It’s a little past the middle of July, and it’s piping hot where I am right now. But I just can’t get these Christmas carols out of my head! I blame this week’s Best Picture winner, Going My Way (1944, Paramount). It’s not a Christmas movie, even though it has a kind of “good will toward all” feeling (and both “Silent Night” and “Ave Maria” are sung in the film). The festive songs are stuck in my head because the star of the movie is Bing Crosby—whom I had previously always associated with snow falling, hot chocolate, and sitting by a twinkling Christmas tree at night.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who had a difficult time accepting Crosby as a legitimate actor, instead of just as the crooner he is perhaps most famous for being. At the time of the release of Going My Way, Crosby was the most popular man on the radio as well as in the movies (and on records)—but Going My Way established his reputation as a respectable actor, earning him his only Academy Award win. The following year (1946) he would become the first actor to be twice nominated for an Oscar for portraying the same character, Father Chuck O’Malley, a role he reprised in The Bells of Saint Mary’s in which he starred with Ingrid Bergman. (For an interesting article on Bing Crosby’s role in the advancement of recording/radio technology, check this out: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-bing-crosby-and-the-nazis-helped-to-create-silicon-valley).

Fitzgerald and Crosby with their Oscars

Speaking of bizarre Academy Award nominations, Going My Way led to a new Oscar precedent after the very odd occurrence in which Barry Fitzgerald, who plays Father Fitzgibbon, was nominated in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories for the same role in the same movie. Back in 1944, nominees in the acting categories were determined by Academy voters. Get enough votes for a certain category, and you qualified for it. Luckily for the Academy, Fitzgerald won the Best Supporting Actor category, while his co-star Crosby took home the Best Actor statuette. But how funny would it have been had Fitzgerald won both categories! We won’t see this peculiar situation again any time soon, though. The Academy changed their nomination rules right after the debacle with Going My Way’s actors.

Altogether, Going My Way took home seven Oscars (out of ten nominations): Actor for Bing Crosby, Actor in a Supporting Role for Barry Fitzgerald, Writing (Screenplay), Writing (Original Motion Picture Story), Directing, Music (Song) for “Swinging on a Star,” and Best Motion Picture. The film failed to take home awards for Best Actor for Barry Fitzgerald, Film Editing, and Cinematography (Black-and-White).

Father O’Malley and his boys choir singing “Swinging on a Star”

The true mark of success for this film, though, was not how many Oscars it garnered, but how it raised morale during the war. One trailer for Going My Way describes the purpose of the film in scripted words superimposed over scenes from the movie: “For a world that needs the LIFT of its wonderful story…and the LILT of its glorious songs.” While some of the set-ups for the songs seem a little contrived, there’s no denying that Going My Way is a warm, feel-good movie about bridging gaps within society and between generations—a perfect message for a world that was about a year away from the start of a massive rebuilding of everything it once knew and everything that had been shattered by the war. Going My Way premiered in New York City almost exactly a month before D-Day and in Los Angeles two months after the Allied invasion of France. The war would soon be in its death throes. The citizens of the world were exhausted and demoralized. This film offered a reprieve from bereavement and destruction—and for that, it was wildly successful.

For more thoughts on Going My Way and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend! And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to some “White Christmas”!