GOING MY WAY (Paramount, 1944) Universal Home Video

BEST PICTURE - 1944

You know, it’s really disheartening to be in the year 2019 and still have no sign of Going My Way (1944) advertised for a hi-def Blu-ray release: director, Leo McCarey’s unabashedly sentimental dramedy with music a la Bing Crosby (who won an Oscar) as Father O’Malley. In hindsight, Father O’Malley is a remarkably sophisticated Catholic priest; his sphere of influence extending into the worlds of pop entertainment, baseball and high opera. And…oh yes, McCarey’s little gem won gold statuettes for Best Director and Best Picture too: small point of interest, I know, but that long ago ought to have fast-tracked Going My Way for a Blu-ray release. Incidentally, the other nominees of that year were Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Since You Went Away, and, Wilson. And while one can sincerely debate Academy voting members their sanity in affording this relatively ‘little’ movie its highest honor, no one should be consternating over the effectiveness of either McCarey’s ability to tug at our heartstrings or Der Bingle’s affable and inimitable charm as the big-hearted/brass tacks cleric who can take on any situation with more than a bit of fun-filled finesse. Alas, Hollywood’s collective screen legacy continues to stall in hi-def, the studios contented merely to reissue ‘less than stellar’ 720p transfers on DVD (a format that used to hide an awful lot of sins, but looks gawd awful on new-fangled 4K monitors), so that even noteworthy multi-Academy Award-winning masterpieces such as Going My Way are not guaranteed proper preservation on the latest home video format for future generations to admire and study. Of all the aforementioned deep catalog titles nominated in this single year, only Double Indemnity and Since You Went Away have been afforded Blu-rays, and only the former in a befitting quality. For shame! But I digress.

Father O'Malley is assigned by the Dioceses as an assistant to Father Timothy O'Dowd (the irrepressible Frank McHugh), an intermediary of sorts to slowly ease an aged Father Fitzgibbon (an unreservedly magnetic Barry Fitzgerald) from his parochial duties into his emeritus years. However, owing to Fitzgibbon’s feisty refusal to depart on cue, he is being kept unaware that his days as a practicing man of the cloth are numbered. Going My Way is a delicious concoction of merrymaking and music; Crosby given the lion’s share of the score to warble in his one-off style. Crosby’s musical stealth cuts across many genres, from a stirring rendition of Shubert’s much beloved (and even more re-purposed) Ave Maria to the Oscar-winning hit parade favorite, ‘Swingin’ on a Star’ co-written by Tin Pan Alley favorites, Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. In some ways, Going My Way represents the culmination of Crosby’s indentured contract career as Paramount Studio’s most bankable star throughout the thirties and forties. Like all of the musical talents eventually fed through the gristmill – though particularly those shot out of a canon at Paramount – Crosby’s appearances in movies up until Going My Way were relatively undistinguished; merely a cavalcade to pitch the latest hit parade tunes heard on the radio, the convivial plots, suspiciously similar and loosely constructed as bridges between the singing. Even Holiday Inn (1942), Crosby’s most sizable smash prior to Going My Way, is little more than an excuse for Crosby (paired for the first time with Fred Astaire) to zip through an assemblage of Irving Berlin standards, including his biggest record of all time – White Christmas.  

By 1944, Bing Crosby had achieved unprecedented success in virtually every facet of then available ‘mass media’ as a laid-back bass-baritone; one of the 20th century’s most easily identifiable ‘crooners’. To date, Crosby has sold over a billion records worldwide. In hindsight, his was a voice born for the microphone – entering the pop culture at precisely the same interval as the sound recording innovation.  And Crosby led the charge in pioneering a more intimate singing style, later to usher in the likes of Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin; his influence distinctly felt, and looming large over their artistry. The word ‘prolific’ seems grossly inadequate to summarize Crosby’s far-reaching popularity, his legacy Teflon-coated, though severely challenged, and perhaps even slightly tarnished by a postmortem ‘tell all’ written by his son, Gary, who claimed Crosby’s disciplinarian edicts bordered on regularly administered ‘cruel and unusual’ punishments – both verbal and physical; a claim later refuted by Crosby’s younger son, Phillip, who admits Crosby was strict in their upbringing, but never to the egregious levels outlined in Gary’s memoir, ironically titled, Going My Own Way.

“My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was,” Phillip stated in a 1999 interview in The Globe, “He was strict, but…never beat us black and blue, and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so…He wrote ‘Going My Own Way’ out of greed... He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father.” So too, should we point out that this account was published in 1983, the height of a then insidiously popularized trend in ‘biographies’ expressly meant to topple great names in showbiz, and, featuring puffed out accounts decidedly exaggerated from their personal lives and public indiscretions. Following in the vein of Christina Crawford’s hatchet job on her mother, Joan Crawford, ‘Mommie Dearest’ and B.D. Hyman’s wicked literary assault on Bette Davis’ ‘My Mother’s Keeper’; these ‘stories’ – sold as fact, and believed as truth in their own time, have since been regularly contested by each star’s ‘other’ children who grew up in the same household as the author of these poisoned pen memoirs.    

To contextualize the picture’s monumental success, Going My Way was the highest-grossing movie of 1944; a year dotted by such legendary releases as Meet Me in St. Louis, Cover Girl, Hail the Conquering Hero, Murder My Sweet, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Laura, to name but a handful of the iconic product Hollywood was pumping out. By far, it is Crosby’s most plot-driven movie to date; director, Leo McCarey creating ginger-peachy vignettes from the fabric of wartime and slightly careworn Americana, in which either the centerpiece or bookends of each scene is a Crosby song immediately followed by a transitional ‘fade to black’. “I only know I like my characters to walk in clouds,” McCarey once pointed out, “I like a little bit of the fairy tale. As long as I'm there behind the camera lens, I'll let somebody else photograph the ugliness of the world.” Indeed, McCarey’s forte was begun in the classic thirties' screwball with smash hits like Duck Soup (1933) and The Awful Truth (1937). But McCarey also proved adept at romantic melodramas, his best known – 1958’s An Affair to Remember, actually a remake of his own earlier masterpiece, Love Affair (1939).

Going My Way comes at the height of Crosby’s meteoric fame in the movies; begun inauspiciously as part of ‘The Rhythm Boys’ – a specialty act, appearing as ‘Bing’ in Paramount’s all-star spectacle and early talkie, King of Jazz (1930). By 1944, Crosby had become one of the most beloved entertainers in the world, tirelessly raising American G.I. morale through his breakneck live concert tours and raising money for war bonds. His stamina during the forties is mind-boggling; committed to making at least two or three movies a year, recording dozens of songs, and, appearing on his own program for CBS radio. In 1948, Der Bingle (as he was nicknamed) was even given the moniker ‘most admired man alive’ ahead of Pope Pius XII. So perhaps it is not so much of a stretch to discover him here as the benevolent, if ever so slightly enterprising, Father Chuck O’Malley. The image of the ‘perfect priest’ just seemed to fit everyone’s opinion of Crosby then. Going My Way meanders through a series of vignettes that are, in and of themselves, poignant, occasionally cloying, and certainly quaint. These include the awkward circumstance by which Father Fitzgibbon comes in possession of a stolen Thanksgiving turkey; Father O’Malley’s reunion with old-time college buddy, Father Timothy; O’Malley’s involvement in molding the singing career of a young teen, Carol James (Jean Heather); and his coaching of the Boys Choir to help raise money for St. Dominic's ailing repair fund.

In this latter endeavor, Father O’Malley is greatly aided by another old friend, Genevieve Linden (operatic sensation, Rise Stevens) who suggests a benefit concert at New York's Metropolitan Opera. But it all seems for not when Fathers O’Malley and Fitzgibbons return from the concert's triumph to discover their beloved cathedral destroyed in a terrific blaze; the epic scope of this tragedy crystalized in the intimate sad-eyed reflection caught in Barry Fitzgerald’s careworn gaze and Crosby’s gentle understanding this old campaigner has just witnessed his entire life’s work literally go up in smoke. As Fitzgibbon’s faith is wounded and his health goes into steep decline, Father O'Malley manages the unlikeliest of reunions; bringing Fitzgibbon's centenarian mother over from Ireland, who comforts her son as only a mother’s love can. While the narrative structure of Going My Way is oft brought into question – it really only hints at a lot of threads it never entirely gets around to fully stitching together before the final fade out. The picture’s strength is therefore, and undeniably, its tear-jerking sentiment; unapologetic, warm/big-hearted with Crosby’s clergy, a somewhat wily puppet master, able to prevent the whole enterprise from sinking into rank saccharine-infused treacle.

Going My Way’s screenplay by Frank Butler and Frank Cavett is frequently interrupted by Crosby running through a swath of pop songs – the best still the deservedly Oscar-winning ‘Swingin’ on a Star’ that O'Malley performs with an assist from St. Dominic’s Boys’ Choir for Genevieve’s benefit. A bouncy tune, it proves the centerpiece of an otherwise largely forgettable, if eclectic score, borrowing from operatic arias interpolated with a few standards, like the perennial Christmas hymn, Silent Night, Holy Night and 1914’s Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral (a.k.a. The Irish Lullaby; one of Crosby’s biggest radio hits), capped off by the Van Heusen/Burke ballad, The Day After Tomorrow. Going My Way was released at the height of WWII and it is perhaps saying much of the general public’s need for sentiment and salvation that it became the highest-grossing movie of the year – nominated for a record 10 Academy Awards (winning an astounding 7: for Best Original Song ‘Swingin’ on a Star’; Best Director and Original Story – both awards going to Leo McCarey, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor – Barry Fitzgerald, Best Actor – Bing Crosby and the most coveted of them all – Best Picture).  Today’s audiences have become far to jaded to truly appreciate the tenderness in Going My Way, and indeed, in spots the picture appears to suffer from a slight, even marginally unnecessarily maudlin strain. Personally, I have always found the McCarey/Crosby follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945 and oft erroneously referenced as a sequel) as a more cohesive picture on the whole; McCarey’s pacing and direction infinitely tighter. In hindsight, Going My Way also marked the first time Crosby would don the cleric’s collar; again, in Bells (for which he subsequently was Oscar-nominated as Best Actor again) and, a decade later, in the now all but forgotten Fox musical, Say One For Me (1959) where he croons the sublime and underrated, ‘The Spirit of Christmas’.

The curmudgeonly camaraderie between Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way is quite palpable and arguably, the picture’s best-selling feature, then as now; Fitzgerald, carrying more than a bit of the Irish blarney stone wit and wiles, thus to endear him to movie audiences herein and elsewhere in the cinema firmament. Aside: I get an immediate warm and fuzzy ‘feel good’ recalling him as Michaleen Oge Flynn; the sage buggy driver in John Ford’s masterpiece, The Quiet Man (1952). The rest of the cast in Going My Way slightly overplay their hand. Frank McHugh especially, is gregarious to distraction, too much ham and not enough cabbage to give his performance the necessary gutsy good time resolve it ought to possess. Rise Stevens is mere – if absolutely stunning – window-dressing, showcased in several operatic sequences that bring the already methodical pacing to a screeching halt. Yet, in the final analysis, the awkwardness of these misfires takes a backseat to McCarey’s ample gifts as a true – and today, sadly set aside visual artist. In hindsight, Going My Way may not be the ‘best picture’ of 1944, but it remains one hell of a top-flight entertainment, guaranteed to enrich the soul.

Note to Universal Home Video: please get around to remastering Going My Way for Blu-ray. What we still have is their endlessly reissued DVD. This single disc, to be sure, has rectified the absolutely horrid transfer quality – or lack thereof, present on Uni’s previous two-movie/one-disc release from 1999 (the other film included then was Holiday Inn 1942). Whereas, the aforementioned DVD was riddled in edge enhancement, excessive shimmering of fine detail and a ton of pixelization, this new dual-layered disc is virtually free of all these distractions. However, the B&W image is far from smooth or refined. Persistent and heavier-than-usual film grain is harsher and grittier, than indigenous to its source. Age-related artifacts are everywhere. The gray scale has been nicely balanced with deep solid blacks and, on the whole, generally clean whites. The audio is Dolby mono and adequate. The only extra is a brief introduction by TCM host, Robert Osborne and the film's theatrical trailer. In keeping with previously issued classic titles – Universal does not provide a separate menu for chapter stops, though advancing at ten-minute intervals throughout this disc, simply by pressing the arrow key on your remote control, is possible. Bottom line: a middling mastering effort for a movie deserving far better. We will wait in the hope someone at Universal is listening. Hear our pleas: Going My Way on Blu-ray for 2019!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

1