Father Chuck O'Malley (Bing Crosby) arrives at his new Manhattan parish with instruction to surreptitiously assume control of St. Domenico's from its veteran priest, Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald). After 45 years of service Fitzgibbon has become an ornery old man out of touch with the times and failing under the strain of several competing problems. In addition to falling behind on the church's mortgage held by a number crunching banker named Ted Haines, Sr. (Gene Lockhart), St. Domenico's is losing its fight to maintain relevance with neighborhood children.

O'Malley takes these problems in stride, first by assuming parish duties and then by winning over Fitzgibbon with kindness and understanding. Along the way he counsels a young singer named Carol (Jean Heather) and helps Ted Haines, Sr. and Ted Haines, Jr. (James Brown) re-balance their conflicted relationship after the younger Haines volunteers for the war effort and marries Carol. Most importantly, he sings several songs, reunites with some old friends and figures out a way to save St. Domenico's from financial ruin.

To this end O'Malley organizes a boy's choir out of the hoodlums who people his neighborhood and imbues the young men with a sense of beauty and belonging. He teaches them about living the straight and narrow, eventually turning them into a strong musical ensemble in four-part harmony. O'Malley's boyhood chum-turned-priest, Father Timothy O'Dowd (Frank McHugh), then introduces the boy's choir to friendly record company executives. Hearing O'Malley's originals songs showcased by the choir accompanying the operatic talents of Genevieve Linden (Risë Stevens), the girl who got away from O'Malley when he entered the priesthood, they buy the songs and flood St. Domenico's with enough money to get ahead of its debts.

By film's end O'Malley is transferred to another troubled parish to work his much vaunted magic. Before leaving, however, he sees Fitzgibbon returned to the head of the newly strengthened St. Domenico's and reunites the old man with his even older Irish mother after some 45 years of separation since he first left home for the church.

Followed later on by the sequel The Bells of St. Mary's, Leo McCarey's heart warming story about Father O'Malley's kindness perfectly blend the era's most popular singer with a story meant to show him in the most flattering light. Featuring the songs "Going My Way", "Too-ra-Loo-ra-Loo-ra" and "Swinging on Star" it was also a box office hit that made Crosby a celluloid star by confirming McCarey's touch that had been formed after years of work in Hollywood dating back to the silent era.

With its debut intended to support the war effort, Going My Way was first screened on 65 different military bases on April 27, 1944. Publicized with the sensibility of a patriotic nation, advertisements from the times noted how the movie's debut took place in locations, "from Alaska to Italy, and from England to the jungles of Burma," all of them part of the struggle to earn peace, although most of the sites were actually in Europe just then heating up for D-Day.

From first to last it's hard to either love or dislike Going My Way. It works hard to build its kind-hearted, pleasant and affirmative tone through virtuous characters and situations, not to mention the laudable inclusion of sundry details from the mid-1940s. Plus frequent plot points make O'Malley's singing priest and bursts of song as natural as an umbrella on a rainy day.

Just as it would be missing the point to criticize the movie on purely aesthetic terms, since it is a popular entertainment without deeper pretense or ambition, it's also difficult to really sink your teeth into McCarey's picture. It may be pleasant but it's never more than disposable work meant to offer an escape within darkened rooms filled with the scent of popcorn and the pop of cold soda. Crosby is charismatic, Fitzgerald is delightful and the plot moves along like clockwork, ultimately delivering its sentimental, happy ending, welcomed from the start and easily anticipated.

That the film won movie of the year recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an indication not so much of its excellence but of the prevailing attitude towards mass entertainment in Hollywood. Namely, the times influenced many movie producers, critics and audiences to gravitate towards heart-warming, relatively light works with wide appeal and happier sentiments that were, at their center, moral tales about doing good works for others in need. Thus Going My Way surpassed its Best Motion Picture competitors to emerge victorious over the more troublesome and provocative film like Double Indemnity and Gaslight but also the relatively benign titles Since You Went Away and Wilson.

Discounting the latter two pictures that have largely passed into the annals of history as works for their times but perhaps no other, nominations weren't extended to Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. Of course both films are genre pieces from start to finish yet each is all but required viewing to anyone serious about understanding Hollywood's art and history. Knowing this fact along with remembering the veneration piled high atop McCarey's star vehicle for Bing Crosby as the best loved crooner of the times it still amazes me how Academy voters turned the other cheek in applauding mediocrity instead of trying to touch forever with their citations.

Said differently Going My Way is decidedly not a picture for the ages. It is, however, a reflection on a period in history for scholars, lay people and interested moviegoers to use in trying to understand earlier times and the preoccupations filling people's daydreams in 1944. Though not a transparent slice of ideology, the film gives ample evidence about the preferred ideas of its time as it urges sacrifice, selflessness, fair play and ultimately inspires audiences to live up to higher ideals than their own more base pursuits.

Clearly these values were, and continue to be, viable and necessary for civilization to exist but the particular emphasis they received in the war years is especially noteworthy. Not just because the times demanded goodness, thrift, hard work and shared effort but because these ideals have gone out of fashion in the intervening years between now and then.

For some the current cultural climate is preferable to the homogenous, religiously centered and patriotic times of the '40s. For others, though, the twentieth century often seems like the steady unraveling of a higher purpose. Occasional relics like Going My Way then become descriptors of nodal moments in time when artists and industrialists alike raised their hands to remark on the times and offered a signpost of conventional goodness to mark the descent into our more animal selves.

That less well rewarded work from the times like Double Indemnity and Lifeboat explored these dystopian aspects of civilization is a point about artistic preference and, perhaps, of greater artistic value. For sure Going My Way is technically strong and built on ample human and material resources that make it an efficient entertainment. But where Minnelli's and Hitchcock's films tried changing the medium and reception of cinema, McCarey's work was designed to contain audiences within two hours of screen escapism.

Compared to its betters Going My Way is only a sign of the times. A pleasant sign of the times, most definitely, but still sentimentality run amuck in the face of other more interesting, instructive and complex work that has far surpassed the reputation of the Academy Award winner for 1944.