Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land

This article contains mature content and may not be suitable for all readers.
This article particularly deals with content blacklisted from contemporary television for containing harmful, outdated racial stereotypes and/or imagery. This article is not censored, as to censor the article would be to pretend that these prejudices never existed.
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Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land

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Airdate:
28 November 1931

Series:

Merrie Melodies

Production Number:	Vitaphone Number:
MM-4-1	5025

Starring:

Piggy
Fluffy
Uncle Tom

Crew

Voice Characterizations:

Johnny Murray (uncredited)
Rudolf Ising (uncredited)
Ken Darby (uncredited)
The King's Men (uncredited)^[1]

Director:

Rudolf Ising (uncredited)

Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land is a 1931 Merrie Melodies short directed by Rudolf Ising.

Plot[]

The plucky Piggy must rescue his girlfriend and a doglike Uncle Tom from perilous predicaments and villains. A singing steamboat dances down a river while, on the deck, three blackface caricatures play the song for which the short is named on the harmonica, banjo, and bones. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom drives Fluffy toward the boat by donkey cart.

Piggy is a riverboat captain. Fluffy joins the frolicking steamboat passengers and reunites with her boyfriend, but during the revelry, Piggy falls overboard. The pig has a run in with an alligator, but he makes it back to the boat. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom's donkey bucks him into a cemetery. There, in a variation on a stock gag featuring a superstitious black man,^[2] he is scared by three dancing skeletons reminiscent of those in Disney's 1929 short The Skeleton Dance. Tom escapes to the middle of the river, but a shoddy boat leaves him stranded and drowning. Piggy saves the day but not before a vaudevillian villain kidnaps his porcine paramour. Piggy captures the villain on a passing mail hook, leaving the villain tortured over a buzz saw.

Lyrics[]

Open up your golden doorway
And stop. I'm coming your way.
I'm hittin' the trail for Hallelujah Land.
I can see my silver lining. (Daddy-O)
With a passing green reclining. (Daddy-O)
I'm hittin' the trail for da da Land.
(Da da, wa da da do da!)

I sailed away on a miserable day in search of gold.
And I want a pour and store a lot of the sunshine in my soul.
A da da da da my heart beats truer
And skies above are bluer.
I'm hittin' the trail for that there Land. (toot)

Notes[]

This is the final starring role of Piggy. However, Piggy frequently appeared in the "So long Folks!" sequence of the Merrie Melodies shorts up to "I Love a Parade".
This is also the final appearance of Fluffy.
This cartoon is the earliest in the Censored Eleven, a group of eleven cartoons that has been withheld from USA television distribution since 1968 by United Artists.^[3] Because of this, the cartoon has never been officially released on home media. It is also the only black and white cartoon in the Censored Eleven.
- A restored version aired at the 2010 TCM Classic Film Festival, alongside seven other Censored Eleven shorts. This version was set for release on DVD, but such plans were aborted.
This cartoon entered the public domain in 1960 due to United Artists failing to renew the copyright. This cartoon, alongside "Jungle Jitters" and "All This and Rabbit Stew" are the only cartoons in the Censored Eleven to be in the public domain.