• Destry Rides Again, 8/20/22 (Sat)

Was the west ever this wild? In George Marshall’s 1939 romp, the son of a legendary tough sheriff is called in to bring law and order to an anarchic town controlled by a corrupt rancher after the previous sheriff mysteriously disappears. He attracts ridicule when he emerges from his carriage with a parasol and birdcage and no weapons, but his unorthodox methods and persistence, with help from a voluptuous saloon manager who shifts loyalties, gradually bring the villains to heel.

The film is a parody of a Western from the very opening, when a massive brawl, one of many to come, is taking place in front of the Last Chance Saloon (a name that itself signals a lampoon). Marshall handles crowd scenes with great skill, culminating in the hilarious final scene where the wives, fed up with the men’s uncivilized behavior, do some cleaning up of their own. That in turn nicely sets up the murder scene of two key characters, the final in a number of shooting deaths throughout. The superb script, which reportedly veers sharply from the source novel, offers an abundance of fascinating characters and keeps all its plot strands adeptly in play to the end. Very well filmed and choreographed.

Jimmy Stewart is fantastic as the new aphorism-spouting sheriff and has tremendous chemistry with a dynamic Marlene Dietrich, who apparently made her comeback with this film. (They reportedly had an affair during the film, which I believe on the evidence of their performances together here.) It’s never quite clear what a German is doing in the old west – there’s a Russian character as well – but she commands the saloon as completely as she commands the screen. There’s no questioning the self-assurance she brings to the role, which serves her well in the unruly town. That ties to a frightening quickness to anger, including a penchant for throwing things, which matches well with Stewart’s confident calm. Best of all is her no-holds-barred catfight with a man’s wife (Una Merkel), several minutes of slapping and hair-pulling and punching and screaming amid a cheering crowd; I wonder if that was the inspiration for the raucous all-female battle in Funeral Parade of Roses. She also delivers to perfection three songs by a young Frank Loesser and Friedrich Hollaender. She gets a great entry as she turns around in the crowd to deliver the opening number, which includes a pig-calling “hee-haw!” The classic “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have”, thereafter one of her signature numbers, slyly foreshadows events to come:

And when I die don’t spend my money

On flowers and my picture in a frame

Just see what the boys in the backroom will have

And tell them I sighed and tell them I cried

And tell them I died of the same

The film apparently wasn’t even nominated for an Academy Award, having opened in an amazing year dominated by Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz and other classics. But it holds up extremely well all these decades later. Loved it.