Serious Movie Lover

Father O'Malley finds that somebody up there (in this tenement) does NOT like him.

GOING MY WAY (1944/DVD) plus (but Not Bitchin’ Whatsover): HOLIDAY INN (1942/DVD) 

I had somehow made it thus far without seeing any Bing Crosby movies—until now I’d only known him as the guy who sang “Little Drummer Boy” with his friendly TV neighbor, 1977-via-1982 David Bowie—and as an introduction to his stuff I somehow managed recently to watch three films featuring the crooner/actor in the same night. This was an unintentional marathon—my original intent was just to view director Leo McCarey’s 1944 smash hit Going My Way and its equally popular sequel, 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s, both featuring Crosby in the lead role of easygoing, modern (for 1944) Father O’Malley. The DVD I procured of Going My Way just happened to be a double feature edition*, paired with the also very popular Holiday Inn, starring Crosby with his real-life pal/golf buddy Fred Astaire, so after viewing these wonderful McCarey pictures, I figured, hey, I like this “Der Bingle” fella well enough—might as well check out Holiday Inn. Man, was that a bad decision. Holiday Inn. Is. The. Worst.  More on that later…     

Der Binger REPRESENTS STL, yo! (with Risë Stevens)

McCarey’s charming and sweet-natured 1944 Best Picture winner Going My Way features Crosby in a career (re)defining role that much of the 1944 moviegoing public wasn’t quite ready to see. It sounds silly now, but at the time, Crosby—the playboy crooner and “Road” picture goofball—playing a priest was seen as a blasphemous act. That knee-jerk reaction subsided quickly enough as audiences fell in love with Crosby’s genuine, fits-like-a-glove turn as the gentle, easygoing, and good hearted Father O’Malley, a young priest transferred from his hometown of St. Louis (shout out to the STL Browns, yo!) to a run-down parish in NYC to assist and eventually take over for the aging, very Irish, and cantankerous-on-the-outside Father Fitzgibbon, played by Dublin-born stage actor Barry Fitzgerald in a cherished performance that was (as a honest fluke) nominated for Oscars in both Best Actor AND Best Supporting Actor categories, the latter of which he clinched. (Fun fact: Fitzgerald later accidentally beheaded his Oscar statue while practicing his golf swing in his living room. Thanks, DVD Production Notes!)     

Puppies!

Part of the charm of McCarey’s films is his tendency to follow his whims on-set, allowing them to take him wherever, and then incorporating these side stories or scenes into the whole of the picture, without making the finished result seem scattershot or overplotted. Crosby later said that the Going My Way story McCarey initially sold to studio heads bore no resemblance to the story he finally shot, revealing that “75 percent of each day’s shooting was made up on the set by Leo.” He went on to say that McCarey would start every shooting day by immediately going to the piano and playing ragtime for an hour or two, “while he thought up a few scenes.” According to co-star Risë Stevens (an opera star-turned-actress, appearing here as an old flame of Father O’Malley-turned-opera star), McCarey often asked actors how they would say a line in order to give the words the most natural sounding delivery possible—often changing dialogue on the fly to their own interpretations. And for bored actors, the director was a godsend; McCarey encouraged improvisation at all times—a talent in which crooner-turned-actor-turned-Actor Crosby was found to excel.      

Going My Way eventually racked up 7 Oscars, including Director & Writer (Original Story) wins for McCarey, Actor for Crosby, and Best Song for “Swinging on a Star,” which you don’t realize that you already know (“Oh, would you like to swing on a star?/Carry moonbeams home in a jar?”). The film was an unqualified smash, placing fifth in a 1946 report of the All-Time Top Grossers. With accolades and honors like these piling up—not to mention a cast outspoken about their love and respect for McCarey and his working style—making a sequel was a foregone conclusion. I was planning on including a review of the equally delightful sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s, but that will have to wait until next week, because of this:     

OK, so: Holiday Inn. Where do I begin? The clumsy and manic direction by Mark Sandrich conspires to make both Fred Astaire and Crosby unlikable aged buffoons. The Astaire numbers are boring and repetitive. And when he sings a line or two and then dances and then sings another line and then dances, OH MY GOD is that some boring, meandering shit. Crosby’s singing voice is at its cornball croony cheesiest, and the songs—by THE Irving Berlin, who also terribly wrote the “idea” the film was based on, in addition to the countless horrible holiday theme songs (minus his Academy Award winning “White Christmas,” however terribly sung in the film by Crosby) that are uniformly dull and tuneless and just go on and on and never stop.  And then there is some dancing! And then, no wait— we’re singing and dancing now.  What is this fresh hell?     

Marjorie Reynolds and the subtle social commentary of Holiday Inn.

Berlin’s ACADAMY AWARD-winning story outline was apparently fleshed out by actual professional screenwriters, but one might not guess that while watching this story of two performing partners (One DANCES! One SINGS! Guess who is who?) split up over a dame’s change of heart (and gooey love stuff), leading the jilted beau (Crosby) to move to snowy Vermont and open a Holidays-only hotel, where for 15 holidays a year (WHEN DID THERE EVER EXIST 15 HOLIDAYS?) it becomes a special destination nightclub where incredibly boring shit happens to PACKED HOUSES.     

Holiday Inn, you are a douche.

It’s quite possible that I might have disliked this crap a tiny bit less if I hadn’t viewed it so closely following these Leo McCarey/Bing Crosby gems, but I did, and in that order, Holiday Inn sucked.  Wasting any more words on this will not be required—just check out this clip of the performance they came up with to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday. YES, that is Crosby in blackface singing the most racist shit ever, along with co-star Marjorie Reynolds in a bug-eyed, crazy-haired, hateful caricature disturbing in its bizarre “comic” intensity. Not to mention Crosby’s character’s maid Mamie (a character which very well could have been named “Mammy” or even “Aunt Jemima” in this cartoonish environment) who sings this couplet to her tiny, constantly misbehavin’ chilluns: “When black folks lived in slavery/Who was it set the darky free?”  It is amazing to me that this was business as usual for white America only 68 years ago. Although I suppose that is very white of me to think such things:    

I implore you: choose wisely.

Grades:
Going My Way: A
Holiday Inn: F

* This DVD edition contains a crisp and bright print of Going My Way, which makes this discount DVD bargain worth the purchase (as long as you NEVER accidentally watch the fuzzier (and terrible) Holiday Inn, and don’t mind clunky, weird looking menus like this one.)

Tags bing crosby, holiday inn, leo mccarey