Bing Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor in this 1944 musical-dramedy written and directed by Leo McCarey. Crosby plays the new Parrish Priest, Father O'Malley, who has to win over the aging superior (Barry Fitzgerald) and the local teenage delinquents. Bing gets to sing "Swinging On A Star."

This irresistible Oscar winner from writer-director Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember) stars Bing Crosby as a low-key, crooning priest who joins the parish of a no-nonsense but sweet old Irish man of the cloth (Barry Fitzgerald). While Bing turns local toughs into a choir, the elder priest worries over the church building fund and whether he'll get a chance to see his old mother back in Ireland before she dies. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be won over by this charmer, with a lovely ending guaranteed to make you bawl for a week. --Tom Keogh