Film review: Destry Rides Again (1939)

Jami and Frederick were watching Rango, and it put her in the mood for an actual Western.  I picked this one, and now we've seen it I'm starting to think that Mel Brooks didn't come up with anything new.  Just as watching Son of Frankenstein revealed that Young Frankenstein was pretty much a straight-up remake of that with jokes, so watching Destry Rides Again tells you not just that Lily Von Shtupp is just doing Marlene Dietrich's "Frenchy" (!) but that the plot is basically beat for beat the same.  There is a small town that keeps losing sheriffs.  The town drunk is a deputy sheriff that sends for a new one (in this case he, Jimmy Stewart, is the son of a former legendary sheriff (the titular Destry)).  The town villain (Harvey Korman in Saddles, Brian Donlevy in Destry) has a crooked land deal going on (in Destry's case owning all the land across the valley so that they can charge people driving cattle a fortune for passing through).  And of course, the town mayor in both cases is corrupt.  Granted there's no racial component in Destry (although Frenchy has a black maid who has accompanied her from New Orleans, and with whom she has a relationship much like Barbara Stanwyck has in Baby Face, and there are Cantonese-speaking Chinese townsfolk, which was an interesting touch for a comedic 30's western) but Frenchy does fall for the new guy, to the rage of her evil current lover.  And she sings a song that is almost as funny as Madelyn Kahn's, and with exactly the same outrageous low notes.  It's an enjoyable film, mostly because of Dietrich (who is a revelation) and Stewart (who doesn't overdo his Jimmy-Stewart-ness, thankfully), although the drunk deputy "Wash: (actually, he was deputy to Destry Sr., but Destry Jr. is supposed to be his deputy, even if he never acts like it), played by Charles Winninger is also a scene-stealer. Interestingly, Stewart's character is determined to tame the town without the use of guns (because his father died by being shot in the back, supposedly), and mostly does so, right up to the point when Wash is fatally shot.  Also interestingly, a major set piece is a knock-down, drag-out catfight

and the climax of the film is a riot of the town's women, driven by Frenchy, to stop their men killing one another.  However [spoiler], unusually for a mostly-comedy, Frenchy dies at the hand of her evil ex-lover before Destry shoots him.  A fun romp, and I will never wonder where the idea of Lily Von Shtupp came from again.