In the sound era McCarey focused on feature-film direction, working with many of the biggest stars of the era, including Gloria Swanson (Indiscreet, 1931), Eddie Cantor (The Kid From Spain, 1932), the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, 1933), W.C. Fields (Six of a Kind, 1934), and Mae West (Belle of the Nineties, 1934). A series of six films at Paramount came to a crashing halt with his production of Make Way for Tomorrow in 1937. While the story of an elderly couple who have to be separated for economic and family reasons during the Depression was not without humor in its treatment, the results were too unpopular at the box office and the Director was let go. Nonetheless the film was recognized early on for its importance by being selected for the permanent collection of the recently formed Museum Of Modern Art in New York City. In later years it became canonical, and even considered by some as McCarey's masterpiece, due to perceptive champions such as Bertrand Tavernier, Charles Silver and Robin Wood. Later in 1937, invited to Columbia, McCarey earned his first Academy Award for Directing for The Awful Truth, with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, a screwball comedy that launched Cary Grant's unique screen persona, largely concocted by McCarey (Grant copied many of McCarey's mannerisms). Along with the similarity in their names, McCarey and Cary Grant shared an eerie physical resemblance, making mimicking McCarey's intonations and expressions even easier for Grant. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich notes, "After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran." After the success of The Awful Truth McCarey could have become, like Frank Capra , a Columbia contract Director with a certain independence, but went his own way, selling the story that would become The Cowboy And The Lady to Sam Goldwyn and moving to RKO for three films. A car accident in 1940 prevented him from directing his production of My Favorite Wife, a kind of follow up to The Awful Truth with the same two stars, so it was turned over to Garson Kanin though McCarey worked on some of the editing. McCarey was a devout Roman Catholic and deeply concerned with social issues. During the 1940s, his work became more serious and his politics more conservative. In 1944 he directed Going My Way, a story about an enterprising priest, the youthful Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, for which he won his second Best Director Oscar and Crosby won a Best Actor Oscar. His share in the profits of this smash hit gave McCarey the highest reported income in the U.S. for 1944, and its follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), which paired Crosby with Ingrid Bergman and made by McCarey's newly formed production company, was similarly successful. According to Paul Harrit in Great Directors, McCarey acknowledged that the film is largely based on his aunt, Sister Mary Benedict, who died of typhoid. McCarey testified as a friendly witness early on in the hearings of the Un-American Activities Committee in Congress, which was concerned about supposed Communist activity in Hollywood.