Stars in My Crown

And they didn't get one.

"Stars in My Crown" was Joel McCrea's favorite film. He's cast against type here, playing the parson, Josiah Gray, who settles with his wife (Ellen Drew) and her nephew John (Dean Stockwell) in a small town.

At first he's accepted by the community, who help him build his church. However, not everyone is crazy about him, including Daniel Harris Jr. (James Mitchell) who has taken over his late father's practice.

There are some dark forces at work, including an attempt to take land owned by a black farmer (Juano Hernandez). The violence against him escalates, but he stands firm.

What was interesting to me about this film was that citizens of the town become infected with typhoid. The first one hit is John. When Josiah attempts to continue to work in the community with his flock, the doctor accuses him of spreading the disease as more and more people become ill. The family become pariahs.

This isn't the exact scenario with COVID, though some of the sentiments are the same as people play the blame game and deal with suffering and death in their families.

"Stars in My Crown" is family entertainment, a story of the power of prayer and the need for courage in the face of difficulties. It's a lovely film, and while some may think Joel McCrea was miscast, I don't. Tough, charismatic, and plain speaking, he makes Josiah the kind of pastor any community would be proud to have.

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.

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.

STARS IN MY CROWN is a nice slice of life movie about the life about a country preacher in the years immediately following the Civil War. Joel McCrea plays the preacher and Dean Stockwell plays an orphan that is taken in by the preacher and his wife. However, the film isn't just about them but about the people in the town. It focuses quite a bit on a young and somewhat cocky doctor as well as a gentle and beloved Black man (played exceptionally by the wonderful character actor, Juano Hernandez).

Both plots are exceptional--particularly the one involving Hernandez because the film dared in 1950 to attack prejudice--something Hollywood was seldom willing to do at that time. Often, when Blacks were in mainstream films, they were one-dimensional and the racial divide in America was ignored. For 1950, this was a brave film--though some will no doubt notice that the film is perhaps a bit overly idealistic in how it portrayed how the White Southerners generally loved Hernandez.

The plot involving the doctor was also rather touching and had a lot to say about the supposed gap between faith and science. I particularly liked how McCrea AND the doctor struggled with this divide.

STARS IN MY CROWN reminds me of another film that is also about a small town preacher (ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN) and both have a nice gentle spirit but also aren't preachy or saccharine despite being films about the clergy. I especially like how both ministers (in this case, Joel McCrea and in the other film, Frederic March) were human beings--not dull caricatures. Some may be offended because the films AREN'T really religious movies (you get no Gospel or Bible-thumping here) but for a general audience these films are sure to please. I recommend both heartily because they were written so well and the acting was on target. See these films.

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.