Destry Rides Again

Plot

Saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy), the unscrupulous boss of the fictional Western town of Bottleneck, has the town's sheriff, Mr. Keogh (Joe King), killed when Keogh asks one too many questions about a rigged poker game. Kent and "Frenchy" (Marlene Dietrich), his girlfriend and the dance hall queen, now have a stranglehold over the local cattle ranchers. The crooked town's mayor, Hiram J. Slade (Samuel S. Hinds), who is in collusion with Kent, appoints the town drunk, Washington Dimsdale (Charles Winninger), as the new sheriff, assuming that he will be easy to control and manipulate. But what the mayor does not know is that Dimsdale was a deputy under the famous lawman, Tom Destry, and is able to call upon the latter's equally formidable son, Tom Destry, Jr. (James Stewart), to help him make Bottleneck a lawful, respectable town.

Destry confounds the townsfolk by refusing to strap on a gun in spite of demonstrating that he is an expert marksman. He still carries out the "letter of the law", as deputy sheriff, and earns their respect. A final confrontation between Destry and Kent's gang is inevitable, but "Frenchy" is won over by Destry and changes sides. A final gunfight ensues where Frenchy is killed in the crossfire, and the rule of law wins the day.

Cast

As appearing in screen credits:

Songs

Dietrich sings "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have" and "You've Got That Look", written by Frank Loesser, set to music by Frederick Hollander, which have become classics.

Production

Famed Western writer Max Brand contributed the novel, Destry Rides Again, but the film also owes its origins to Brand's serial "Twelve Peers", published in a pulp-magazine. In the original work, Harrison (or "Harry") Destry was not a pacifist. As filmed in 1932, with Tom Mix in the starring role, the central character differed in that Destry did wear six-guns in that version.

The film was James Stewart's first western (he would not return to the genre until 1950, with Broken Arrow and Winchester 73). The story featured a ferocious cat-fight between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel, which apparently caused a mild censorship problem at the time of release.

According to writer/director Peter Bogdanovich, Marlene Dietrich told him during an aircraft flight that she and James Stewart had an affair during shooting and that she became pregnant and had the baby surreptitiously aborted without telling Stewart.

Internationally, the film was released under the alternate titles Femme ou Démon in French and Arizona in Spanish.

Reception

Destry Rides Again was generally well accepted by the public, as well as critics. It was reviewed by Frank S. Nugent in The New York Times, who noted that the film did not follow the usual Hollywood type-casting. On Dietrich's role, he characterized, "It's difficult to reconcile Miss Dietrich's Frenchy, the cabaret girl of the Bloody Gulch Saloon, with the posed and posturing Dietrich we last saw in Mr. Lubitsch's 'Angel'." Stewart's contribution was similarly treated, "turning in an easy, likable, pleasantly humored performance."

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