By the time of the 1944 Oscars in March, 1945, the end of World War II was in sight. Only one of the year’s five Best Picture nominees dealt directly with the war.

The big winner was of course Leo McCarey’s Going My Way, which won seven of the ten Oscars it was nominated for including Best Picture, Director, Actor (Bing Crosby) and Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald).

Bing Crosby was at the time the most popular star in show business thanks to his best-selling recordings, radio programs and films. His charming and sincere portrayal of the easy going parish priest may not have been ground-breaking acting but he made audiences of the day feel warm and cuddly. Fitzgerald as the grumpy older priest, however, was the revelation. The Irish born character actor won the New York Film Critics award for Best Actor and was nominated for both Best Actor and Supporting Actor for the same performance, the first and only time that has happened – the Academy quickly adapted new rules to prevent a reoccurrence.

The film itself is a bit episodic with Crosby’s singing and sparring with Fitzgerald interspersed with singing by Rise Stevens and the Robert Mitchell Boy Choir and a great happy tear-inducing ending. If it seems a bit simplistic by today’s standards it was the right film for the right time.

Today’s more cynical critics and audiences consider Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity the best of the nominated films. The suspense thriller was nominated for seven Oscars but won none. Barbara Stanwyck as the wife who dupes insurance salesman Fred MacMurray into murdering her husband was the only acting nominee. The exclusion of both MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson as his inquisitive boss seems more than a bit unfair. MacMurray is generally the one cited as most likely to have benefitted from a single supporting nomination for Fitzgerald.

At the time, however, Going My Way’s toughest competition was thought to be Darryl F. Zanuck’s production of Wilson, directed by Henry King. The film about the U.S. President who reluctantly brought his country into World War I and then spent the rest of his life trying to organize the League of Nations to prevent future wars, was Zanuck’s dream project. He was so hurt by the film’s loss that when he won for Gentleman’s Agreement three years later he said “this doesn’t make up for past mistakes.” Star Alexander Knox was inconsolable in his loss as well, reportedly remarking “I can’t believe I lost to a crooner.”

The only Best Picture nominee dealing directly with the ongoing war was David O. Selznick’s production of Since You Went Away, directed by John Cromwell. Selznick envisioned the nearly three hour film about the American home front as another Gone With the Wind. It wasn’t, but it was good enough to receive nine nominations and one win – for Max Steiner’s score.

Claudette Colbert was the mother of two daughters, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, whose husband is off fighting the war. It featured Joseph Cotton as a family friend, Monty Woolley as a boarder, Robert Walker as Woolley’s grandson and a host of others. Colbert, Jones and Woolley all won nominations for their performances.

The fifth nominee was Georg Cukor’s Gaslight, a remake of the similarly titled 1940 British gothic thriller, which proved that Cukor could direct a suspense film as well as Hitchcock.

Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar as the woman slowly being driven mad by her husband. Charles Boyer won his third nomination as the husband and 18 year-old Angela Lansbury in her film debut won her first nomination playing a surly maid. Joseph Cotton, Dame May Whitty and Barbara Everest also had prominent roles. If the film has a flaw it’s that Bergman seems much too intelligent to be fooled by Boyer’s suavity as long as her character is, but it’s a masterful performance nonetheless.

Otto Preminger also found himself deep in Hitchcock territory with the film version of Vera Caspery’s Laura about a detective’s infatuation with the portrait of a murdered socialite. The film was nominated for five Oscars and won one for Joseph LaShelle’s haunting black-and-white cinematography. Gene Tierney in the title role, Dana Andrews as the obsessed detective and Oscar nominated Clifton Webb as a venomous gossip columnist headed the cast which also included Vincent Price and Judith Anderson. Shockingly, David Raksin’s classic music score was not nominated although the main theme with words added would soon become one of the biggest film inspired hits of all time.

Hitchcock himself was represented by Lifeboat for which he received his second Best Director nomination. The film, which takes place entirely at sea in lifeboat was also nominated for John Steinbeck’s original story and its cinematography. None of the actors were nominated, although Tallulah Bankhead won the New York Film Critics award for her portrayal of an acerbic newspaper columnist. Walter Slezak, William Benidx, John Hodiak, Mary Anderson, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull and Canada Lee co-starred.

Nominated for four Oscars, Vincente Minnelli’s valentine to Judy Garland, Meet Me in St. Louis failed to win any, but child star Margaret O’Brien took home a special Oscar as the best juvenile performer of the year largely in tribute to her performance as Garland’s little sister.

Mary Astor, Marjorie Main, Leon Ames, Tom Drake and Harry Davenport were also prominent in the musical which introduced such soon to be standards as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “The Boy Next Door” and “The Trolley Song”. The latter was singled out as a Best Song nominee, losing to Going My Way’s “Swinging on a Star”.

The year’s two best laugh out loud comedies were Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek both of which won Oscar nominations for their writing. The former featured Eddie Bracken as a manufactured war hero. The latter concerned a mysterious small town pregnancy involving Bracken, Betty Hutton and Diana Lynn.

The year’s most popular action film was Mervyn LeRoy’s accurately told Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo featuring Spencer Tracy as ace flyer Jimmy Dolittle. It was nominated for its cinematography and special effects and won for the latter.

All of the films mentioned thus far have long been available on DVD with the exception of Wilson. The Warner Archive Collection has recently made available Clarence Brown’s The White Cliffs of Dover and Tay Garnett’s Mrs. Parkington.

Based on Alice Duer Miller’s poem, The White Cliffs of Dover opens with star Irene Dunne reciting the poem as she awaits the arrival in the hospital where she is a nurse of her injured son. The film then tells in flashback of the life of the American born woman who marries a British officer during a whirlwind courtship at the outbreak of World War I. Nominated for George Folsey’s meticulous cinematography the film might have as easily been nominated for its marvelous art direction and costume design as well as for the performances of Dunne and Gladys Cooper as her mother-in-law. The once in a lifetime cast also includes Roddy McDowall, Alan Marshall, Frank Morgan, Dame May Whitty, C. Aubrey Smith, Van Johnson, Peter Lawford and Elizabeth Taylor.

The best thing about Mrs. Parkington,which was nominated for Best Actress Greer Garson and Best Supporting Actress Agnes Moorehead, is its casting. Walter Pidgeon, Gladys Cooper, Edward Arnold and Cecil Kellaway are also on board in this rather oddly constructed “woman’s picture” in which an 80 year-old Garson reflects on her earlier life while her relatives wait for her to die so they can latch onto her money.

Not on DVD in the U.S., Clifford Odets’ morose None But the Lonely Heart is an important film if for no other reason than it contains one of only two Oscar nominated performances by Cary Grant and the performance that won Ethel Barrymore a much deserved Oscar as his poverty stricken mother.

New DVD releases worth your time include Michael Heneke’s Oscar nominated The White Ribbon and Jon Amiel’s Creation with Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin. I forgot to mention last week that Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station with Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren in their Oscar nominated turns as Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya is now available and well worth a look.