AllMovie

Half a Sinner is the first film version of the 1925 John E. Hymer-LeRoy Clemens play Alias the Deacon. Berton Churchill re-creates his stage role as an indigent cardsharp who poses as a deacon to fleece the countryside. While going about his business in a small town, he helps straighten out the lives of John (Joel McCrea) and Phyllis (Sally Blane), fellow hoboes whom he'd met while riding the rails. "The Deacon" ends up clearing John of a murder charge before moving on to new vistas and new suckers. The property was remade under its original cognomen Alias the Deacon in 1940, with radio humorist Bob Burns in the title role.