How others will see it. This lightweight but entertaining movie was a big box office hit, partly because of Crosby's baritone fame, but also because of the chemistry between Fitzgerald and Crosby. Both are lovable in different ways. Crosby is smooth and reassuring. Fitzgerald is skeptical yet sentimental. Hollywood recognized the onscreen bond between the two, and paired them again in Welcome Stranger, a comedy that I actually prefer to Going My Way. Crosby, of course, played the affable priest again in The Bells of St. Mary, another cinematic success.
A more traditional reason for the success of Going My Way is its depiction of the Church, and its ultimate optimistic take on humanity. Crosby is incorruptible, and never loses his cool. The street kids change from juvenile offenders to angel-voiced choir singers. Perky (and boiling hot) young Jean Heather is on a course toward vice, but all turns out well for her, and for her perfect new husband.
It's a Hollywood fantasy of the effects of the Church on the community, but audiences lapped it up. They didn't care that the outcomes are preposterously upbeat, and didn't think twice about whether the Metropolitan Opera headliners would spend all their free time at the Church, helping Crosby with the high notes and aiding his cause of turing the neighborhood delinquents into an unnaturally conformist version of the Vienna Boys Choir.
How I felt about it. One wonders how Going My Way would be remade today. Priests who hang around minors are subject to lawsuits about improper touching, whether such a thing actually occured, or whether a group of former altar boys decided that salacious accusations would bring in enough dough to buy a new SUV. The cultural view of priests today, as pedophiles, is irreconciliable with that of Going My Way, which presents priests as selfless neighborhood missionaires.
Cute as a button Jean Heather made only two significant movies, Going My Way and Double Indemnity, where she played the goody two-shoes daughter of Barbara Stanwyck. Both films were made in the first year of her screen career. She made other films, of course, but her career fizzled out within a few more years.
Crosby and Fitzgerald both won Oscars for their work in Going My Way, and perhaps deservedly, since they put over the film's pretense: Everybody wants to do good, and all it takes is for a kindly priest to show them the way. But while it's true that most would like to do good, the instant gratification of selfish behavior, and the long-term success of looking after your own interests, is a far greater force than the charm of any velvet-voiced clergyman.