Destry Rides Again (1939)

Film: Destry Rides Again (1939)

Stars: Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donleavy, Una Merkel

Director: George Marshall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Since we took last weekend off due to the Easter holiday, we're doubling-up with Marlene this week to give this star her full menu of Saturday's.  You might be wondering at this point "when are we going to get to the westerns?" and you'd be right to do so-for the first decade of Dietrich's career, she largely eschewed the genre, and was focusing on continuing to make large-scale epics with (and then without) the skilled hand of Josef von Sternberg, and by 1939 her celebrity was going out of style.  She was one of the major stars in 1938 listed as Box Office Poison alongside people like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, & Katharine Hepburn.  Like these legends, Dietrich would prove that she was not box office poison, and in short-order, when she took an against-type role in a Universal Pictures' western called Destry Rides Again, where she would play a saloon girl.  This was against type for both she and her leading man, Jimmy Stewart (Stewart, our star in February, would not be a huge fixture in westerns until the 1950's & 60's...he actually wouldn't do another western until Winchester 73 in 1950, and this was the first time he'd worn spurs onscreen).  Though she had to have a pay cut to do the role, the film would revive her career-a huge hit with both critics & audiences, it got her a smash song on the radio ("See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," which would become a staple in her cabaret act years later), and opened up a new genre for her that she'd continue to explore for several years: the western.

(Spoilers Ahead) The town of Bottleneck is run by a lawless group of men, and the powers-that-be intend to keep it that way when they appoint Wash Dimsdale (Winninger), the town drunk, as the new sheriff.  Saloon owner Kent (Donlevy) thinks that this is the end of his problems with the law, but Dimsdale has an ace-up-his-sleeve in the form of Tom Destry, Jr. (Stewart), the son of a legendary lawman who comes to town as Dimsdale's new deputy.  Destry is competent, honorable, & intent on following the law...all of which are anathema to Kent, and initially to his beautiful saloon gal girlfriend Frenchy (Dietrich).  But slowly, it becomes clear the town needs to uproot Kent and his crew, and even Frenchy understands this (as she also realizes that she's in love with Tom).  The film ends with a riot, as the women of the community decide to end the violence by subduing Kent's gang, but in the process both Kent & Frenchy are killed in a shootout, thus ending Tom's relationship with the reformed singer.  The film ends with him likely marrying a different (more respectable) girl who has long pined for him as a wagon of kids passes by, singing one of Frenchy's songs showing her legend will live on.

Destry is a comedy despite that rather somber ending, and it's quite well-done largely because of the chemistry between Dietrich & Stewart.  The two allegedly had an affair (Peter Bogdonavich claimed later that Dietrich confided in him that she had to have an abortion as a result of her affair with Stewart), and there's a mountain of heat between the two, with Stewart playing the hapless, awe-shucks fella to Dietrich's more seasoned sexuality.  It's dynamite-Destry Rides Again occasionally has plot issues (maybe one too many side characters), but that central romance between the two main characters is electric...I wanted to watch Dietrich & Stewart flirting for hours afterward.

This was not the first film that Marlene Dietrich sang in, nor would it be the last, but we can't have a month devoted to Dietrich without at least mentioning her very successful side hustle as a singer, which would become her primary gig in the 1950's when she would largely leave movies in favor of her wildly successful cabaret act (which would feature arrangements by a very young Burt Bacharach).  Dietrich's range wasn't big (she's certainly not, say, Jeanette MacDonald if you want to pick one of her 1930's contemporaries), but it's intoxicating.  I love Dietrich's voice and songs ("Cherche la Rose" is my favorite), and am so glad that she found this niche in the movies where it could last forever.