After the complicated dance I did trying to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of La La Land (someone had to do it since nobody in that movie was), I really wanted to focus on something surprisingly wholesome and uncomplicated.  Going My Way is a Bing Crosby feature that received all the acclaim, changed the rules on Academy Award nominations and subsequently disappeared from public consciousness.  In contrast with the holiday juggernaut White Christmas that rises from the grave and is paraded around every holiday season, I didn’t even know this movie existed until I saw it nestled at #74 on this list.  I found a DVD copy at the library to watch, but not among other movie musicals, but hidden in the classic movies section with Frankenstein and Gone with the Wind as its neighbors.  For Christ’s sake, I had to create my own gifs this time because there’s only one gif set of this movie on Tumblr… It really fell off.

While age naturally buries even good motion pictures, I think Going My Way’s subject matter in general is what relegated it to Church Basement bargain sales.  Bing Crosby plays Charles Francis Patrick O’Malley, a Catholic priest sent to New York with aims to “assist” Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) in turning his dwindling parish around.  He succeeds in this by getting involved in the community, forming alliances with those who are not free of sin, and providing activities for wayward youths heading down the wrong path.

If all the alarm bells are ringing in your head right now, you are not alone.  Movies today about Catholic priests touching boys focus less on the figurative feel-good sense and more on literal crimes like Spotlight, By the Grace of God, or Primal Fear.  This, of course, is not without merit considering the vast, disgusting history of the Catholic church preying on young children while praying for forgiveness.  But try (if you can) to put this grim reality out of your mind, along with Bing Crosby’s own pockmarked record of how well he raised his own children.  Chuck O’Malley is a progressive (for his time) cool priest, not a regular priest.  He is casual in dress, leaves the church frequently to mingle with its patrons, and doesn’t speak down to or laud himself higher than those he interacts with.  This is Catholic fan fiction of what kind of support the Catholic church wants to portray it provides to its members.

Father O’Malley’s introduction to the audience immediately sets the tone of his character, wandering the streets sporting a casual boater hat and lugging around a plain suitcase.  In attempting to locate his new church in NYC, Chuck instead gets harassed by a busybody, takes the blame for a kid breaking an atheist’s window with a baseball, and gets sprayed by a street cleaner.  Adorning his East St. Louis sweats, he meets Father Fitzgibbon for the first time, giving the Father the impression this new recruit is less than committed to the professionalism needed for the job.  Not only that, but Chuck takes a personal call from his old schoolmate Father Timmy (Frank McHugh) in the middle of their conversation, who is not only a jovial loudmouth, but loves golf (which everyone knows is just a pool hall moved outdoors).

It’s not just youth that makes Father Fitzgibbon hesitant to trust his new partner with his parish; It’s his grand attachment to St. Dominic’s, a church he raised the funds to build over forty years ago.  Father O’Malley tries to alleviate Fitzgibbon’s concerns by immediately making connections with its parishioners, with his first gracious act assuming ownership of a bunch of unwanted puppies and their mother.  He’s then sent on another side quest to prevent the eviction of the same mouthy lady who gave him lip the day before, Mrs. Quimp (Anita Sharp-Bolster), since she’s not paid her rent in over 6 months.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the real villain of this movie (and in rl) is capitalism.  Knickerbocker Savings and Loan are the mortgage holders of St. Dominic’s and after 5 months of missed payments warn Father Fitzgibbon they’ll need to take “necessary action” on the church if it doesn’t cough up some funds.  Mr. Ted Haines Sr. (Gene Lockhart) bemoans they’ve made a “bad loan” and want to get their money back, but like, they gave it to a church?  It’s not like we’re talking Mormon or Scientology money here – this is 1944 toward the end of a second World War.  If they were dumb enough to make this bad investment that’s their own issue.  Not to mention the optics of foreclosing on a church is really, really bad.

Mr. Ted Haines Jr. (James L. Brown) is more than aware of this.  Training to take over his father’s business, he’s a toothless dog in charge of distributing bad news.  When Father O’Malley finds him lingering outside of Mrs. Quimp’s apartment lobbing threats at a fixed income woman, Chuck assures Teddy Jr. she’ll pay back the money next month, and that’s a St. Dominic’s promise.  This does little to impress Sonny Boy since St. Dominic’s is also on the road to defaulting and his dad is already fantasizing paving paradise to put up a parking lot.  But he takes Chuck’s word for it and leaves the unpleasant woman alone.   Mrs. Quimp extends no grace to Father O’Malley for his kind deed, however, since she is the type to find fault with anyone, especially outsiders.

On the way home from saving the day again, Father O’Malley witnesses the same miscreant street baseball playing boys stealing turkeys from a truck.  When Father Fitzgibbon runs into them outside of the church, the kids, particularly their ring leader Tony, say they won the turkey in a theater raffle and like, holy shit, was it a common thing to raffle feathered poultry at your local movie theater during the 1940s?!  Figuring they needed to avoid the heat from the constable, they give the bird to Father Fitzgibbon, which bemuses Father O’Malley when he returns home to find their housekeeper, Mrs. Carmody, has cooked up donated hot turkey for dinner.  When the constable returns two turkey-free children to Father O’Malley later in the night, the Father doesn’t outright threaten to rat them out to the cops, but instead offers them tickets to a baseball game to earn their trust.

Again, must reiterate, nothing bad happens to these children during the runtime of this movie.  OK? OK.

With his youth rehabilitation plan now in motion, Father O’Malley is also asked to deal with the city’s rampant prostitution issue.  The ‘Ol Biddy Mrs. Quimp saw an unmarried, unaccompanied woman and immediately called the cops because clearly she’s an undesirable element.  The cop lets this young runaway stay in his house overnight and delivers her to the church in the morning since she clearly needs Jesus.  Shit, she’d probably be safer on the street.

Carol James may look older, but she’s an 18-year-old who decided to strike it off on her own since her parents don’t let her date and are not supportive of her dream of becoming a singer.  Instead of sending her on her way since she’s a fucking adult, Father O’Malley decides to conduct a mini audition in order to workshop her act, revealing that Chuck is a talented musician that gave up his career to instead work for the lord.  He believes Carol has potential to succeed, but her presentation may need some work.

After Father O’Malley suggests to Carol maybe flapping around like a bird is more distracting than illustrative, Father Fitzgibbon wanders in the room seemingly perplexed that this church instrument is actually being played.  His own advice to Carol is to go home to her parents and wait around until the right man comes to marry her off so she can pop out some children and fulfill her true purpose.  Oh, the 1940s… please change.  Sooner rather than later.  I find this attitude particularly perplexing during the war when millions of women were stepping up and performing non-traditional jobs while the men were overseas… but maybe less surprised that this instruction is coming from a priest.  Shit, NFL kickers are emboldened to share these regressive views today, so not a whole lot has evolved from the Faith and Family people.

Carol leaves on her own recognizance and Father O’Malley returns his focus back on the youth.  Tony is O’Malley’s biggest cheerleader and vouches for the father to the other lost boys.  He keeps secrets for us!  He took us to a baseball game!  He bought us hot dogs!  He said he’s gonna show us movies!  It’s a relieving notion that the only aim of Father O’Malley’s affection is to get the boys involved in a productive character building activity – a church choir.

Father Fitzgibbon, being a man who clearly doesn’t feel the same way about “Three Blind Mice” that Pat Finnerty does, decides to rat out Father O’Malley’s activities to the Bishop.  Unfortunately the interaction doesn’t go according to Father Fitzgibbon’s plan when it is insinuated that Father O’Malley isn’t there to help him out, but is actually in charge of running the church and was too polite and kind to kick Father Fitzgibbon to the curb.  Father Fitzgibbon reacts to this news in a totally reasonable and not at all dramatic way – by packing a suitcase and running off in the middle of a rainstorm without telling anybody where he was going.

When Mrs. Carmody discovers Fitzgibbon’s absence when she ventures upstairs to ask him to join Father O’Malley for dinner, the two alert the one constable who works in New York City and when they finally fish him out and return him, Mrs. Carmody and the Father wring him out and put him to bed.

Facing retirement, Father Fitzgibbon begins to reminisce to Father O’Malley of his time in the church, realizing he dedicated his life to a cause that would unceremoniously strip him of his parish and hand it over to some young whippersnapper with wild ideas.  He traveled to America 45 years ago from Ireland leaving his mother behind and has not once returned for a visit because of his commitment to his congregation.  Surprisingly his 90-year-old mother awaits his return, sending a bottle of whiskey every year around Christmas that the father uses as a calendar to mark yet another spin around the sun.

“I get a little behind during Lent, but it comes out even during Christmas.”

Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for both Best Actor AND Best Supporting Actor for his role as Father Fitzgibbon.  He ultimately won Best Supporting Actor (and later decapitated his plaster Oscar in a golf-related accident), but this confusing ballot led the Academy to change the rules to prevent the same role from being nominated in multiple categories. Mr. Fitzgerald does a great job at playing a curmudgeonly old man set in his ways, but flexible enough to acknowledge change isn’t necessarily bad.  Ultimately he cares about his parish, and if the Bishop believes Father O’Malley is the one to help strengthen the community and raise the funds to keep the church, Father Fitzgibbon will go along for the ride.  Chuck also assures Father Fitzgibbon he has no intentions of displacing him and convinces him to stay so they can work together to Damn the Man and Save the Empire.

In the ever growing list of Father O’Malley’s allies, the next day he literally runs into an old flame, Jenny, on the street.  Played by real life opera singer Risë Stevens (an opera singer who can actually sing in a movie musical, and one whose voice was once insured for 1 million dollars?!  Unheard of!), Jenny (now rebranded as Genevieve) is on her way to The Met to prepare for her performance in Carmen. Quite the non-traditional woman, Chuck and Jenny used to exchange letters while she was on her European tour, and when the letters stopped Jenny wondered what had happened to her childhood friend.  Turns out the message with important context was lost, leading to this touching reveal.

Risë Stevens just sparkles on screen – you really can’t help but smile along with her.

With all the cards all out on the table, Jenny regroups and gets ready for her performance by acknowledging the conductor’s own prayer.

“I want to ask you just a small favor.  Tonight, would you be so good as to glance occasionally at my baton?  Tonight, let’s not race.  Let’s try just for once to finish together?”

Jenny isn’t only just a friend, but now a valuable networking connection.  Father Timmy had the great idea to try and sell Chuck’s original song “Going My Way” to a publisher in order to raise funds for the church.  When Jenny drops by to hear O’Malley’s boys choir in action and overhears the unfortunate news that the music industry thinks the song is too schmaltzy, she decides to recruit the The Met orchestra to play the song for the musical bigwigs in order to convince them to reconsider.

With the backing of an entire orchestra, a boys choir, and a real life opera singer, the record industry executives decide to… give O’Malley the dignity of rejecting his song in person.  It’s not sexy enough, and everyone knows church songs need to be sexy.

Disappointed, the boys ask Father O’Malley if they can sing the mule song to cheer him up, and while the record industry wasn’t interested in run-of-the-mill ballads, kids songs apparently are all the rage.  They eavesdrop on their performance, decide it’s a home run, and offer Father O’Malley some coin for the silly song about how animals lack morality.

I would much rather be a pig than a human, confirmed.

Instead of accepting the money outright, Father Timmy convinces the executives to instead go to the church, hear Father Fitzgibbon’s sermon, and then donate as much as their heart inspires them to.  This not only restores Father Fitzgibbon’s faith that he is still a valuable asset of the church that can compel an exorbitant amount of money of his congregation, it assures the funds are donated directly to the church, y’know, tax free.

Father O’Malley’s other parish side quests serendipitously collide when he receives yet another call from fucking Mrs. Quimp who is unhappy that Carol is seemingly fucking Ted Haines Jr. for rent money, and presumeably Mrs. Quimp is annoyed that format of payment isn’t available for her.  Chuck shows up at Carol’s surprisingly well-furnished and piano-housed apartment and is sold the line that Teddy Jr. is funding Carol’s lifestyle out of the goodness of his own heart and conviction in her talent, and definitely for no other reason.  Chuck side-eyes the young couple, tells them a story about finding proper purpose in life, and leaves letting that thinly-veiled guilt trip permeate their pore-free skin.

Not long afterward, Teddy Sr. is surprised to discover that his son has not only been shacking up with a young woman, but he eventually put a ring on her finger a few weeks ago, yet again proving that the church’s solution to promiscuous women is to marry them off.  This news would have landed like a ton of bricks if Teddy Jr. didn’t follow it up by informing his father of his enlistment in the United States Air Force.  I definitely didn’t cry when this flighty dude put on his uniform and left his wife and father in the apartment to go off to war – You can’t get the granddaughter of an air force veteran with that one, no sir, made of steel, I am.

Anyway, with Carol married, Teddy gone, and the mortgage company now firmly off their backs, Father O’Malley and Father Timmy shift their focus on ushering Father Fitzgibbon into retirement by encouraging him to pick up a few hobbies, like golf, and potentially returning to the old country to visit his elderly mother.

Father O’Malley’s interest in golf, and sports in general, is just another way to make him more worldly and of-the-people.  It sticks out in Going My Way so significantly that it is cribbed on later in Dogma with Cardinal Glick, a man that is also desperately trying to get the youth back into the church by making Jesus more approachable.

“Keep your head down Father – Watch your language.”

While the plan is initially successful, it is immediately derailed when THE CHURCH LITERALLY BURNS DOWN WITH NO APPARENT CAUSE.  Shit, I wonder how much God actually loves Father Fitzgibbon or his mother cause it sure seems like he never wants them to be reunited.

The established support team is now fully focused on fundraising, again, to rebuild the church.  Father Timmy, Jenny, and the boys choir leave for the summer on a concert tour to raise money while Father Fitzgibbon is pounding the payment and essentially panhandling for a few coins.  This gives them enough money to start rebuilding, but not enough to finish.  Mr. Haines Sr., touched by Father O’Malley’s influence on his son (and seemingly relieved Teddy Jr. returned from Africa alive but wounded because one of his buddies ironically ran him over with a Jeep?!) decides to help the church with the mortgage so they can reestablish.  Hopefully this time he won’t eventually get frustrated with their slow payments and threaten eviction again.

With the church’s financials in order, Father Fitzgibbon revitalized, and the parish productively engaged in their community, the bishop decides to reassign Father O’Malley to a new struggling parish and appoint Father Timmy as Father Fitzgibbon’s new curate.  Like a Catholic Mary Poppins, Father O’Malley passes the baton to Tony to run the choir, flew Father Fitzgibbon’s mother in for a visit which definitely didn’t make me cry again, and floated off into the night.  The end.

A Catholic himself, Bing Crosby, having attended Jesuit schools during his education, was also invested in portraying the relaxed “Americanization” of Catholicism, depicting the church as open to new ideas.  Leo McCarey allowed and encouraged his actors to provide input and improvise, and while that annoyed performers like Cary Grant, it was a good fit for Bing.  Crosby and Bob Hope had just filmed several “road movies” and thrived on the push and pull of on-the-spot comedy.

The original Hot Priest (although in the beginning of his film career he was encouraged to tape his ears back because studio execs are dumb as fuck), Father O’Malley was a departure from Crosby’s typical romantic crooner “always gets the girl” type roles.  Bing’s rise to the public consciousness coincided with improvements in audio recording, allowing singers to eat the mic and give more subtle and intimate vocal performances.  Not every Catholic was incredibly happy with Mr. Crosby’s portrayal of a priest wearing street clothes and talking about baseball, but the general public wanted some feel-good optimism in a time of fear and uncertainty, leading them to be incredibly charitable to the performance of a well-loved swoony-voiced radio star.  It was refreshing to see a priest portrayed as a cheerleader for the working class, demystifying the stuffy, sometimes sinister image of an unmoving and uncaring religious organization.  There are no secrets here – the basement isn’t a dungeon, but a joyous place where children sing the praises of Jesus!

Bing Crosby himself was a bit like Father O’Malley with his willingness to buck tradition and embrace changes.  Understanding the importance of the technology that launched his career, he was an entrepreneur that funded innovation in audio and video recording as well as seeking out and promoting new generations of talent that used it like Frank Sinatra.  His last Christmas special even included a duet with rocker David Bowie.  He died the next year from a heart attack after playing 18 holes on the golf course.  Father O’Malley’s love of the sport wasn’t just a random character trait – it was a large part of Bing Crosby’s personality.  He truly did what he loved up until the very end.

Going My Way and its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s, won the Academy Award for Best Picture (also was the first sequel to win the award), and went on to inspire a 1960s TV series starring Gene Kelly as Father O’Malley and Leo G. Carroll as Father Fitzgibbon.  I could only find one episode of it online and I’m going to be honest, I was bored out of my mind and skimmed it after like 20 minutes.  If that sample is indicative of the tone of the rest of the show, it’s incredibly overdramatic and humorless.  I’m not sure how anybody watched the film Going My Way and thought it would be successful as an hour-long drama, so if anybody has any information about how this came about almost 20 years after the movie was made, let me know.

While the film inspired the revitalization of the cushy, approachable Catholic church, the lasting legacy of Going My Way is somewhat mixed due to its creator’s shenanigans.  This wholesome movie was written and directed by famed Preserver of American Ideals Leo McCarey.  Previously known for his role in the creation of slapstick comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, this epic king testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that the communists who worked as his writers were trying to put secret messages in his films, but they were getting harder and harder to find because the writers were so crafty, NOT because he was inventing the entire conspiracy and had no evidence to back his claims.  My Son John (1952), McCarey’s own anti-communist propaganda movie, further cemented his ideals that Good Christians not only rejected godless communism, but ratted out those who espoused those beliefs, even if they came from their own child.  His last film, Satan Never Sleeps (1962), further demonizes Chinese communists as untrustworthy and violent heathens that are only redeemed by eventually converting to Christianity.

While Going My Way is clearly Catholic propaganda not incredibly dissimilar from an episode of 7th Heaven, I choose to view it at face value.  Its story and cast are both charming, and the acts of kindness featured in the film, while some of them being corny and maybe slightly regressive by today’s standards, did elicit an emotional reaction out of me.  Sometimes you just want to see a bunch of people being nice to each other and pretend that the Catholic church operates out of acts of love like Jesus intended instead of being a breeding ground for nightmarish conservative evangelicalism.  Let the few catchy songs lull you into a false sense of security, because reality is depressing enough.