The Shepherd of the Hills is a 1941 American drama film starring John Wayne, Betty Field and Harry Carey.

[1] The supporting cast includes Beulah Bondi, Ward Bond, Marjorie Main and John Qualen.

The main story surrounds the relationship between Grant "Old Matt" Matthews Senior and Dad Howitt, an elderly, mysterious, learned man who has escaped the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow.

Howitt's reclusiveness has earned him the moniker "The Shepherd of The Hills", yet he befriends the Matthews clan (the strongest and most respected family in the area) who come to love and trust him.

However, Mad Howard believed that his father's pride of family and place in society would never allow him to approve of his son's marriage to an Ozark country girl.

His doctor recommends he take a long vacation, so he spends some time wandering around the country, rediscovering and strengthening his faith.

Here he finally learns of his son's secret, the subsequent death of the Matthews girl, and the identity of young Pete as his grandson.

A backdrop storyline surrounds the pretty Samantha "Sammy" Lane and her love of Grant "Young Matt" Matthews, Jr. Young Matt is in love with Sammy, who is also being courted by two other men: Ollie Stewart (a "city slicker" who at the outset appears to have the inside track, but Sammy decides that she doesn't want to move to the city) and Wash Gibbs (leader of the Baldknobbers, a gang who terrorize the countryside wearing frightening masks with horns at their top and who rob banks and settlers as they see fit).

Inside, the artist takes special note of how nicely decorated the home is, and he is especially interested in one room, where paintings of good quality are hanging.

He is greeted by Young Matt and Sammy, and discovers that The Shepherd's prediction had come true – the railroad was blasting away nearby mountains, but he had died while the surveyors were in the area before construction had started (and was buried at Dewey Bald).

[2] Literary critic Kingsley Canham reports that The Shepherd of the Hills is considered the best of the director’s “mountain feud” films dealing with inter-family conflicts in rural settings.

While the novel interposed fiction with portrayals of actual persons residing in the Missouri Ozarks, in the early Branson area, the film departed markedly from the book's presentations.

Old Matt, a patriarch, mill owner and influential person within the community, is presented in the film as a doddering fool, henpecked by his wife, Aunt Mollie.

The "Shepherd" of the title, a cultured, sympathetic visitor from Chicago who contributes positively to the society he's visiting, in this film is an aging ex-convict.