"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on
May 3, 1954 with Barry Fitzgerald reprising his film role.
"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on January 8, 1945 with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald reprising their film roles.
Bing Crosby sang "Swinging on a Star" by Jimmy Van Heusen, which went on to win an Academy Award for Best Song. Crosby sang four different Oscar-winning songs in his films.
Barry Fitzgerald was nominated by the Academy for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards for the same performance, the only time this has ever happened. He won the Oscar in the supporting category but lost in the lead category to co-star Bing Crosby (This is no longer possible under Academy guidelines.) Due to wartime metal shortages, Fitzgerald received a plaster Oscar (instead of a gold one) for his performance. A few weeks after he won, he broke the head off his plaster Oscar while practicing his golf swing.
Added to the National Film Register in 2004.
Although Barry Fitzgerald played a Catholic priest in this film--and several others--he was in real life not a Catholic but a Protestant. Several times during this film when he is "crossing" himself he does it wrong, going from right to left instead of from left to right.
Banned in several Latin American countries because Bing Crosby wore a white shirt as a priest.
Cinematographer John F. Seitz shot the opening scenes, uncredited.
Earned $16.3 million on its initial run, a huge amount for the time.
Filmed in the Santa Monica Church near the beach in Santa Monica, California. Leo McCarey based the Barry Fitzgerald character in part on the church's real (irascible) pastor, Msgnr. Nicholas Conneally.
Fr. O'Malley's favorite baseball team is the St. Louis Browns. The year "Going My Way" was released, 1944, was the only season the Browns reached the World Series while in St. Louis.
One of over 700 Paramount productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.
Singer Andy Williams debuted as one of the singing boys surrounding Bing Crosby during the song "Swinging On A Star". Williams and his three other brothers were performing as the Williams Brothers and were all cast in the scene.
The film was actually written after its "sequel" The Bells of St. Mary's; in order to borrow Bing Crosby from Paramount for that film, RKO had to allow Leo McCarey to write and direct "Going My Way", based on the same character. Oddly, however, "Going My Way" was released first.
The first film to win the Oscars for Best Film and Best Song.
The first public showing, on 27 April 1944, was at 65 military locations, "from Alaska to Italy, and from England to the jungles of Burma..." (but mostly in Europe).
Remember Bing Crosby as "Father O'Malley" in the 1944 classic "GOING MY WAY"? Well, they filmed scenes for that movie inside the church rectory at Saint Monica's Catholic Church, located at 715 California Avenue, in Santa Monica.