Destry Rides Again (Universal). One day this year Hungarian-born Producer Joe Pasternak had an idea for a U. S. western. He would take German-born Marlene Dietrich, cast her as French-born entertainer in a Wild West saloon. He would take Russian-born Mischa Auer, cast him as an expatriate Cossack with a will to be a cow hand. He would take U. S.-born James Stewart, cast him as an easy-talking, no-gun sheriff who brings law'to lawless Bottle Neck, routs its bad men by using his head instead of his trigger finger. Producer Pasternak allowed that he might turn out something new in the genre.
Destry Rides Again is charged with enough buckaroo comedy* and sheer animal spirits to keep cinemaudiences chortling even when there is nothing to laugh at, makes even the widely advertised Dietrich v. Merkel hair-pulling match (the closest the picture comes to being vulgar) seem just a romp. As entertainment, Producer Pasternak's western, with hardly more pretensions than a cow town, is likely to be voted best of the year.
James Stewart, who had just turned in the top performance of his cinematurity as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, turns in as good a performance or better as Thomas Jefferson Destry. Marlene Dietrich, as Frenchy, the bad girl of the Last Chance saloon, turns in her best performance since the somewhat similar role in The Blue Angel brought her to Hollywood. To the thrilling question—could Dietrich come back via the western trail?—her bottle-tossing, eye-rolling and shoulder-shrugging, her singing (in a whiskey mezzo) of Little Joe and The Boys in the Backroom supplied the answer. Dietrich has. She makes it dazzlingly clear that the Dietrich legs, once more unsheathed, will still be taking her places.
One of the first "places" was reported to be Paramount, which dropped her in 1937. But to the sudden autumnal flurry of studio offers, Cinemactress Dietrich, grateful to Producer Pasternak for giving her another chance when other producers would only take her out to supper, replied that her option belongs to daddy. Said she: "Joe Pasternak has first call on my services."
Neither Producer Pasternak nor anybody else could foresee what Samuel S. Hinds (who was the father who played with fireworks in You Can't Take It With You) would do to Destry Rides Again. As a top-hatted, bespectacled, tobacco-chawing old mayor of Bottle Neck, and a crooked stand-in of its bad men, he durn near runs away with the show.
*Sample: When Bad Girl Dietrich slips some gold coins into her bosom, says Allen Jenkins: "Thar's gold in them thar hills." Last week the Hays office pounced on this gag after the picture's release, ordered it deleted.