Stars in My Crown

It gets high marks because of Joel McCrea right off. Then, it is a Western and there is always so much to learn about the early wild days and how towns got started along with laws, rules, regulations and all the rest. I always notice how the buildings of these start-up towns were built one right next to another. One fire takes them all out. I wonder how many times a town was actually re-built from fire losses? Notice too the streets and roads. Good community flick with everyone knowing everyone else and helping each other too. What an interesting way to live and grow up in. You got characters both good and not so good, the Klan, greed, fever, love interest, and a nice, happy ending. Such clean, fun and wholesome entertainment. Even if it is not true to life it can be and restores faith in human-kind just by watching. Warm and fuzzies will visit with you guaranteed. Narrator does an excellent job helping us to get the flick and not work too hard. Pay attention to Uncle Famous and his attitude on life. He lives simply, has all he needs, bothers no one likes everybody and is thankful just to be here. What a role model if there ever was one. This movie shows you what life can be like if we just let it. Good sandwich movie and tasty drink with a snack to follow will keep you happy and content to the satisfying end

An almost plot less piece of Americana and one of Jacques Tourneur's very finest films, "Stars in My Crown" is set in a small American town in the aftermath of the Civil War and it follows the daily happenings in the lives of the townsfolk, principle of whom is Joel McCrea's parson, (it's a wonderful performance). Then there's the parson's wife, the young doctor, the school mistress and the boy, (Dean Stockwell), who as a man, (an unseen Marshall Thompson), narrates the film. They are all beautifully played as are Ed Begley's greedy storekeeper, Juano Hernandez's dirt farmer and Charles Kemper's magician.

It's a very simple piece, a series of scenes on which there hangs the thinest thread of a plot, in feeling and in structure not dissimilar to John Ford's "The Sun Shines Bright". It's also one of the few really good 'religious' pictures yet one in which religion isn't centre stage but something that's just there infusing every scene and it's not at all sentimental yet ultimately it's very moving. It's cult status is thoroughly justified.

This, the second of director Jacques Tourneur's westerns after CANYON PASSAGE and one of several collaborations with actor Joel McCrea, finds him at least at first sight as far removed from the ambiguous psychological Gothic horror films he became famous through a couple years back for Val Lewton's RKO horror unit, yet once we scratch the surface, peel back the layers of faith-restoring sentimentality which lies at the film's core, we'll find this can be a pretty dark film.

Not only because the life of a small rural town in the post-Civil War South has to face a typhoid epidemic and Klan racism because the 'family' nature of the film ensures these are merely obstacles to be overcome, each of them a lesson learned in Christian love and brotherhood not only for the characters but also for the audience, but mostly because of the way Tourneur shoots the major set-pieces that revolve around them. Going back to what he learnt next to Val Lewton at RKO, Tourneur gives an otherwise saccharine film a dark underbelly, Klansmen pinning threatening notes on negros in front of burning crosses et al.

Yet STARS IN MY CROWN never feels like a film whose message and theme is beneath the director. Tourneur approaches the story in earnest. The truth is that it takes a while for things to get going. That the film is a bit too episodic and scattershot to really register until the final 15 minutes when parson Joel McCrea has to face off alone with a mob of Klansmen to save the life of a negro. That the small vignettes scattered throughout the film push the two major plots (smalltown biggotry and typhoid epidemic) a bit too far apart, the result making the first half a pretty meandering anemic affair. But the denouement, for all its saccharine 'everybody gets together to sing hymns in the church' quality, feels honest and I find it hard to fault such a film. Building something as emotionally earnest and unassuming as this is harder than tearing it down with cynicism.

According to TCM this was Joel McCrea's favorite film. Of all the wonderful westerns that Mr McCrea appeared in this says a lot. I found this movie almost hypnotic. A picture of a time in America's past that has gone by the way side. Parson Gray,Played by Mr McCrea is what I would personally want a minister of the gospel to be like. Strong and courageous and committed to his calling. Juano Hernandez plays Uncle Famous Prill and was deserving of an Oscar for his courage in facing the racism of the day by the night riders or KKK of the day. This movie took the courage to show that not all white people hated black people in this day and age. Something I personally know to be true and factual.This was Alan Hale Sr's last movie. He died before this movie was released.John Kenyon,played by Dean Stockwell was an orphan living with Parson Gray and his wife,played by Ellen Drew. Stockwell gave such a performance that if Children didn't really behave that way in those days, they should have. Stars in My Crown is one of those lost treasures that has long since been forgotten. Any movie with a character named Cloroform has got to be special. Throw in Ed Begley as the man who try's to have a "Finger in every pie" and James Mitchell as young Doc Harris who comes home fresh out of medical school and runs straight into Slow(Typhoid)fever and at the same time falls in love with Lovely Faith Samuels played by Amanda Blake(of Gunsmoke fame).Theirs even a traveling medicine show featuring Professor Jones and his two companions who sing and play like a cross-eyed meadowlark. Wonderful movie that makes you feel better after viewing it which explains why I can easily watch it over and over.

I must admit that this movie took its time to grab me.It's a movie which grows on you.Some called it "western" but western fans won't get anything of it.It's rather a chronicle,sweet memories of a grown up who remembers his dear past with a marvelous preacher man and a loving auntie.

There is no plot but subplots for it is primarily the depiction of a city in the south.Around the minister,we find the "new generation" doctor who has his doubts and who doesn't believe that healing the soul is that much important;he comes into conflict with Gray .There's also a KKK side and their "methods" to do good old Uncle Famous Pril away from his valuable property.The scene which finally won me over was the reading of Pril's "last wills" .When you discover the truth,you won't believe your eyes!This scene alone raises the movie to greatness by recurrence.And what a tuneful canticle!