One of these days, hopefully while I still remain above ground, someone will write the definitive tale of why, for what appeared to be a period of several decades from World War II forward, Hollywood was utterly, hopelessly, and reverentially obsessed with Catholicism. Maybe not the church hierarchy per se, or particular aspects of doctrine, but certainly the comings, goings, and daily musings of priests and nuns.
If there was one such movie, there were a thousand, and had one been an alien crash-landing into the random American theater of your choosing, they (or it) would be hard-pressed to believe there was any other vocation. It was as if the decidedly Jewish origins of the motion picture industry had been quietly banished to the hinterlands, paving the way for the Pope, assorted Bishops, and a full-tilt gaggle of Cardinals. It’s enough to make a cinephile sick with embarrassment.
And so we arrive at 1944. Nothing to see here, except a cataclysmic World War, and all the moguls can think of throwing at a nervous public is yet another tale of a collared do-gooder doing good, whether it’s single-handedly eliminating juvenile delinquency in our time, or hitting the links to perform one impossible shot after another. Naturally, since the collar in question belongs to the Crooner in Chief, Bing Crosby, he’ll also have a fondness for belting out a tune, something he manages to do no less than six times in a film ostensibly not a musical.
As Father Charles O’Malley (is any other name possible in a film so Irish it was too much even for John Ford to helm?), Bing proves for all time that while the 1930’s and 1940’s swooned and swayed to his rhythms, modern audiences might look askance at an alleged talent that clearly owed more to gangsterism than Sinatra himself. Ol’ Blue Eyes, after all, had genuine talent; Bing just coasts on a shoeshine and a smile so wan, he all but disappears into the wallpaper. Maybe that same book can explain his allure as well.
If you need a story, let it be said that Father O’Malley arrives in town, meets the crusty but benign head of St. Dominic’s, one Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), and, despite the predictably rocky start, the pair come to love each another to pieces. Throw in an unpaid mortgage that needs some creative fundraising to make disappear, an old flame from the past who’s made good, a gaggle of Dead End-style kids who balk and moan, but end up going on a national tour as a church choir, and you have the makings of a movie that no doubt helped Americans from coast to coast forget that Europe and Asia were literally on fire. Sentimentality as the ultimate weapon of war.
Given that it secured seven unforgivable Academy Awards, it is here that I remind the faithful that at the very same moment, on printed ballots no less, Double Indemnity was itself nominated for seven Oscars, winning precisely zero. Director Leo McCarey was a fine man, no doubt, and a filmmaker of much respect (Duck Soup, for chrissakes), but we’re talking a head-to-head matchup with the century’s singular voice here. Then again, this was the age of atrocity, so what’s one more for the history books? While Going My Way represented the worst sort of uplift, Wilder reminded the home front that perhaps we weren’t really worth saving after all. It’s a wonder they didn’t run him out of town.
It’s also important to note that absent a single character who decides to enlist (the son of the mean banker who, naturally, has a change of heart), Going My Way has about as much to do with the global conflagration as a Disney cartoon. To be fair, Double Indemnity never discusses the all-encompassing conflict either, but when everyone is so inherently rotten, why confuse the masses? Men are bleeding on beaches for this? Had they shared Wilder’s dripping cynicism, they may have stayed overseas permanently. Bing and his godly gang, on the other hand, have a different message for our boys: we’ve got this, and despite last-minute church fires, we’ll have everything just so for the big return. Subsequent events reduced that vision to a mere pipe dream, as expected.
Make no mistake, because this is 1944, in no way did I expect anyone on board to insist that Going My Way excise a song or two to make way for a subplot concerning the molestation of a choir boy, or Rome’s collaboration with Hitler. But then, as now, it strains good sense and even better taste to endorse anything worthwhile stemming from history’s greatest bogeyman. Even in retrospect, everyone with a conscience must mock the very idea that a priest could even be accidentally heroic. There have been too many legal settlements to give anyone a break. Cinema, for all time, must choose what is over what has never been, and Oscar is no less accountable to the same mandate. Even if it fails more often than not.
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