Destry Rides Again
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Destry Rides Again
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1996.
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Destry Rides Again is a 1939 American Western comedy film directed by George Marshall and starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody Jr., Lillian Yarbo, and Una Merkel.
Why It Rocks
- 1939 is often viewed as a triumphant year in American cinema, as it marked a turning point in the careers of many movie veterans, among many other things. Marlene Dietrich underwent a similar transformation from an exotic European vamp to a lusty American wench in Destry Rides Again. Dietrich embraced her role, realizing it could expose her to a new audience.
- After adopting Max Brand's novel Destry Rides Again (which previously had an adaptation in 1932), Pasternak turned a fairly dour story of revenge into a lighthearted Western comedy. Instead of focusing on an innocent man who becomes a killer when he is framed, this version of Destry centered on his son, a pacifist who eschews the use of guns. It also featured a saloon singer who went from being a crook’s mistress to saving the hero at the cost of her own life.
- Talented acting not just from Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart (who's staring in his first full-fledged western), but also some accomplished character actors, including Brian Donlevy as the heavy, Mischa Auer in a comic relief role more developed than his bit in My Man Godfrey, and Una Merkel as Dietrich’s female adversary.
- Stewart approaches his role lightly, sliding so comfortably into Western traditions that the genre would become the focus of his later career.
- The film's built like a series of two-reelers, or even one-reelers.
- The first 20 minutes are devoted to Dietrich, who gets to perform two songs, and to her surroundings—mostly an extraordinarily large saloon filled with more customers than most frontier towns had as residents.
- Stewart arrives late in the film, riding in a stagecoach with Jack Carson and Irene Hervey. It takes almost an hour for Stewart’s first real scene with Dietrich, one in which he further “humanizes” her by trying to remove her makeup.
- In 1939, it was unusual to have a movie begin with an action sequence. This film goes all out with a long, slow track alongside the sidewalks of Bottleneck, where the chief entertainment appears to be drunkenly shooting guns into the air, fistfights, and destruction of property, with a heavy emphasis on the first. (There's also a brief scene with a prostitute rolling a customer. Scenes like that would usually be cut due to the Production Code at the time.)
- While the two leads are memorable enough, a reasonable amount of screentime is given to hams like Charles Winninger, playing the sort of alcoholic lawman that Howard Hawks would rely on in films like Rio Bravo. This being a Universal effort, perhaps it’s understandable for the film to end in a paroxysm of mob violence, just like the Frankenstein movies.
- The genius of Destry Rides Again is that it weaves together its comedy with the elements of a true western, including a climax with less-than-happy ending that leaves at least three lovable characters are dead, and Destry with a good reason for hating guns.
- The two-story Last Chance Saloon set allows for a number of beautiful shots, such as the early high-flying one that glides from the dance floor to the barroom in back, as Kent strolls along the railing above to survey his rotgut kingdom: A crowd of men is arrayed along the length of the bar, lustily swinging into Hollander and Loesser’s "Little Joe, the Wrangler." We descend from the balcony to the bar as someone throws ice at the head of Loupgerou, the bartender. As he gets a signal from the boss and moves down, we see a gaggle of raucous drunks, but we hear Dietrich's voice, coming in for the chorus. At last, Frenchy turns around with a wink, one hand rolling a cigarette, and finishes her part.
- It’s easy to see Destry’s influence on subsequent Westerns. "Americanizing" Dietrich worked in a way that it didn’t for Garbo. Its success prompted a whole new string of semi- or entirely comic westerns from Universal, the so-called mini-major that had always made westerns a specialty, as well as from other studios eager for a new formula.
- The film most famous scene, that all-out catfight between Merkel and Dietrich would also be imitated time and again.
Bad Qualities
- Without Paramount’ technicians to protect her, Dietrich is vulnerable at times to unflattering close-ups. This is partly due to the new image given to her by Universal’s makeup and costume department. Dietrich’s eyebrows were lowered, her cheeks given more rouge, and her lips made fuller. As Alexander Walker wrote in his book about the star, Dietrich was also asked to sacrifice her mystery, her hint of sexual perversion, her European sensibilities, and, most tellingly, her dignity. Her first song ends with a (dubbed-in) yodel, and at one point she’s subjected to a catfight with Merkel. Dietrich used to be pitiless; here, she’s just another Wild West dame who cheats at cards and stuffs coins down her cleavage. (Today it seems careless that an obviously German woman is called "Frenchy".)