Tag: Barry Fitzgerald

Going My Way (1944) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“Going My Way” is a comedy drama that took a bunch of Oscars and was the biggest box office draw in 1944.  And since it starred Bing Crosby it unsurprisingly had several musical numbers spread through the movie.  It’s the story of Father Chuck O’Malley (Crosby) a Catholic priest sent by the bishop to rescue a New York City parish; St Dominic’s, from the overwhelmed exhaustion of its present elderly pastor; Father Fitzgibbon (played by Barry Fitzgerald).  With a supporting cast that includes such veteran character actors as Gene Lockart, Timothy O’Dowd and William Frawley the film drops any pretense at reality and has Father O’Malley manage to reform a local gang of New York City teenagers and converts them into a church choir.  He manages to raise enough money to pay off the mortgage by selling a song to a music producer.  He saves a runaway teenager from trouble with the police and even manages to reunite Father Fitzgibbon with his ninety-year-old mother by finding a way to pay for her trip from Ireland.

Now clearly this movie has nothing to do with reality.  Having grown up in a New York City Roman Catholic parish I can assure you that no priest of Father O’Malley’s caliber has ever been seen.  But treat the movie as a fantasy from a much more innocent time and enjoy it for its virtues.  Crosby comes across as eminently likeable and the whole movie is a feel-good experience that can be watched around the holiday season to try and believe that there are still good people walking this Earth.

Now the interesting thing is this movie has the distinction of being one of only a very few good movies that had an even better sequel.  The next year (1945) Crosby returned as O’Malley, paired with Ingrid Bergman as a nun in the movie, “The Bells of St Mary’s.”

But with or without the sequel, “Going My Way” is a heartwarming and well-made film that I can highly recommend to anyone who still wants to believe in the possibility of human goodness and hope.  There is comedy, human feeling and a sense of optimism in the face of hardship.  A classic.

The Naked City (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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In this movie the star is New York City at the height of its prominence as the largest city of the most powerful country on the planet.  The tagline of the movie is “There are eight million stories in the Naked City.  This is one of them.”  And almost every shot of the film highlights the sights and sounds of New York.  Everything from the crowded subway cars and crowded streets to dizzying vistas on the tops of buildings and the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The story begins with the late-night murder of Jean Dexter, a pretty blonde model.  It is followed by one of the two murderers killing his partner for being too soft-hearted.

The murder of Jean Dexter falls into the lap of police Lt. Dan Muldoon played with his best Irish brogue by Barry Fitzgerald.  Assisted by detective Jimmy Halloran played by Don Taylor they run down leads until they find Frank Niles, played by Howard Duff.  Every word coming out of Niles’ mouth, including “and and but” is a lie.  And when they find out that he is engaged to Jean’s close friend Ruth Morrison but that Ruth doesn’t even know that Niles was a close friend of Dexter they know they’ve found their connection.  At every step Niles shows himself to be tied to the murder and to a jewel robbery ring.  But at the same time all evidence clears him of Jean’s murder.

Finally, the clues add up to the fact that Jean Dexter and Frank Niles were the brains behind the jewelry theft ring.  They hired two burglars and used information from the husband of a society matron to rob the houses of the wealthy when it was known that they would be at a party.  But finally, the burglars decided to cut Jean out of the picture by murdering and robbing her.  Under threat that he would be indicted as an accessory to murder Niles confesses and provides the names of the two burglars.

The climax of the movie is a manhunt and a shootout between the police and the murderer while he is cornered at the top of one of the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, hundreds of feet in the air.

In a lot of ways, the movie is a standard police procedural.  But there are enough secondary players to round out the story in a satisfying way.  We meet detective Halloran’s wife and young son and hope with him that he won’t have to obey his wife and spank his son for crossing Northern Boulevard by himself.  We meet Jean Dexter’s parents and watch as the mother goes from declaring her hatred for her prodigal daughter to crying over her “baby” and hugging Jean’s cold dead body in the morgue.  We even meet the murderer’s Lower East Side neighbors who know him as the friendly harmonica playing guy that all the kids like.

This is not a great movie.  It’s a good one.  I recommend it as what it is, an interesting police story.