Bing Crosby – Movie Musings

Schmaltzy but also rather charming, a superior sequel to Going My Way

Director: Leo McCarey

Cast: Bing Crosby (Father Chuck O’Malley), Ingrid Bergman (Sister Mary Benedict), Henry Travers (Horace P Bogardus), William Gargan (Joe Gallagher), Ruth Donnelly (Sister Michael), Joan Carroll (Patsy Gallagher), Martha Sleeper (Mary Gallagher), Rhys Williams (Dr McKay), Dickie Tyler (Eddie Breen), Una O’Connor (Mrs Breen)

When Bing Crosby asked America if they were Going My Way in 1944, the answer was a massive yes. It was inevitable we got a sequel –the first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture – The Bells of St Mary’s. In a stunning display of it ain’t broke so don’t fix it, The Bells of St Mary’s drops Father Bing (aka Chuck O’Malley) into another urban-parish-with-problems, this time turning round a rundown convent school, run by straight-laced Sister Ingrid Bergman (aka Mary Benedict). Can Father Bing and Sister Ingrid set aside their incredibly-good-natured rivalry to: (a) convince heartless local businessman Horace Bogardus (Henry Travers) to donate a new school building, (b) save sensitive young Eddie from easy-going bullying and (c) re-build the marriage of easy-going-bad-girl Patsy’s parents? If you have any doubt Father Bing can solve these problems without breaking his easy-going-sweat, you ain’t spent long enough going his way.

The Bells of St Mary’s score over its Oscar-winning forbear by being significantly less gag-inducing in its snowstorm of saccharine schmaltz. This is despite the fact it shares almost all the flaws of the original. It goes on forever, very little really happens, every single problem is solved with a little flash of Father Bing’s gentle insight, and it’s painfully predictable. But The Bells of St Mary’s manages to not outstay its welcome because it’s told with genuine wit and, in Ingrid Bergman, has a consummate performer who is actually charming and lovable rather than someone we are just told is charming and lovable.

It’s also somehow more down-to-earth, the resolution to its problems being a bit more relatable than Going My Way’s MET-opera finale for the tough kids. Father Bing is marginally less saintly smug and has an underhand cunning – having worked out his wise words ain’t melting the heart of Bogardus (how strange it is to see George Bailey’s Clarence as a child-hating arsehole), he quickly switches to a little conspiracy of suggestion to make Bogardus fret about being set on a highway to hell. Despite this of course, O’Malley remains blissfully perfect, a liberal churchman and bathed in perfection.

The Bells of St Mary has complete faith in the fundamental goodness of the church. The only questions are ones of approach: O’Malley favours a manly Christianity where decent men fight bullies, while Mary Benedict’s instinct is to turn the other cheek and take the moral high ground. O’Malley feels the kids will be served best if they relax, Mary Benedict sees virtue in hard work and self-improvement. Naturally, lessons are learned on both sides: O’Malley discovers sending the boys on holiday isn’t a ticket for good behaviour, Mary Benedict teaches bullied Eddie to box and prove himself to his bully.

Sister Ingrid might be a bit more serious because, unlike Father O’Malley, she’s lived a bit in her time. The tomboy-turned-nun can swing a baseball bat with the best of them and when she tells young Patsy you “have to know what you are giving up” when you become a nun, there is more than a hint Sister Mary might have snuck behind a few bike-sheds back in the day. Perhaps this contributes to The Bells of St Mary’s cheekily suggesting a little bit of sexual tension between the eunuch-like O’Malley and Mary Benedict. (Crosby and Bergman played up to this to tease their on-set Catholic advisors, at one point ending a take with an improvised passionate kiss – a gag that’s probably a little funnier than some of those in the film.)

Ingrid Bergman is actually rather marvellous here. It’s a reminder she had fine light comic chops, making Mary charming, warm and rather endearing – for all Sister Mary switches from hard-headed academic realism to a flighty faith that God Will Provide so long as they pray hard enough (very different from O’Malley’s God Helps Those Who Help Themselves angle). Bergman hilariously dances and prances, like Sugar Ray, while teaching Eddie to box but is also touchingly gentle when comforting a distressed Patsy. Bergman is such a good actress she pretty much lifts the entire film another level from its original.

She even lifts the game of Bing Crosby. Though he still largely coasts through on his own charm and persona, but he pushes himself into some more fertile dramatic territory. Even the film’s contrived plot developments like Sister Ingrid’s TB diagnosis – something which for reasons she can’t be told about (don’t ask) – end up carrying a touch of realistic drama. Not that Bing forgets what the people want to see: of course Patsy’s father is a piano player, so of course within seconds of him turning up at her mother’s flat he and Bing dive straight into a musical number.

Despite all the treacle that The Bells of St Mary’s wades through, there is enough genuine charm here (among all its sentimental, signposted silliness) for you to cut the film some slack. Leo McCarey directs mostly with an unfussy professionalism – although he does sprinkle in the odd good bit of comic business, noticeably a cat stuck crawling around under O’Malley’s signature straw hat, on the mantlepiece behind him during his first meeting with the nuns. And it might largely be due to Bergman’s skilful presence, but there is genuinely more substance here than Going My Way. It might still feel like gorging on candy, but at least this time you don’t feel your stomach groaning in pain after you’ve finished.

Bing Crosby wins hearts and minds in the sentimental Best Picture winner Going My Way

Director: Leo McCarey

Cast: Bing Crosby (Father Chuck O’Malley), Barry Fitzgerald (Father Fitzgibbon), Frank McHugh (Father Timothy O’Dowd), Rise Stevens (Genevieve Linden/Jenny Tuffel), James Brown (Ted Haines Jr), Gene Lockhart (Ted Haines Snr), Jean Heather (Carol James), Porter Hall (Mr Belknap), Fortunio Bonanova (Tomaso Bozani), Eily Malyon (Mrs Carmody)

“Schmaltz isn’t selling” record producers tell Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) when he pitches them the little ditty he’s penned to raise funds to save his church from financial ruin. Well no one told the producers of this film: and just as well, as this became one of the most successful films of the 1940s, raking in buckets of cash and armfuls of Oscars. Watching it today, you’d hardly believe it – but that’s to forget the stress and fear of a nation at war, or that Bing Crosby (in a tailor-made role) was practically the most popular human being alive. For all that, watching Going My Way today won’t challenge you at all – other than perhaps your patience.

Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) arrives in a (allegedly) rough neighbourhood in New York. He’s to take over the parish from the ageing Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) but, gosh darn it, Father Bing doesn’t have the heart to tell Father Fitzgibbon that, so pretends to be his new curate. Promptly, Father Bing sets about solving all the problems of the parish with his charming homespun wisdom, decency, empathy and ability to bond with all. Gosh darn it, before you know what’s happened he’s turned the rough-and-tumble local boys from larcenists into an all-male choir and has roped in an old friend (who just happens to be the lead singer at the MET Opera) to give him and the boys the stage to sing a few of his songs and help save the church.

Yup, Going My Way is exactly that sort of film, and your enjoyment of it is going to be inversely proportional to how quickly being dipped in pure schmaltz brings you out in hives. This film is sickly sweet in its cozy comfort, a reassuring view of a world straight out of Enid Blyton, where the priest has all the answers, the hearts of businessmen can be melted by a few wise words, and dropping a few sporting references can win over the local ‘tough’ kids.

Going My Way is so homely and quaint, it makes Capra feel positively edgy. In fact, it lacks any of the energy, wit and style Capra brings to his pictures. That lack of buzz doesn’t help it, the languid pace drawing your attention all the more to its overbearing decency and careful weeding out of anything that could even cause a scintilla of doubt.

Instead it’s a warm gentle hug – and a hug that takes a great deal of time (at just two hours, it can seem like it’s going on forever). There are fewer songs in it than you might expect – only one every 10-15 minutes max. Often very little happens – and when it does, drama is very far from the agenda. Instead every problem is solved with consummate ease (it just needs Father Bing to open people’s eyes). Everyone is at heart decent in the extreme: the local tough kids have more high spirits than hooliganism to them, the (very) Irish women have stern exteriors but soft hearts, and the ruthless businessman is a devoted family man. After a while, I felt my patience being sorely tested.

In the middle of this, we get Bing Crosby, who won an Oscar for his work here. It’s a part tailor-made for Bing. In fact, so much so, that he essentially turns O’Malley into a dog-collar wearing version of his own stage persona, with touches of wry humour, whimsy and an affectionate smile. It’s no mean thing creating an entire persona – or performing it – but it feels a little rich to win an Oscar for it. O’Malley is of course perfect, a man free of any blemish who backs humbly into the limelight. A liberal who thinks Church should be fun (though far from a radical), there is nothing to cast even a shadow of doubt on his perfection: his flirtation with a girl never went so far as a date, he has the patience of a saint and he always knows exactly what to say to everyone.

He even wears down the defensiveness of Barry Fitzgerald’s Father Fitzgibbon. Fitzgerald also won an Oscar (for Supporting Actor) and effectively created the cinematic template for what an Irish priest is like. Fitzgibbon is bumbling with a sing-song whimsy, stuck-in-his-ways but basically decent, a touch prickly but also vulnerable and caring. His Irishness (like many of the rest of the cast) is dialled up to eleven. It’s an engaging performance, even if this old-cove-with-a-heart-of-gold schtick already felt familiar. But blimey, like the rest of the film, it can be far too much.

John Ford would have loved the Irish sentimentality of this film. It’s not perhaps Going My Way’s fault that its unquestioning regard and confidence in the church – and the assumption that all would treat them with complete deference and absolute respect – has dated it. But then maybe this was the case then as well, and it just felt much more reassuring to watch a simple world where a priest has all the answers and can change everyone’s lives. In the simple world of the film, you just let the cliché and coincidence wash over you and go with the flow.

Nevertheless, it still can make for a long watch if you aren’t in the right mood for this constant spin of Sunday-afternoon-gentleness. I have to confess it was too sweet for me – way too sweet. And there isn’t much of interest in the film, McCarey directing with a professional but uninteresting staidness (you couldn’t believe he cut his teeth doing Laurel and Hardy, so visually dull and slow is this film). Every outcome is dipped in sentimentality and sweetness and eventually watching the film is like gorging on candy-floss. Light, insubstantial, not as filling as it should be, and at the end you feel like throwing up.