This Disney saga doesn't dazzle you with cleverness; it has moments when charm tips over into nausea; and it slows towards the end. Yet this was one of the nicest films of its year. With no megastar names and a spun-out piece of Americana to work with, the set-up can't have looked promising. But the actors rise to the occasion, the direction (by Norman Tokar) is care itself, the small-town atmosphere is never lost, and the corn comes across as sweet, warm and human. Fred MacMurray, a tower of acting quality here, gives one of his best performances as the footloose musician who drops off at a tiny mid-West town because he has an eye for the banker's daughter (Vera Miles) and stays not only to marry her, but become the town's first scoutmaster and, of course, one of its best-loved citizens. Miles, as the wife who can't have children, washes away years of playing drab heroines. And Tokar sparks the film's slower second half with a couple of fine, throat-lumping scenes, including one in which MacMurray, who has always wanted to be a lawyer, defends an elderly lady (Lillian Gish) whose sanity has been challenged.

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