Stars in My Crown opens on a preacher coming into an Frontier town and making a sermon at gunpoint. It's even on the poster. From then on, it's really not that kind of a movie, though it's one I wouldn't mind seeing too. Instead, like the novel it's adapted from, it's an essentially plotless series of vignettes presenting the life of an Old West pastor. There are subplots acting as connective tissue, like his difficult relationship with a young doctor who doesn't put much stock in the power of faith, and crucially, miners trying to force a black man to sell his ore-rich land, but for the most part, it's a character study. Not just of Joel McCrae's Josiah Gray, but of the whole town. By the time we get to the bigger events' resolutions, we have enough of a context for them to mean something. Director Jacques Tourneur gives the film a soft touch and some of its poignancy comes from its subtlety. I love the story of the farmer who doesn't believe in God, but most lives by Christian tenets, for example. Tourneur doesn't force the issue, it's just there for the audience to catch. A lot to like in this unusual picture, if you're patient with it.

I've grown to really appreciate Joel McCrea. He's a great steady actor with wonderful presence. The "Nightriders" in this movie were more frightening to me than any Klu Klux Klan depiction I've seen before. But the best part of this movie is when Parson Gray reads Uncle Famous' "will" to the gathering of Nightriders. Corny? Maybe...but it's fantastic!

A little too churchy. Appealing to the empathy and good will of an angry hooded mob seems like a pretty risky gambit. It would have been more believable if they all lynched him since they (thought they) would inherit everything.