Hallelujah, I'm A Bum! [1933] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Customer Reviews:

Rodgers & Hart and Al Jolson shine in this early Hollywood musical.......2007-10-04

Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart had just scored a critical and popular success with 1932's Love Me Tonight. They used their new leverage with their next film, Hallelujah I'm A Bum, to push further their idea of rhyming dialogue and more integrated songs. The movie starred Al Jolson and was a poignant tale of a happy-go-lucky bum who falls for a woman he rescues from a lake who has amnesia, only to lose her to a good friend of his who had been her lover. Despite the film's many charms, it was just too unusual and probably too bittersweet. It didn't do well at the box office. As a result, Rodgers and Hart were consigned to the fate of all the other Broadway songwriters who had come to Hollywood when the Depression cut the legs off much of the Broadway theater; they were given piecemeal assignments with the songs altered, cut, changed or dropped at the whim of the producers. Within a year and a half the pair had fled Hollywood, returned to Broadway and created a stunning series of hit musicals until the partnership finally came apart in 1943.

Bumper (Al Jolson) is a cheerful, resourceful bum, the leader of the Central Park lay-abouts. He has his standards, too. His friends call him the Mayor of Central Park, and among those friends is Mayor Hastings, the real mayor of New York City. Hastings keeps a mistress, June Marsden (Madge Evans), whom through a mistaken series of events he believes is being unfaithful. She tries to explain, he says he no longer wants to see her, and so she wanders to Central Park, jumps off the bridge into the lake and is rescued by Bumper. She has amnesia. Bumper falls for her, and falls hard. He even gets a job at a bank so he can take care of her. But Hastings realizes how much he loves June and how wrong he was about her. Bumper finds out the girl he calls Angel is really June Marsden, and honorably he brings her back together with Hastings. June recovers her memory, but now she sees Bumper only as this funny, harmless bum. The last we see of Bumper he has given up his coat and tie and returned to Central Park. He's leaning back on a bench and staring at the sky. Some how, we know, his innate cheerfulness and sense of what's right will pull him through.

Probably a third of the movie is made up of lengthy set pieces involving stretches of rhymed dialogue half sung, half spoken. Rodgers and Hart wrote several songs, but they are so much a part of the characters and the plot that only two can stand alone. One, You Are Too Beautiful, became a hit. The other, I've Got To Get Back to New York, became a standard among supper club saloon singers like Bobby Short.

Al Jolson does a first-rate job as Bumper. He had such an outsized personality that you can see how he could easily dominate a theater. In movies, you can also see how he could just be too much. Here, he's playing a nice guy, a little shy at times but basically a confident, fair-minded man with a sense of what's right. Jolson isn't exactly subdued, but you wind up liking his character. He's the point of the movie, and he makes the movie work. Frank Morgan does a fine job as the mayor, tired of his duties, a charming man, not realizing he loves June until it's almost too late. Madge Evans doesn't have a lot to work with, but she looks great and works well with both Jolson and Morgan. One of the standouts in the cast is Harry Langdon as Egghead, who picks up trash in the park. He's an innocent Red, a naive socialist, a friend of Bumper's most of the time. Langdon was one of the great silent comics of the Twenties until success went to his head. By the time the talkies came in Langdon was doing bit parts. Nothing came of his prominent role in Hallelujah, but you can see why he was big in his prime. He has a child-like face and a confused expression, he's a little helpless, he stumbles about some, and he is a master of small bits of business. Also on hand is Chester Conklin, once one of the Keystone Kops and a great silent movie clown, as a driver of a horse-drawn park carriage who has as forbidding a wife as you can imagine.

The movie is dated but is still great fun. If you're interested in the development of Hollywood musicals, or Rogers and Hart, or Al Jolson, or just movies that tried being unconventional, you might enjoy watching and owning this one. The DVD presentation is very good considering the age of the film. There are no extras.

We'll let Bumper have the last words:

Rockefeller's busy giving dough away;
Chevrolet is busy making cars;
Hobo, you keep busy when they throw away
Slightly used cigars.
Hobo, you've no time to shirk.
You're busy keeping far away from work.

The weather's getting fine.
The coffee tastes like wine.
You happy hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"
Why work away for wealth
When you can travel for your health?
It' s spring, you hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"
Your home is always near;
The moon's your chandelier;
Your ceiling is the sky,
Way up high.
The road is your estate,
The earth your little dinner plate;
It's spring, you hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"

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