Product Details

• Actors: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Dean Stockwell, Alan Hale, Lewis Stone
• Directors: Jacques Tourneur
• Writers: Joe David Brown, Margaret Fitts
• Producers: William H. Wright
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: April 25, 1994
• Run Time: 89 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303072593
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,985 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McCrea Classic a Family Must-See!, December 3, 2002

By 

Benjamin J Burgraff (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Stars in My Crown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

'Stars in My Crown' is over 50 years old, yet in it's humor, it's message of brotherhood, and it's depiction of small-town Western America at a time when religion was the true center of everyone's lives, this film has rarely been equaled!

The story is told through the observations of young John Kenyon (sensitively portrayed by Quantum Leap's Dean Stockwell, with Daktari's Marshall Thompson voicing Kenyon as an adult), who lives with Soldier-turned-Minister Josiah Dozier Grey (Joel McCrea, in one of his finest performances) and his wife, Harriet (Ellen Drew). Grey is kind, warm, and totally sincere, with a penchance for telling funny stories with a Message, rather than being 'preachy'...in short, the kind of Parson who can win hearts, as well as souls!

Grey's congregation includes some of Hollywood's finest character actors, including Lewis Stone (Judge Hardy) as a crusty old doctor, James Mitchell (Days of Our Lives) as his doubting physician son, Alan Hale (The Adventures of Robin Hood) as a Civil War buddy with a large family (including 'Matt Dillon' James Arness!), Amanda Blake (who would costar with Arness in 'Gunsmoke') as the schoolmarm, Arthur Hunnicutt (The Big Sky) as a local character nicknamed 'Chloroform'(!), Oscar-winner Ed Begley as a rich mine owner, and, in a remarkable performance, Juano Hernandez as 'Famous Uncle Prill', a Black farmer who experiences with dignity the racism of the time.

Director Jacques Tourneur, best-known for his gothic classic 'Cat People', shows patience and restraint, allowing the story to build under its own steam, which gives the climaxes (a typhoid epidemic and a Klan near-lynching) an emotional wallop. McCrea's scene with the incensed Klan members foreshadows Gregory Peck's confrontation with the lynch party in 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and is truly unforgettable.

'Stars in My Crown' is a rich, wonderful film that your family will cherish. It is on the short list of my favorite films, and is one that you can enjoy for years to come!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem, July 6, 2005

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Stars in My Crown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Orson Welles' definition of movies as a "ribbon of dreams" helps account for cinema's special hold on human consciousness. To return to a film that we may remember seeing as children is more than revisiting the past: it's reexperiencing the actual moment of wonder that was ours the first time we saw the film.

"Stars in My Crown" is a film that has stayed with me since I saw it at Rockford, Illinois' proud Coronado Theater over 50 years ago. It's a first-rate "B" movie by a director who excelled at making such pictures--Jacques Tournier. I suspect that my lifelong attraction to the movie had more to do with the star (Joel McRae, as a tough yet gentle preacher) and the hymn providing the title (after seeing the movie I began to search every church hymnal for "Stars in My Crown," usually with disappointing results) than with the director's resourceful style (only in recent years have I become aware of Tourneur as a creative filmmaker, thanks to Scorcese's praise of him).

The film's achievement is to combine pastoral elegy (it foregrounds the narrator's memory of a nostalgic time and community) with singular realism in its portrayal of race relations in the South. In fact, it "humanizes" the Klan while making them redeemable. In the film's remarkable climax they're transformed by the power of the "Word" from murderous, rampaging brigands into chastened stars in the preacher's crown.

But even with its inflammatory racial theme, the more interesting subtext is the story's representation of the conflict between science and religion. The preacher and doctor, in effect, become engaged in rivalry for the town's affections. When the doctor stems the typhoid epidemic, he's embraced by the town as its new hero. Ultimately, however, it is the preacher who reclaims his flock when he identifies the source of the biological plague and then administers to the souls of those affected by the even more threatening disease of racial hatred.

Apart from narrative specifics, "Stars in My Crown" rises to unmistakable archetypal significance. It's a story of initation and experience, life and death, marriages and funerals, and above all of faith in the human spirit. Certainly no title could be more apt for a little movie that, no matter how you cut it, is a real gem.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nostalgic, heartwarming experience, July 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Stars in My Crown [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A great cast and authentic flavor make this movie well worth watching. It is based on Joe David Brown's novel; although some of the novel's best parts are ommitted, the film is true to most of the story. It deals with community and racial issues, so it's not fluff, but can teach and inspire. END