Just finished watching the incredibly disappointing Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933). It's named after an IWW hymn and wikisaid it "is noted for its heavy leftist overtones" but what it is is quite the opposite. The hymn of its namesake isn't even present.

It stars a homeless guy and his blackface stereotype servantlike friend (who acts as a slave, essentially) who is homeless by choice by he has no desire to be rich and living in the park is just a fine and dandy good time

The protag is first seen "on vacation" in florida (via trainhopping) and the mayor of new york bumps into him and the two are very good friends and have conversations where the mayor basically says like "any time you want i can get you a really nice job and you won't be a bum" and the protag is like naaaah i like having nothing it's Great and peaceful and i prefer it

of course this is the opening perhaps the film is going somewhere different?

no.

So the first hint I had that this was right-wing propaganda was that when the protag gets back to central park and the large community of homeless people greet him with joy and sing about how nice it is to be homeless. Keep in mind this is the 1930s this isn't exactly a period piece.

And then the Socialist Bum arrives

The socialist bum is played for comic relief. This the 30s remember. This guy is a bum who works a newspaper cat but is still homeless and he goes off on rants about how the future belongs to workers and "when the revolution comes you'll be thrown out only the workers matter" while the bums makes fun of him and torment him for laughs.

The plot picks up when our protag stumbles upon a $1000 bill

The $1000, by chance, is in someone's wallet, with the address of its proper owner. The other bums all want a piece of it (even the socialist bum who wants "half" despite "not doing anything" har har) and the protag sings a song about how they don't need money and life is better without money and "it'd be worse to divide this equally because nearly nothing is worse than nothing" and all the bums are convinced and satisfied

so the Moral Right Thing To Do is return the $1000 bill to the rich lady who lost it. which the bum proceeds to do. he goes to her apartment and she's not there but the mayor, who is her (husband? boyfriend?) shows up and thanks protag for returning the money and says he can keep it, but protag insists on not being selfish, and the mayor says "well if you insist on being a socialist about it go divide it among your bum friends"

please remember in EVERY scene with protag, Acorn, his blackface 30s stereotype pseudoslave is always there praising him and doing menial tasks for him. Like it's hard to even keep mentioning this character because he's ever-present in this story as comic relief and also just like... background...

anyway protag divides the money among the central park tent city (sans tents in this movie cuz in this world it's always By Choice) and they all spend it on booze and lose it

meanwhile the mayor and his girlfriend get into a fight and the girlfriend jumps off of a bridge; and protag sees this and jumps after her and saves her.... BUT SHE HAS AMNESIA!!

In order to care for her he... takes job? Like he just Gets A Job it's Incredibly Easy to just suddenly being working at a bank with an apartment... in the great depression... he Just Does It and has a suit and a deskjob and everything

and all the bums put him on trial for "working" and betraying them but he Did It For Love so they forgive him (and Acorn! who also got a job at the bank because protag's decisions necessarily affect him for some reason)

there's this scene where Acorn is working doing menial cleaning tasks in the bank and keeps distracting protag from his important work stamping stuff to ask him for help because Acorn couldn't remember how to count past a hundred. seriously

there's a scene of payday where Acorn suggests using his paycheck to buy stuff for all the bums in central park while complaining about how hard and unpleasant working is; but protag.... tells him not to? and he just listens? like this is the extent to which this character has NO autonomy. he does with his own paycheck what protag tells him to do.

anyway then blahblah lotsa weird infantilizing het romance scenes w/ protag and Woman until Act Three

in act three it turns out the mayor is so sad over losing his girlfriend who jumped off a bridge that he himself is considering it. his friend, protag, sees the photo of the missing woman and realizes its his own love. He has to think a it about it but... eventually decides to Do the Right Thing and return the Woman to the mayor her Rightful Love (hearkening back to the dollar bill he returned... Property to Return...) when she sees the mayor her memory comes back instantly

and she and the mayor kiss and protag (and Acorn!!) go back to being bums and sing about how maybe the monied people can do the working and aspirations thing but they're just too simple and like the simple things that they could never live that lifestyle and prefer to be bums

so basically this whole movie, which takes its name from an IWW hymn!! is just propaganda meant to make rich people during the great depression feel better about the tent city in Central Park with a good dash of racism (Acorn has to give up working and be a bum just because protag does??) and the notion of socialism is played for laughs. no idea why wikipedia thought to call this "heavily leftist." the message is "things are best in their natural hierarchy" which is right-wing