- Overview
Civil War veteran Josiah Grey comes to a small town to be a gospel minister. In time, he has a family and many friends but also finds friction with a few of his parishioners.
- Release Date
11 May 1950
- DirectingJacques Tourneur
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreJohn Chard
16 May 2024
Yellow backs in fancy dress. Stars in My Crown is directed by Jacques Tourneur and written by Joe David Brown and Margaret Fitts. It stars Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Dean Stockwell, Alan Hale, Lewis Stone, James Mitchell, Amanda Blake and Juano Hernandez. Music is by Adolph Deutsch and cinematography by Charles Schoenbaum. It's post the American Civil War and we are in the Southern town of Walsburg. Preacher Josiah Gray (McCrea) arrives in town and promptly settles down to become an important part of the community. Soon he will come face to face with two killer diseases, that of typhoid and racial hatred. First off it should be noted that some plot synopsis' and poster art are off base, McCrea's preacher is not a gun toting dude willing to use guns to further his causes, it's a brief scene flecked with humour. Also note that the Ku Klux Klan is not mentioned in this, the gang at the centre of the race hatred here are called The Night Riders (Nightriders perhaps?). A veer from what we know as the norm for a Tourneur movie, this only really suffers from being a little too precious and naturally dated in its depictions of small town church life and racial bigotry. But that said, it's such a warm involving picture that is performed and directed with skill, it's almost impossible not to feel good about things come the closure of the play. Story thrives on community strengths and weakness, delicately blending both to show optimism on offer in spite of human fallibilities. The battle between faith and medicine in nicely played, refusing to force feed one or the other, whilst the key scene as the racial hatred reached its vilest peak is potent and hits all the right notes. Cliches and stereotypes are within, perhaps unsurprisingly for the era of film making, while Hernandez's black character is written as far too passive to be utterly comfortable. It also would have been nice to have had more of Charles Kemper's ebullient medicine show host, but complaints are small here and Stars in My Crown is a worthy and comfort food kinda picture. 7/10
More Like This
The Rehearsal
First-year acting student Stanley mines his girlfriend's family scandal as material for the end-of-year show at drama school. The result is a moral...
See more
Scarface
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to...
See more
Crash
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims, and he...
See more
Aparajito
Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of...
See more
Broken Blossoms
The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.
See more
Cool Hand Luke
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or...
See more
Doctor Zhivago
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship...
See more
Bullitt
Senator Walter Chalmers is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross with the help of testimony from the criminal's hothead brother Johnny, who is in...
See more
Dead Man
William Blake, an accountant turned fugitive, is on the run. During his travels, he meets a Native American man called Nobody, who guides him on a...
See more
Do the Right Thing
Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the...
See more
Don't Look Now
While grieving a terrible loss, a married couple meet two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.
See more
The Phantom of the Opera
The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.
See more
The Magnificent Ambersons
The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.
See more
Paths of Glory
A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
See more
The Ox-Bow Incident
A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing them over to the law or lynching them on the spot.
See more
Solaris
A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.
See more
Payback
With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's the question bad guy Porter is left asking after his wife and partner steal his heist money and...
See more
The Perfect Storm
In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the...
See more
The Glass House
When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in...
See more