One of three films originally planned by Universal Pictures to star Griffith, it also features Lee Meriwether, Jerry Van Dyke, Kay Medford, Henry Jones, Edgar Buchanan, and Gary Collins.

[3] Thereafter Sam spends most of his time trying to improvise to provide for the church needs, speak out on various problems in the community, and, ever more frequently, to run interference between the Sinclair and Gresham families.

[3] In one final attempt to save his situation and the community, he persuades his one remaining friend, Attorney Art Shields, to run for mayor as a write-in candidate, with the election two days away.

When the Sinclairs and the Greshams argue yet again about who was responsible for the faulty equipment, Sam roars at them to "go someplace else, yell your heads off, and let this poor church die in peace!"

The constant bickering between the Sinclairs and the Greshams (similar to the Hatfield–McCoy feud), and the spectacle of the mayor's office bouncing back and forth between the two families, suggest a satire on the Democratic and Republican parties.

NBC-TV showed "Angel in My Pocket" as part of their Saturday Night at the Movies series on February 14, 1970; this was not long after the film was out of theatres, having been released just ten months earlier in April 1969.

However, in his Chicago Tribune review published in 1969, critic Clifford Terry characterized Griffith's lead character as a "minister with a Blue Ridge mountain accent and a positive-thinking-power approach -- a kind of Gomer Peale," referencing the Gomer Pyle character of Griffith's earlier eponymous TV series and positive-thinking clergyman Norman Vincent Peale.

American democracy doesn't function as smoothly as you'd gather from 'An Angel in my Pocket,' and small towns will probably never again be as simple and sunny as this one in Kansas, but there's no harm showing the kids what could be or should be.