I see you, Catey B. Looking all smug; like a regal folk singer.
And you, Mr Foxx. With all the arrogance of a blind taxi driver.
And a visually impaired real estate salesman too. You’re no better, Al Pacino. HOO-HAH.
And the conceited look on the faces of Moore, Thompson, Hunter, Weaver, Lange, Wright and Bainter. They haven’t escaped my attention either.
The revered honour that binds this decemvirate of self-satisfied poseurs is that each has earned themselves two performing Oscar nominations in a single awards season. And don’t they just know it.
But I’ve got news for the ears and egos of the aforementioned farrago, because their ‘achievements’ fade into insignificance when mentioned in the same thespy breath as Barry Fitzgerald.
Barry Fitzgerald
Today is the 125th anniversary of the Irish character-actor’s birth; the only person in Academy Award history to earn two nominations in the same year…for the same film…for the same role.
By a now defunct quirk in voting, Fitzgerald picked up nods in both Lead and Supporting Actor categories for his role as fusty Father Fitzgibbon in 1944’s Going My Way.
The film swept the 17th Academy Awards, stealing Best Picture, Director, Writing (Story and Screenplay) and Original Song. And it really was a theft, in a year when Double Indemnity‘s powers of alchemy were sorely lacking, managing to fail in converting any of its 7 nominations into gold.
Going My Way is a pleasant enough 121 minutes. Bing Crosby – at the height of his powers – is likable as Father Chuck O’Malley, in a departure from his usual saccharine appearances. As per the New York Times’s review on release, it was “Mr. Crosby’s first picture with a comparatively serious dramatic theme, and also the first in which his singing is not heavily depended upon.”
O’Malley is a young Catholic priest, drafted in to a small New York parish by the bishop who fears that Father Fitzgibbons’s inability to modernise will see the church foreclosed by an unforgiving mortgagee. The two men of the cloth overcome their initial friction, to (inevitably) keep the money men at bay and allow Fitzgibbon’s belligerent religioso to retire happily. There’s nothing ground breaking here and, at a shade over two hours, it drags the action out too long; but there are some genuinely amusing lines and the reluctant relationship between Crosby and Fitzgerald is nicely observed and played.
The men would be at odds off screen too – on Oscar night. Somehow, Fitzgerald managed to impress sufficient peers to sneak in to both acting categories. Crosby eventually took the award (Fred MacMurray, criminally, wasn’t even nominated) and Fitzgerald had to settle for a Best Supporting Actor win.
Barry and Bing compare statues (I could have saved you some time boys…they’re identical)
But, that would have suited the Dubliner, who never sought fame like Bing’s. As the NYT’s Fred Stanley reported in a splendid feature in 1945, fame wasn’t for Fitzgerald:
“He finds it all rather bewildering. He resents the disruption of his previously inconspicuous private life. He can’t even browse in Los Angeles book shops or join in a discussion with strangers at some out-of-the-way barroom or drug store without being tagged as Father Fitzgibbon. His old clothes and cloth cap, which once kept him inconspicuous, now make him a marked man.”
And, after Academy voting rules were changed to stop the rather embarrassing anomaly from recurring, Barry Fitzgerald’s name will continue to live on after death, as a perennial question in Oscar trivia quizzes every year.
Now beat that, Mr Day-Lewis.
Bloscars 