Review of Stars in My Crown

Western icon Joel McCrea stars as a country parson in "Cat People" director Jacques Tourneur's "Stars in My Crown," an old fashioned, inspirational, and often humorous chronicle of life in the post-Civil War South. Initially, I thought that I was going to watch another pistol-packing shoot'em up with one of Hollywood legendary western stars Joel McCrea. He comes to Walsburg after the war, enters a saloon, introduces himself as the new parson, brandishes a pair of six-shooters, and stars perforating the air while the patron duck and cover. This is the first and last time that we see McCrea armed for bear. He spends the remainder of this predictable but heartwarming movie preaching and caring about the souls of his flock. You might get away with calling Tourneur's film an 'eastern," because the action takes place in the south, there are no traces of the War Between the States, except in the reminiscences of our protagonist. This black & white, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release will drive women to their handkerchiefs and men will struggle to stifle a tear or two. The artwork on the cover of the DVD disc implies that McCrea wields his revolvers like a town tamer, but he doesn't even when he is staring down death in the face. One of the subplots involves a feud over the land belonging to a freed black, Uncle Famous Prill (Juano Hernandez of "Intruder in the Dust"), who resists the persistent efforts of a town merchant, Lon Bracket (Ed Begley), to buy his property for an absurdly cheap price. Mild you, "Stars in My Crown" is the kind of saga that anybody—people of faith and those without—because "Paper Moon" novelist Joe David Brown adapted his novel to the screen. Brown gives us sympathetic, three-dimensional characters and a narrative that is surprisingly charming. If you're looking for a rough & tumble horse opera, you're going to be disappointed. Apart from a couple of spiritual scenes that lacked impact, "Stars in my Crown" is a classic film. Helmed with subtlety, this 89-minute opus is another star in Jacques Tourneur's crown.