Movie Time: Going My Way

 It's Sunday and it's time to go to church.

Specifically, that church is St. Dominic's Catholic Church in New York City.

It's Movie Time and time for a 1944 Oscar winner starring Bing Crosby as a priest.

Going My Way is an American musical comedy drama film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. 

St. Dominic's Catholic Church is a stodgy old church in a troubled neighborhood in New York City. The church is troubled too, in debt to the bank on a past due mortgage.  

Father Fitzgibbon is a stodgy old priest who has little patience for the new priest sent to assist him, Father Charles "Chuck" O'Malley.   

O'Malley is unconventional compared to Fitzgibbon. 

O'Malley likes to dress informally in sweatshirts of his beloved St. Louis Browns baseball team.

He likes to play golf.

He's a musician for crying out loud. He sings, plays the piano, writes songs and even knows current pop music tunes. 

O'Malley is progressive and proactive where Fitzgibbon is conservative and reactive.

Like O'Malley's approach with the boys in the neighborhood, boiys inclined towards vagrancy, vandalism and theft.  

O'Malley actually takes the local boys under his wing to attend baseball games and then convinces them to form a boy's choir. 

Or what about that matter of the young woman who ran away from home because she wants to be a singer in New York's night clubs? O'Malley does encourage her to return to her parents  but he also slips her $10 to tide her over and gives her singing lessons to help her be a better singer.  

Fitzgibbons meets with the Bishop to have O'Malley removed.

Only to discover the truth that O'Malley hasn't shared with him yet.

The Bishop didn't send O'Malley to St. Dominic's to assist Fitzgibbons.

The Bishop sent O'Malley to St. Dominic's to replace Fitzgibbons.

Distressed over this information, Fitzgibbons runs away from home. But after hours of wandering around in a rainstorm with nowhere to go, he returns to the church and acquieces to whatever O'Malley wants to do.

While O'Malley was sent to take charge of St. Dominic's to make it stable and viable, he still considers Fitzgibbons as the pastor and will always have a place at the church.   

On the matter of getting the church on a more secure footing, well, that means money and one way to get that is if O'Malley can sell his song compositions to a music publisher.  But so far, no one is buying.   

 Working with Jenny Tuffel, a singer who is a pre-priesthood ex-girlfriend and some help from the conductor and orchestra at the  Metropolitan Opera (where Jenny is a star) as well as the church's boy choir, O'Malley arranges for a performance of his composition, "Going My Way" for music publisher Max Dolan.

Who is suitably impressed but still declines to buy the song.

An impromptu performance of another of O'Malley's songs, "Swinging On A Star" also impresses Max Dolan and this song, yeah, he'll buy it. 

It's enough money to pay off the church's mortgage. 

With St. Dominic's saved from foreclosure, O'Malley is transferred to a new assignment.  

But there are still challenges to be faced by Fitzgibbons and the church before he can leave.

But even in the face of a fresh new disaster, the church and Fitzgibbons are in a far better place and more than ready to face the future as O'Malley takes his leave.  

Life imitates art: Risë Stevens who played Jenny would go on to become a star performer at the Metropolitan Opera.

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department

• An uncredited William Frawley is Max Dolan the music publisher.  Frawley was Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy.
• Barry Fitzgerald who played Father Fitzgibbons was Aloysius Gogarty, Mrs. Random's gardener in Bringing Up Baby. 

Barry Fitzgerald has the really difficult role of playing a cantankerous curmudgeon without making him completely unlikable. His performance in this role is quite remarkable and deserving of his Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor.  

Going My Way did very well at the Oscars with ten nominations and seven wins.

In addition to Barry Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby won for Best Actor and Leo McCarey  took home the Oscar for Best Director.  The movie itself won Best Picture.  

The record set by Going My Way was not  matched until 2022 by Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Going My Way resulted in Paramound delaying the release of the completed Road To Utopia, a Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "road picture" until 1946.  The studio didn't want the absurdist comedy of that picture possibly screwing up Crosby's chance at a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Father O'Malley.

And Crosby's earns that trophy with an understated performance filled with grace and gentle humor.  

Going My Way may not convert you to Catholicism but it is a warm and positive reminder of the good that come when someone actually tries to live up to the ideals of their faith. 

Let's have Bing and the boys of the St.Dominic's boy choir take us out with "Swinging On A Star".