The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is not a likely place to look for saints.
The venue was, for eight years in the 1960s, the home base of the Academy Awards, which then — as now — declined to make a practice of honoring films that took as their subjects spiritual matters or religious figures. To read a rundown of Best Picture recipients is to confirm this impression. Yes, there is Leo McCarey’s lovely Going My Way (1944), with Bing Crosby starring as a priest, not to mention William Wyler’s ponderous Biblical epic Ben-Hur (1959). A case could be made, perhaps, for …
