Rachel and the Stranger

In the Ohio frontier, a widowed farmer named David Harvey is raising his young son Davey alone and wants the boy to receive the kind of education and upbringing his late wife would have wished for. To give Davey a mother and keep his household in order, David buys an indentured servant, Rachel, and marries her, though the arrangement is a practical one rather than a romantic match. Davey resents the newcomer, and David shows her little warmth. The situation changes when David's old friend Jim Fairways comes to stay for a while and takes a clear interest in Rachel, stirring feelings in David he had not acknowledged.

Norman Foster directed this 1948 RKO production, the second of three features listed for him between Journey into Fear in 1943 and Woman on the Run in 1950. Waldo Salt wrote the screenplay, and Richard H. Berger produced. Loretta Young plays Rachel opposite William Holden as David and Robert Mitchum as Jim, with Gary Gray as the boy Davey and supporting turns from Tom Tully and Sara Haden. The film runs 93 minutes and blends romance with the western setting.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 3,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 35 votes. The much larger IMDb sample points to a durable reputation among viewers.