Directed by Alan Rafkin and produced by Edward Montagne, Angel in My Pocket co-starred Lee Meriwether as Griffith's wife, Jerry Van Dyke as his trouble-making brother-in-law, and veteran actors Henry Jones, Edgar Buchanan, and Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The screenplay was by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, who had written several light comedy and family projects like The Andy Griffith Show, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and The Reluctant Astronaut (1967).
Angel in My Pocket was to be the first of a three-picture deal Universal had signed with Andy Griffith. In it, he plays an ex-Marine who joins the clergy and is assigned to The Church of the Redeemer, located in a small town in Kansas. There, he finds the church is run-down and has had several pastors come and go in the last ten years. Any effort to fix the structural and social problems has been stymied by two "Hatfield and McCoy"-type feuding families, the Sinclairs and the Greshams, who refuse to work together for the good of all. Griffith's attempts at uniting the community and repairing the church predictably result in disaster.
It was a fluffy little feel-good film that was released in time for Easter 1969, but it and Griffith weren't enough to bring in an audience. Howard Thompson wrote in his New York Times review that while Angel in My Pocket was a pleasant family film, it was formulaic and full of caricatures. He accused the filmmakers of using gags seen in "other and far better movies." The Rank Film Distributors refused to distribute Angel in My Pocket in Great Britain because they felt that Griffith had no appeal for British film audiences, and religious pictures without big stars generally failed in that country. Universal Pictures was so disappointed by the lackluster box-office receipts that they cancelled the other two films with Griffith, who soon went back to television, where he had several successful series.
By Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
The Internet Movie Database
Kelly, Richard Michael The Andy Griffith Show
Reid, John Howard Big Screen Bible Lore
Thompson, Howard. "Angel in My Pocket" The New York Times 3 Apr 69
