This western comedy from 1939 directed by George Marshall and produced by Joe Pasternak marked Marlene Dietrich’s first comeback. She had been considered “box-office poison” in the US after her separation from Josef von Sternberg. The setting of the film is a saloon in the Wild West town of Bottleneck, where corruption and deceit reign. Singer Frenchy (Dietrich) is complicit in this system. Only when Thomas Jefferson Destry (James Stewart), the son of a legendary western hero, moves into the town, does the tide turn and peace and order return. The songs by Frank Loesser and Friedrich Hollaender structure this lively comedy full of linguistic wit and solid brawls. The song The Boys in the Backroom later became part of Marlene Dietrich’s regular repertoire during her singing career.
“The New Yorker” wrote on 9 December 1939: “Marlene the feisty is in sparkling form in Destry Rides Again, and one can only assume that she spent her recent forced vacation not in the rosy glow of a boudoir, but at some training camp. In the few lulls when she’s not tripping a bully, hurling a bottle into the mirror or slapping poor Una [Merkel] (who also knows how to defend her skin), you notice that she looks a little more emaciated, a little less voluptuous in her contours. With those muscles – the wiry type – she has the makings of a welterweight. And she hasn’t lost her voice because of it.”

Peter Mänz