Destry Rides Again Reviews

A classic sendup of western heroism starring James Stewart and--of all people--Marlene Dietrich. Stewart is the lawman who takes control of his town without shooting it up. Dietrich is the chantoosie who sings "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have." The son of a brave lawman gone to his reward, Tom Destry (Stewart) appears to be anything but a two-fisted fighter for justice. He refuses to wear guns, and, when he steps up to the bar, he orders milk. Soft-spoken and mild-mannered, he becomes the butt of jokes when he shows up in Bottleneck where Kent (Donlevy) runs the wildest saloon in town and lords it over the populace. His girlfriend and star attraction is the famous Frenchy (Dietrich), arguably the real power in town. Destry has arrived in Bottleneck to be deputy to "Wash" Dimmsdale (Winninger), the former deputy turned town drunk who has been made sheriff by Kent as a joke. Sheriff Dimmsdale is mortified when he learns that the young Destry does not carry a gun. "You shoot it out with them, and, for some reason, they get to look like heroes," Destry reasons. " You put 'em behind bars, and they look little and cheap, like they are." Dietrich's career was in free fall prior to this movie. She had left the protective wing of her directorial mentor Josef von Sternberg in 1935, and most of her subsequent movies were not popular. After appearing in ANGEL, an uncommon failure for Ernst Lubitsch, Dietrich was considered "box office poison" by exhibitors. For three years, she made no films of consequence, and, when Paramount dropped her contract in 1937, she was considered washed up. She fled to Europe believing that American film audiences were through with her. Then she got a transatlantic call in the middle of the night from producer Joe Pasternak who wanted her for his new film at Universal--a western! One of the screen's most glamorous women, renowned for romances, melodramas, and sophisticated comedy, playing a saloon hussy in a crude oater? But Dietrich took it and she was appropriately bawdy, tempestuous, and wicked but with a heart of gold. The public responded and her star shot up again, higher than before. Under the sure directorial hand of genre veteran Marshall, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN is a well-paced western that seamlessly combines humor, romance, suspense and action. Stewart's performance is rendered in his usual low-key manner and provides the perfect counterpoint to Dietrich's bold and brassy character. All the great character actors in this film are superb as well. DESTRY was filmed three times following the publication of the Max Brand novel in 1930, first as a Tom Mix standard in 1932, again in the 1939 Dietrich/Stewart classic, and in 1954 as a routine western with Audie Murphy.