What I’ll always remember most is the image of the parson standing on the front porch of Uncle Famous’ shack and facing the KKK. They’ve come to lynch the old black man, but this mob isn’t made up of strangers. Under their sheets, they’re the local townsmen, and every one of them has had some personal connection growing up with Uncle Famous.
Through every trial since the birth of this nation, there have been Americans who have challenged intolerance and oppression– characters not unlike Josiah Gray in Stars in My Crown (1950). The preacher, as portrayed by Joel McCrea, embodies the very best of what this country can offer. When he confronts the Ku Klux Klan at the end of the film, there’s no shoot-out or sanctimonious sermon. Instead, Josiah shames them. But he does this in a way that I, the viewer, never saw coming.
What he does to those hooded townspeople is something that probably should be done to a great many people today who, through poor judgment, have aligned themselves with the worst elements of society. How many cling to ideology and partisanship over common decency and truth? America’s well is poisoned. Not from the typhoid in the water, as depicted in the movie, or from COVID-19, which has claimed the lives of thousands. No, this is something longer-lasting than a pandemic, and it’s at the heart of Stars in My Crown.
Joel McCrea
Stars in My Crown is a film for our time, an episodic portrait of Americana that addresses the issue of racial intolerance. In fact, the story presents a dual conflict a town is faced with. Two diseases are tearing it apart– typhoid and racism. A parallel could be made to events in 2020, which makes Stars in My Crown all the more relevant now. At the time of its release seventy years ago, the film received the prestigious Freedom Foundation Award, which recognized its role in exemplifying the American ideal.
Set in the postbellum South, Stars in My Crown is the story of a small town, Walesburg, as remembered by the film’s narrator, John Kenyon. What he recalls, however, is something more than a nostalgia for one’s childhood– it’s a longing for a special time and place. There were problems to be sure, but there was always the parson to guide the town through it all. And during the darkest hours, Josiah faced his own self-doubt and questioned whether he had failed the town. The story was based on the book of the same name by Joe David Brown with an adaptation by Margaret Fitts. Both the novel and the film took their title from a 19th century Protestant hymn, Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown.
Parson Josiah Gray embodies strength and empathy. It is through people like him that Walesburg has a spiritual foundation and a sense of community. McCrea biographer Tony Thomas wrote, “Stars in My Crown is one of the stars in the crown of Joel McCrea. The role of the strong, likeable pastor fits him like a glove. It is quintessential McCrea, thoroughly American and straight as an arrow. This pastor is no mere Holy Joe; when he strides into a saloon and slams a pistol on the bar the patrons pay attention. And when he faces down the Klanners there is no doubt that this is the man who could do it. He knows about prejudice and greed and ignorance, and how to do something about it. Josiah Doziah Gray is Joel McCrea at his best.”
Stars in My Crown features a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Ellen Drew as Harriet Gray, child actor Dean Stockwell as John Kenyon, James Mitchell as the practical doctor with more faith in medicine than in prayer, Amanda Blake as the schoolteacher, Alan Hale (in his last film), Lewis Stone, and Juano Hernandez as Uncle Famous. The previous year, Hernandez had appeared in Intruder in the Dust, another film that dealt with lynch mobs. Also in the cast, though uncredited, is James Arness. Both he and Amanda Blake would go on to star in the long-running television series, “Gunsmoke.”
The film was beautifully directed by Jacques Tourneur, a Paris-born filmmaker who is best known for the Robert Mitchum film noir, Out of the Past, as well as the horror films he made with producer Val Lewton at RKO. But the darkness of those earlier films has been replaced here by the light of a summer day. In a style that recalls the best of John Ford, Tourneur’s rural compositions, character vignettes, and homespun humor make this distinctly American tale one of the stellar films of the 1950s– and perhaps the most underrated of the decade. Tourneur reportedly waived his normal salary demands in order to make the film his way without studio interference. As a result, he made what he believed to be his best.
There’s a wonderful introduction of the film on the online site reddit in which the moderator writes, “Tourneur conjures the palpable aura of one era giving way to another, with an emphasis on growth, renewal and healing—both spiritual and physical. Pastor Gray’s fight on behalf of Famous Prell for the community’s soul is paralleled with the story of a young, idealistic atheist doctor fighting a typhoid outbreak. As we transition from one era to another, the characters learn to see themselves not as divided polarities (young and old, black and white, men of faith and men of science), but as forces of complementary balance, inextricably linked together, each with inherent worth and dignity.”
Acknowledging this is the first step in solving our current troubles. Understanding the complementary balance of how society is made up– and accepting the inherent worth and dignity of the individual. From this starting point, you can then build opportunities to succeed.
Stars in My Crown received a “Critic’s Choice” review from the Chicago Reader when I screened it at the LaSalle Bank Theatre in 2001 as part of a 29-film series devoted to Our Cinema Heritage. In 2015, I played it again as part of a “Films of Faith” series at the Park Ridge Public Library. It’s a movie I wish more people would seek out, a comforting film in difficult times. In a society that is ever-changing– with values being reinterpreted– Stars in My Crown presents an image of America on film that was constant and reassuring. The film reflects a sense of community, a spiritual identity, and a fundamental decency– the bedrock upon which our divided house now stands. Stars in My Crown is a glowing memory and a vision of small-town America at its finest– an America that faced its challenges and overcame them.
In times of crisis, when there is an absence of national figures who can speak with moral authority, it’s incumbent upon the Josiah Grays of the community to step forward on the porch, face down those who fearmonger– and take the whip from the hand of the town bully.
~MCH