicle for Al Jolson that, unintentionally, may well be the best documentation of him for the modern viewer. This is NOT a film that you may always be in the mood to watch. I can imagine many viewers catching a little of the romanticized homeless people reciting "Musical dialog" and scratching their heads in confusion. I don't usually like musicals (I bought the film back when it came out on VHS because Harry Langdon was in it), but I was won over by it and I can imagine I'll watch it again in a year or two and show it to friends who are involved in musical theater. Check it out if the above description sounds interesting!

To call this film "unusual" feels like a thundering understatement. Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is so strikingly original, so unlike anything else Hollywood ever attempted, one hardly knows where to begin in talking about it. What can you say about a musical-comedy-drama with satirical touches made in the darkest days of the Depression that celebrates the superiority of happy-go-lucky hobo life, centered on a motley gang of homeless people who live in Central Park and consider "work" a dirty word? What if the unofficial leader of these hobos is none other than Al Jolson, that brash show biz legend who, in this incarnation, is a humble tramp nicknamed 'Bumper' who pals around with a young black sidekick called 'Acorn'? And just to add to the incongruity, what if fading silent comedy star Harry Langdon is added to the mix as a trash collector called 'Egghead' who spouts Marxist rhetoric and warns his cohorts that the Revolution is imminent? Speaking of odd casting, what if the romantic lead of the story, the melancholy, middle-aged Mayor of New York City, is played by the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan? (And by the way, he does a damn good job!) And what if the characters switch from naturalistic dialog to Rodgers & Hart songs and then to a kind of rhyming recitative, rather like a comic operetta? In short, there's no fast or easy way to sum up the experience this movie provides, but I'll say right now that even allowing for occasional patches where the material doesn't quite come off the film is absolutely fascinating.

During the transition to talkies in the early '30s director Lewis Milestone was known for dynamic effects at a time when many of his colleagues were still struggling to regain the fluidity of late silent cinema. Milestone took full advantage of his medium with swooping tracking shots, rapid montage, offbeat camera angles, and clever use of sound, and all of these techniques can be found in Hallelujah, I'm a Bum. A bravura comic highlight combining several of these effects is the sequence in which the mayor must lay a cornerstone at a new school with all due pomp and ceremony while earnest, homely children serenade him with "My Country 'Tis of Thee." This film integrates its songs into the flow of action with finesse, which is all the more impressive when you consider that only two or three years earlier most Hollywood musicals were clunky stage pageants trapped within the proscenium arch. Milestone takes the action to Central Park and stages some of his best scenes outside under the trees, although the movie's best known song, "You Are Too Beautiful," is sung by Jolson to leading lady Madge Evans on the fire escape of her dingy apartment, while couples across the street slow-dance at a club called Loveland. It's a moving scene that artfully captures the melancholia of the era.

Beyond these directorial flourishes, however, the most striking thing about this movie is its off-the-wall casting. I've never seen Al Jolson as likable as he is in this film, and in a role utterly unlike anything else he attempted in his Hollywood career. He is our central figure and drives the story, yet Jolson, uncharacteristically, is nonetheless only part of an ensemble of strong performers who each make major contributions to the success of the whole. I gather Roland Young was originally cast as Mayor Hastings and filmed a number of scenes, but he took sick and was replaced by Frank Morgan. Those who know Morgan only from The Wizard of Oz or from the blustery character roles he played later in his career are in for a surprise: he is a revelation as the aging, rueful playboy mayor --doubtless based on NYC's Mayor Jimmy Walker-- who suffers from romantic difficulties with his much younger girlfriend, the gorgeous Madge Evans. Hastings is often depressed and morose, yet he's a square-dealing guy who earns our sympathy. (And in an accidental inside joke, the future Wizard of Oz at one point drunkenly intones: "There's no place like home.") Morgan is terrific, and so is Harry Langdon, the one-time silent star who received his best-ever talkie role on this occasion and rose to the challenge like a champ. A number of other silent comedy veterans appear along the way in small roles, which is a treat.

There's no denying, however, that Hallelujah, I'm a Bum sugarcoats the reality of poverty, and it did so at a time when millions of formerly middle-class Americans found themselves in dire financial straits, which was doubtless a factor in the film's less-than-stellar showing at the box office. On some level audiences must have seen through the songs and comedy and recognized that some very handsomely-paid screenwriters, composers and performers were trying to convince them that they were better off poor; after all, as Jolson sings, "What Do You Want With Money?" That couldn't have gone over too well when this movie was released in the last days of the Hoover Administration, a time of bank failures, foreclosures, evictions and genuine, widespread distress. For us, the struggles of 1933 are long past, but as we deal with the problems of our own era this film stands as a fascinating time capsule, a one-of-a-kind curio that captures the mood of its age better than any other.