How others will see it. Except for the greedy local businessman and his hired goons, allegedly necessary to the story to create tension, Walesburg is the kind of transplantable and nostalgic small town that many alive in 1950 had grown up in, but no longer lived in. The sense of loss, combined with the loss of their youth, made the days of yore seem more meaningful than they in fact were.
Now, seen generations later, people still live in small towns, but they're not like Walesburg, circa 1875. Any nostalgic factor is gone. Those not accustomed to classic films will not likely have the patience for Stars in My Crown. Classic Hollywood movie adherents, as always, will enjoy picking out the faces (there's Alan Hale!) but the story will seem tame even to them.
How I felt about it. As mentioned earlier, Joel McCrea plays what I consider to be the luckiest preacher in America. Perhaps he really does have the Lord on his side, because he sure gets his help when common sense would dictate a different outcome.
The silliness begins when the preacher first arrives in Walesburg, and marches without pause into the saloon, where he begins his reform of the sinners by reading the Bible from page one. The audience is rowdy only for a moment, until the preacher man pulls out his guns. Did Jesus do this on the mount?
Luck again comes to the unhesitant preacher when he comes to the rescue of a man humiliated by a bully with a whip. Soon enough, the preacher is doing the whipping, the bully gets his comeuppance, and the bully and his fellow ruffians just laugh! I think not, unless the force is really with you.
The preacher also sails through a town plague without so much as a cough, and he's blessed with the best wife and son in America. But his luck really comes in handy when he confronts a bloodthirsty, racist lynch mob by reading a blank piece of paper to them.
This miracle is enough to even bring Godless but God-blessed Alan Hale to Church. All hail the prophet Joel McCrea. Pay attention when he speaks, because the lord is his servant as much as the other way around.