Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is a 1933 American pre-Codemusical comedy film directed by Lewis Milestone and set in the Great Depression. The title is taken from the American folk song "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum", and the film contains a song called "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum", but the song from the movie is entirely different than the folk song from which the title is taken.
The film stars Al Jolson as Bumper, a popular New York tramp, and both romanticizes and satirizes the hobo lifestyle into which many people were forced by the economic conditions of the time. It is noted for its heavy leftist overtones and freewheeling style. Among the production's supporting cast are Frank Morgan, silent comedian Harry Langdon, Chester Conklin of the Keystone Cops, and vaudevillianEdgar Connor.[1] Morgan, who portrays the Wizard in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz, foreshadows a line in the later film when he says to Al Jolson, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home".
Poster for 1941 reissue, retitled The Heart of New York[2]
