Stars in My Crown **** (1950, Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Dean Stockwell) – Classic Movie Review 10,615

Director Jacques Tourneur’s celebrated 1950 black and white Western family drama film Stars in My Crown stars Joel McCrea and Ellen Drew as Josiah and Harriet Gray.

Josiah Doziah Gray is an American Civil War veteran who, in 1865, comes to the small Southern town of Walsburg as the new chapel parson and marries Harriet, and with his Bible, hymns and his gun, influences the lives of the members of a US rural community facing problems like a new doctor, typhoid and the Ku Klux Klan. The town has become so dangerous that Parson Gray delivers his sermons holding a gun.

Hard work from an above-average cast engages the imagination in MGM’s busy, gentle, attractive character-based drama set in America’s Deep South. Though Margaret Fitts writes the screenplay, MGM hired the original author Joe David Brown for the adaptation to ensure a faithful adaptation of his timeless 1947 novel tale of religious fortitude, held together by its traditional moral values.

Perhaps it is rather too worthy and sedate to be fully enjoyable, but it is still really good hearted, well written, expertly acted and civilised, so it is very appealing. Dean Stockwell co-stars as Harriet’s young orphan nephew John Kenyon, raised by Josiah and Harriet, through whose eyes the story is seen, though it is narrated by Marshall Thompson as an adult John.

It also features an early pairing of TV’s Gunsmoke stars James Arness and Amanda Blake, five years before the long-running series began. Juano Hernandez plays Uncle Famous Prill and Arthur Hunnicutt plays Chloroform Wiggins!

Also notable in the cast are James Mitchell, Lewis Stone, James Arness, Ed Begley, Alan Hale, Amanda Blake, Charles Kemper, Connie Gilchrist, Jack Lambert, Arthur Hunnicutt, Eula Guy, Frank Mills, Snub Pollard, Connie Van and Wilson Wood.

It was supposedly McCrea’s favourite of his movies.

It is shot by Charles Schoenbaum in black and white and runs 89 minutes.

It made MGM a recorded profit of $225,000 on a budget of $1,175,000 and box office of $2,146,000.

Tourneur and McCrea did three Westerns together, also including Wichita (1955) and Stranger on Horseback (1955).

Stars in My Crown was remastered on DVD on 18 September 2018.

The main cast are Joel McCrea as Josiah Gray, Ellen Drew as Harriet Gray, Dean Stockwell as John Kenyon, Juano Hernandez as Uncle Famous Prill, Alan Hale Sr as Jed Isbell, Lewis Stone as Dr Daniel Kalbert Harris Sr, James Mitchell as Dr Daniel Kalbert Harris Jr, Amanda Blake as Faith Radmore Samuels, Charles Kemper as medicine show huckster Professor Sam Houston Jones, Connie Gilchrist as Sarah Isbell, Ed Begley as Lon Backett, Jack Lambert as Perry Lokey, Arthur Hunnicutt as Chloroform Wiggins, Philo McCullough as Townsman, Eula Guy, Frank Mills, Snub Pollard, Connie Van and Wilson Wood.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,615

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