LGM Film Club, Part 512: This is the Bowery

This is the Bowery is a 1941 MGM short designed primarily to make viewers feel that mission work for the homelessness on the Bowery and in other districts in the U.S, and around the world was a good thing that they should support. Interestingly, it does not play up religion, basically saying this is not a good way to reach the homelessness, but rather just treating them like humans works and exhorting them to take another shot at life. Maybe so, maybe not. I can say that it was one thing to work with the drunks of 1941 and another to work with the fentanyl addicts of 2025. The drugs are just so much more powerful now. Anyway, an interesting vision of a time and place, though by no means the film that Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery is, of course.