Stewart, Dietrich in "Destry Rides Again"
Film Friday
My brother Jonathan, who lives in Tennessee, keeps me up to date on the increasing permissiveness of gun laws in the state. It has now gotten to the point where my parents, also in Tennessee, have to phone ahead to restaurants to find out if it bans guns or not. Of course, the increasing access to guns in this country has done nothing but lead to more gun deaths.
Wondering what we could do about this situation, I found my mind drifting back to an old 1939 Jimmy Stewart movie. Destry Rides Again is not well known, perhaps because 1939 was Hollywood’s annus mirabilis and so the film got drowned out by Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the list goes on. Nevertheless it is one of my favorite westerns. I especially love how it handles gun issues.
The film begins with a scene that 1939 audiences would have associated with the Wild West but which seems disturbingly familiar to us today in the wake of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood and Tucson. In a rowdy bar scene, people are shooting guns in the air and getting hurled through windows. In real life, there were strict gun control laws in many of these places—often one had to check one’s guns at the city limits—but this town is lawless.
Kent, who owns the bar and much of the surrounding real estate, is running a crooked monopoly and, after dispatching the old sheriff, chooses the town drunk, Will Dimsdale, to be his replacement. Dimsdale, however, surprises him by taking the job seriously. His first move is to send for Tom Destry Jr., son of a legendary former sheriff. As Dimsdale puts it,
[H]is father brought him up to be the toughest and fightin’est man that ever growed up in the West! He ain’t got as big a name as his pa, but he cleaned up Tombstone and I’m sendin’ for him to be my deputy and when he gets here, Destry will ride again!
The film, however, offers us a very different version of Destry riding again. Dimsdale is sorely disappointed when Destry shows up carving napkin rings and refusing to play the tough. For instance, here’s his first interchange with Kent:
Kent: I collect Deputy Sheriff’s guns. Whenever I meet a new deputy, I ask him for his gun and I ask him real nice.
Destry: I’m sorry, Mr. Kent. I’m afraid this here’s one gun your collection’s going to be minus.
Kent: You mean I’m going to have to take it?
Destry: If you can. Now, hold on! Hold on. Don’t get excited here. I’m just tryin’ to tell you that I ain’t got any guns. You see if I woulda had a gun then, why, one of us might have been hurt and it might be me. I wouldn’t want that to happen… would I?
This theme gets repeated in several interchanges that would have today’s NRA breathing fire. I’ll let the dialogue speak for itself:
Dimsdale: I expected you to be like your pa, comin’ out blasting behind your shootin’ irons! And what happened? You didn’t have any? Why?
Destry: I don’t believe in ’em.
Dimsdale: You did the last time I heard about ya. What in thunder has come over ya since then?
Destry: Wash, my pa had these [guns] on that day in Tombstone when he got shot in the back. Didn’t seem to do him much good, did they? That’s one reason I don’t believe in ’em.
Dimsdale: What in tarnation do you believe in?
Destry: Law and order.
Dimdale: Without guns?
Destry: Without ’em!
And:
Dimsdale: The only way to [deal with them] is fill ’em full of lead.
Destry: No, no, no, what for? You shoot it out with ’em and for some reason or other, I don’t know why, they get to look like heroes. But you put ’em behind bars and they look little and cheap, the way they oughta look.
Mild-mannered though he may seem, however, Destry can be tough when the occasion calls for it. For instance, he comes down hard on vigilante action (George Zimmerman should have been watching), disciplining a cowboy who wants to fight against Kent’s monopolistic practices:
Jack Tyndall: I ain’t one of your weak-livered citizens that busts out cryin’ every time you snap your fingers and I ain’t gonna pay Kent’s fancy prices. Now whaddaya aim to do about it?
Destry: Nothing at present.
Tyndall: That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll get somethin’ done about it if I have to take the law in my own hands!
Destry: Nobody’s gonna set themselves up above the law around here, ya understand? I got somethin’ to say to you. I think maybe I could illustrate it a little better if I told you a story: I used to have a friend that was an opry singer. Then he went into the cement business – and one day he fell into the cement. And now he’s the cornerstone of the post office in St. Louis, Missouri. He should have stuck to his own trade. You better stick to yours.
The scene that I best remember from the film, however, is how the women of the town intervene. Kent has killed Dimsdale—shot him in the back—and is holed up his bar. It looks as though there will be a bloody shootout and then the women decide they’ve had enough. Using nothing but brooms, mops and the like, they storm the bar and turn the tide of the battle.
To be sure, there is one shootout: Kent tries to shoot Destry, who is saved when a repentant Marlene Dietrich (his mistress) takes the bullet instead. (The Hayes Code would have insisted that she pay such a price for her previous transgressions.) Destry kills him in retaliation. But in the concluding scene, Destry is teaching the next generation that real men don’t carry guns. Real men carve napkin rings. Violent stories are just part of a romantic past, now forever gone.
Not as far gone as America in 1939 wanted, unfortunately. I expect that the film was a response to the rising tensions and outbreak of war in Europe—which is to say, it is calling for America to remain on the sidelines while, at the same time, serving notice that America will stand tall if anyone threatens it. (Never wanting to alienate any audience members, Hollywood at this point in history managed to tread a fine line between isolationism and interventionism.) But by today’s lights, the film seems a model of civilized restraint.
So whose bar can the “women” of America storm to get America to lay down its firearms? When will you ride again, Tom Destry?
