- “31 Days of Oscar” on TCM – Day 13: On Feb. 25 (primetime/late night), Turner Classic Movies’ lineup of Academy Award-winning and -nominated titles consists of six features in which religion – i.e., some form of Christianity – is a central theme. Included are Hallelujah and Elmer Gantry.
‘31 Days of Oscar’ on TCM – Day 13: Hallelujah, Going My Way, and Elmer Gantry among 6 religion-themed features
Turner Classic Movies’ 2026 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Wednesday (primetime/late night), Feb. 25, and into the morning of Thursday, Feb. 26, with the presentation of six Oscar-winning or -nominated religion-themed features. (See TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 13: Religion” movie schedule further below. Most entries should remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Bear in mind that by “religion” TCM means one or another Christian sect. Of course, there have been Academy Award-winning and -nominated movies in which other beliefs are a central component of the narrative, from Rosemary’s Baby, Satyricon, and Fiddler on the Roof to Yentl, Kundun, and The Secret of Kells, but you won’t find any of them in this particular religion-themed lineup.
Below is a brief overview of each “31 Days of Oscar – Day 13: Religion” title, listed in chronological order.
Hallelujah (1929)
King Vidor received a Best Director Academy Award nomination (for the period 1929–1930) for his talkie debut, the curious religion-hued musical Hallelujah!, which also happens to be an unusual Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer* release in that it features two little-known names leading an all-black (or at least part-black) cast: Nina Mae McKinney as The Temptress, a dancer of loose ethics, and Daniel L. Haynes as The Temptee, a sharecropper of loose coin.
Shades of Otto Preminger’s 1954 hit Carmen Jones, starring Best Actress nominee Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, based on Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1943 Broadway musical from Georges Bizet’s opera.
Notwithstanding its relatively low cost ($320,000), Hallelujah failed to earn a profit, ending up $120,000 in the red.
* “Ars Gratia Artis” may have been MGM’s lofty official motto, but its box office compass pointed to “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven.”
One Foot in Heaven (1941)
Adapted by Casey Robinson from journalist Hartzell Spence’s book of memoirs, Irving Rapper’s sentimental religious family drama One Foot in Heaven is well worth a look because of its cast headed by Academy Award winner Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1931–1932),* as Spence’s medical student turned Methodist minister father, and nominee Martha Scott (Our Town, 1940) as Spence’s devoted mother.
As a plus, the supporting cast includes nominee Gene Lockhart (Algiers, 1938) – one of the finest and most versatile actors of the studio era – as a local Denver, Colorado, banker, and, as Hartzell Spence in his late teens, personable Frankie Thomas, Bonita Granville’s partner in crime in Warner Bros.’ Nancy Drew movies of the late 1930s.
Of note, One Foot in Heaven was nominated for one single Academy Award: Best Picture† (Hal B. Wallis for Warner Bros.).
* Fredric March would win his second Best Actor Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
† From the period 1931–1932 to 1943, there were anywhere between eight to 12 Best Picture nominees. In most years, however, the roster included 10 titles.
Going My Way (1944)
Starring Academy Award winners Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald* as clashing priests at a New York City parish – the former younger, new school, newly arrived, Irish-American; the latter older, old school, well-established, Irish from the old country – Leo McCarey’s Best Picture winner Going My Way became both a sizable box office hit a critical favorite. It’s also more agreeable and, at its finale, more moving than its basic narrative might suggest.
Screen story by director McCarey; screenplay by Frank Butler and Frank Cavett. All three won Oscars. Another winner: Best Original Song “Swinging on a Star,” one of Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke’s best-known tunes.
Of note, the year after Going My Way came out, Leo McCarey and Bing Crosby were reunited on an even more humongous blockbuster: The sequel The Bells of St. Mary’s, costarring peppy nun Ingrid Bergman.
** A unique case in Oscar annals, Barry Fitzgerald was shortlisted in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories for the same movie. Bing Crosby won Best Actor; Fitzgerald won Best Supporting Actor. After taking home his statuette, the latter proceeded to (accidentally) decapitate it. He was given a replacement.
Elmer Gantry (1960)
Best Actor Academy Award winner Burt Lancaster hams it up as a snake-oil salesman – the snake-oil here is Christianity – in screenwriter-director Richard Brooks’ intriguing yet disappointingly cautious Elmer Gantry, based on segments from Sinclair Lewis’ 1927 novel about religion and its not infrequent connection to human cruelty, insanity, and stupidity.*
Far more effective are Jean Simmons (who failed to be shortlisted that year) as an evangelist based on Pentecostal word-of-God-spreader Aimee Semple McPherson† and eventual Best Supporting Actress winner Shirley Jones as the sex worker who, after getting the Fear of God rammed deep into her, brings down the corrupt title character.
And to think that once upon a time Fundamentalist Christians actually cared about accusations of “illicit” sexual liaisons. These days, only a scandal of Epstein Island proportions – were it the size of Greenland – would (maybe) bring down one of their parasitical leaders and accomplices.
Note: At the Oscars, Shirley Jones (Oklahoma!, Carousel, etc.) beat another good blonde girl gone bad: The Romance of Rosy Ridge and Confidentially Connie leading woman Janet Leigh, shortlisted for her portrayal of an unlucky embezzler in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Jones will be turning 92 next March 31.
* At the time of the novel’s publication, Sinclair Lewis was lambasted by various Christian leaders. One of them, Evangelical pastor Billy Sunday, accused him of being “Satan’s cohort.”
† Barbara Stanwyck plays a less trustworthy version of Aimee Semple McPherson in Frank Capra’s still compelling 1931 drama The Miracle Woman. (Just make sure to pretend the final scene is a figment of your twisted imagination.)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Stage star Paul Scofield is best remembered for his theatrical portrayal of Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) in Fred Zinnemann’s handsomely mounted but staid historical pageant A Man for All Seasons, a major critical success that also did respectable business at the box office.
And that combo, in turn, translated into six Academy Award wins: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Scofield), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt, from his own 1960 play starring Scofield both in the West End and, in late 1961, on Broadway), Best Color Cinematography (Ted Moore), and Best Color Costume Design (Joan Bridge and Elizabeth Haffenden).
As Henry VIII, the man of power who, with the assistance of Leo McKern’s Thomas Cromwell, ultimately silences the voice of the man of conscience,* Robert Shaw was shortlisted in the Best Supporting Actor category. He lost to Walter Matthau for the Billy Wilder comedy The Fortune Cookie.
Note: Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup were released the same year as A Man for All Seasons.
* Whether or not you agree with the radical Roman Catholic Sir Thomas More is something else. But you’ll likely think that decapitation is a bit too extreme a manner to resolve one’s political-philosophical issues. Oddly, historians don’t tell us how Henry VIII spun that incident in his State of the Kingdom address of 1535.
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
Directed by Michael Anderson (whose Around the World in 80 Days was named the Best Picture of 1956), and adapted by John Patrick and James Kennaway from Morris West’s 1963 novel, the costly critical and commercial dud The Shoes of the Fisherman stars two-time Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Anthony Quinn (Que Viva Zapata!, 1952; Lust for Life, 1956) as (eventually) Pope Kiril, a.k.a., Zorba the Pope.
It’s that artificial.
On the plus side, the supporting cast makes it a must: Oscar nominee Oskar Werner (Ship of Fools, 1965), and veterans Vittorio De Sica* and Isa Miranda (La signora di tutti).
The Shoes of the Fisherman was shortlisted in two Oscar categories: Best Original Score (Alex North) and Best Art Direction (George Davis and Edward Carfagno).
* Vittorio De Sica directed four Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winners: Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). Note: The first two were Honorary Award recipients. Note II: Each title won the Oscar for the year after their original release in Italy.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar – Day 13: Religion” schedule.
‘31 Days of Oscar – Day 13: Religion’: TCM primetime/late night schedule (EST) – Feb. 25/morning of Feb. 26
8:00 PM Going My Way (1944)
Director: Leo McCarey.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, James Brown, Risë Stevens, Gene Lockhart, Jean Heather, Porter Hall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eily Malyon, William Frawley, Stanley Clements, Carl Switzer.
130m10:15 PM Elmer Gantry (1960)
Director: Richard Brooks.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger, Shirley Jones, Patti Page, Edward Andrews, John McIntire, Hugh Marlowe, Philip Ober, Barry Kelley, Rex Ingram, Ed Nelson.
146m1:00 AM A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Director: Fred Zinnemann.
Cast: Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo Mckern, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, Susannah York, Nigel Davenport, John Hurt, Corin Redgrave, Colin Blakely, Michael Latimer, Thomas Heathcote, Vanessa Redgrave.
120m3:15 AM The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
Director: Michael Anderson.
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, Oskar Werner, David Janssen, Vittorio De Sica, Leo McKern, John Gielgud, Barbara Jefford, Rosemary Dexter, Frank Finlay, Burt Kwouk, Arnoldo Foà, Clive Revill, Niall MacGinnis, Isa Miranda, Leopoldo Trieste, Peter Copley.
162m6:00 AM Hallelujah (1929)
Director: King Vidor.
Cast: Daniel L. Haynes, Nina Mae McKinney, William E. Fountaine, Harry Gray, Fanny Belle DeKnight, Everett McGarrity, Victoria Spivey, the Dixie Jubilee Singers, Sam McDaniel, Clarence Muse.
100m8:00 AM One Foot in Heaven (1941)
Director: Irving Rapper.
Cast: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser, Harry Davenport, Laura Hope Crews, Grant Mitchell, Moroni Olsen, Frankie Thomas, Jerome Cowan, Nana Bryant, Hobart Bosworth.
108m
“Oscar Movies on TCM: Religion” notes
“31 Days of Oscar on TCM: Religion” schedule via the TCM website.
Hallelujah box office information via the Eddie Mannix Ledger, found at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library.
Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons Elmer Gantry image: United Artists.
“Oscar Movies on TCM: Religion” last modified in February 2026.