Going My Way

Barry Fitzgerald was nominated by the Academy for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards for the same performance, for the same film, the only time this has happened. (Al Pacino received a Best Supporting Actor nomination and a Best Actor nomination for his role as Michael Corleone, but his nominations were for the first and second Godfather films, respectively.). Fitzgerald 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-plated britannium one) for his performance. Embarrassingly, a few weeks after he won, he broke the head off his plaster Oscar while practicing his golf swing. A funny photo exists of a befuddled Fitzgerald holding the evidence

When Father O'Malley is talking to Jenny while she is getting ready to perform, the conductor can be seen taking out his cigarette case and opening it twice, in two adjacent shots.

Since Paramount could not get the European copyright clearance for Bizet's "Carmen," an additional sequence was shot from Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" which replaced Carmen for foreign prints.

Featured in Hollywood and the Stars: The One and Only Bing (1963)