Count Three and Pray Reviews

This is the rambling post-Civil War saga of a young girl (Woodward) who survived the horrors of 1860-65 by taking to the mountains and living as a wild child. Once found and cleaned up, the tattered girl, thought to be prepubescent, turns out to be 18 years old. Parson Heflin, a onetime hell-raiser, has come back to town completely reformed and determined to rebuild the local church and preach love to the defeated Southerners, though he is not above using his fists to pound a point across. Two small bits rate mentioning: Willes makes her stereotypical prostitute character come to life, and Burr lends the villain his usual hissable intelligence. In the end, Heflin and Woodward get married and will, presumably, oversee peace in the valley. Woodward, in her first movie, was 25 years of age and fresh off the live TV screen. She went on to become a distinguished actress who won an Oscar for THE THREE FACES OF EVE, and has been married to Paul Newman since 1958. Tyrone Power served as an unbilled producer of this film.