One Foot in Heaven is a 1941 American biographical drama film directed by Irving Rapper and starring Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart and Elisabeth Fraser.

[3] In Stratford, Ontario, in 1904, William Spence (Fredric March), a medical student on the verge of becoming a doctor, receives "The Call" while passing a Methodist church one Sunday.

His bride-to-be, Hope Morris (Martha Scott), accepts his decision to enter the ministry with a whole heart despite the disappointment of her prominent and affluent parents.

Will "dives right in," but, with no vacancies in Canada, is posted as a circuit minister to a small town in rural Iowa, beginning a life for them of frequent moves around the district, dingy parsonages, and scraping a living from poor boxes and performing weddings.

He loses one wealthy patron, Mrs. Sandow (Beulah Bondi), to the Baptists when he refuses to stop ministering to her chauffeur (Harry Davenport), and another, influential banker Preston Thurston (Gene Lockhart), after organizing a children's choir to replace the off-key church choir, run for years by Mrs. Thurston (Laura Hope Crews), her family and social circle.

Soon after, Hartzell (Frankie Thomas) is expelled from school because of a gossip campaign falsely accusing him of making a young girl pregnant and forcing her family to move to San Francisco.

Returning to Denver, Will confronts Mrs. Thurston and her circle, who started the rumors to punish Will, and suggests that if they don't contribute substantially to the building of the new church, he will call them out in his sermons.

[4][5] On April 20, 1942, Lux Radio Theatre presented a 45-minute adaptation of One Foot in Heaven, with Fredric March and Martha Scott reprising their original roles.

[9] Olivia de Havilland was originally scheduled for the role of Hope Spence, but was moved over to star opposite Errol Flynn in They Died with Their Boots On.