Goin’ West with Jimmy Stewart

By Fearless Young Orphan

Destry Rides Again (1939) Directed by George Marshall

I saw it: June 16, 2010

Why haven’t I seen it yet?

Lack of awareness strikes again. As much as I like Jimmy Stewart, I don’t pay much attention to westerns.

Destry

If you come to Destry like me, without much idea of what you’re getting into, a couple things might surprise you. The first thing is that this is almost a comedy; while it has a serious underlying theme of corruption in a wild western town, much of the tone is lighthearted and playful, and of course Jimmy Stewart can be a very funny actor. The second thing is that, in the movie Blazing Saddles, when you watch Madeline Kahn doing her hilarious Lili Von Schtupp, what you are seeing is a dead-on impression of Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again.

Out in the Wild West is the untamed frontier town of Bottleneck, corrupted to its core by local saloon owner Kent. Kent has a scheme to take all the ranch land in the surrounding area, by force or cheating, so he can charge cattle herds for passing through. The sheriff gets a bit too nosy about Kent’s methods and Kent has him killed; the equally corrupt Mayor appoints Washington Dimsdale as the new sheriff as something of a joke. Dimsdale is the town drunk, who spins yarns of the days when he was deputy to the great Sheriff Destry.

Bottleneck’s rabble figures they’re going to have it easy now, since Dimsdale almost can’t stand up straight, but in a rare moment of clarity, Dimsdale decides that he will send from Tom Destry, son of the great man, to be Dimsdale’s deputy, and together they will clean up the town.

Tom Destry arrives and he’s a young Jimmy Stewart, so you know he’s not only a good guy, he’s a guy so good that he brings out the goodness in everybody else. I’m not making fun of him. Jimmy Stewart plays this part with great skill, making Destry seem like sort of a slow- witted lummox, easy to push around, until he reveals that he’s pretty steely under all those aw- shucks mannerisms. He’s a talkative feller, likes to spin yarns about the many other fellers he’s known, providing morals to their unhappy stories that would play as threats, save for Stewart’s knowing grin.

Destry has come to town with some interesting ideas about law enforcement; he doesn’t carry guns, hinting that a past life of violence has brought nothing but pain to him and his family, and he steadfastly enforces the laws, even when they temporarily are in the favor of the criminals. For a while the town thinks he is nothing more than a joke, but his methods start provoking results sooner than anyone expects, and before you can say, “I once knew a feller down in Wichita,” Destry is the bane of Kent’s existence.

Our other major player is Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy, who is most certainly not French, but plainly German. Dietrich is not an actress I know much about. Obviously she was popular and maybe she had beautiful cheekbones, but she comes across as mannish and sharp-featured to me, and her deep voice is a bit too deep for my tastes. I mean, throaty can be sexy, sure, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere down in her pancreas. Frenchy has got the most exhausting job in town; she’s the popular, tough-talking hussy (nobody has the nerve to say whore, of course) who runs the saloon and is really in charge of most of the behavior of the populace. She’s the only entertainment around, singing for and carousing with the boys; she aids her sometimes-boyfriend Kent in his evil See, I think she’s a little scary. little schemes; she’s a scrapper and a conniver. I hope she loves what she does, because she never gets a day off.

Frenchy doesn’t like this uppity new deputy much, except that he does that magic trick that always makes the bad girls melt: he sees the good girl in her. Guys, if you don’t know it already, here’s the trick with women: look for the special thing in them that no one else bothers to notice. This is what Destry does, and considering the chemistry they generate, you might be surprised at how little screen time the pair actually has together.

So, can Destry solve the mystery of the previous sheriff’s disappearance, clean up the corrupt Bottleneck, get the land back in the hands of the honest ranchers, and get the girl? Oh sure, plotwise it’s pretty standard western fare. What elevates this lively little tale is the standout performances and the movie’s refusal to play things completely by the cliché. Also, there’s a lot of funny stuff going on, some of it slapstick (mostly provided by the henpecked Russian deputy Boris) and some of it just the natural humor of everyday life, if you are lucky enough to know happy, humorous people. This is entertaining stuff, often imitated, that makes its sweet cliché’s turn unexpectedly original. This is one of those old “clean” westerns, never approaching the grit and brutality that comes to westerns in later days. Sergio Leone, this is not. But it has its own merits, not the least of which is the idea that one can lead by example, if the example is strong enough.

Winchester ‘73 (1950) Directed by Anthony Mann

I saw it: September 28, 2010

Why haven’t I seen it yet?

The same standard excuse for most westerns I haven’t seen. There’s a black hat and a white hat involved; what more do I care?

Winchester

If I hadn’t already lumped three John Ford westerns together months ago, I’d say that Winchester ’73 would make a good companion to the wonderful film Stagecoach. The two share many similarities, including a man out for revenge against a gun slinging outlaw, a woman of tarnished reputation run out of town, and a chase across the wilderness under the ever-present threat of native attack.

In this case, our hero is Lin McAdam (Jimmy Stewart) and along with his wry sidekick (there is always a wry sidekick, because there has to be somebody there to tell everybody the information that our hero will not share) he is in pursuit of outlaw Dutch Henry Brown. They catch up with Brown in Dodge City, which is under the marshalship of the famous Wyatt Earp and therefore is not a town where one can make trouble. Earp is confiscating all firearms. The town is holding a celebration which will include a rifle shooting contest, the prize for which is a perfectly crafted Winchester ’73.

The gun is a big deal. In a land where men feel naked without their guns, an accurate repeater rifle is a treasure worth killing for, and this one is cooler than a Red Ryder. The contest ensues and the two finalists are Lin McAdam and Dutch Henry Brown: they have not been allowed to kill each other in Dodge City but they’re planning on trying as soon as they leave town. But the contest comes first. They’re very evenly matched, both of them excellent shots. McAdam manages to win the gun by a nose, and has possession of it for about five minutes before Brown attacks him, nearly kills him, and steals the prize.

In theory the movie is about the path the coveted gun takes: it goes from McAdam to Brown to a sly trader, to a native chief (who kills for it), briefly to a soldier, to a pioneer with some bad choices in friends, to another outlaw (one of the bad friend choices) and then back into Brown’s hands as the outlaws meet up. It’s interesting to see the tension a really valuable firearm can cause, but the movie could be happening without it. The gun just seems to be a thread that runs through the story so that we’re always aware that there’s something in the room men consider worth killing for. Not like they need an excuse.

The movie could just as easily be called Lola Manners because she gets passed around nearly as much as the gun. A very young and pretty Shelley Winters plays Lola, a saloon girl who knows the ways of men and their guns and knows that she, too, is considered a possession of value— but not as much value as an accurate repeater rifle, not to most of these men, anyway. She’s got a heart of gold, of course, and wants out of the saloon-girl life. She thinks she’s found a way out in the chance to marry and have a place of her own, until her husband-to-be abandons her in the middle of an attack and she must question his worth. In a land this dangerous, does she really want to have a husband who flees in the middle of trouble?

Her misadventures, during which she is moved from the care of feckless pioneer to soldier to feckless pioneer to outlaw, keeps crossing her path with Lin McAdam. They share soft glances. They like each other. It’s fairly clear to us and to them that she would like to be passed into his protection, and left there, and that he would accept the role.

But there is vengeance to be wrought, because that dramatic necessity, like a good gun and a good woman, has been hanging in the balance ever since the beginning. At 90 minutes, this is a quick story that remains exciting throughout because of that tension. Several subplots keep the action high but never overcomplicate things (particularly exciting was McAdam and company coming to the rescue of a pinned-down regiment). McAdam (white hat) and Brown (black hat) of course must have a confrontation, and it may be more complicated than we originally imagined. The gun must also make its appearance, and the girl, and everything must go to its rightful place.

Winchester ’73 is a legendary western with all its archetypal trappings, never pretending to be more than that, and thus never being less than that, either. And Jimmy Stewart does well in these roles, where his natural pleasantness and charm only serve to underscore how angry and ruthlessly effective he can become when he’s pushed. Like Stagecoach, I’m loathe to explain how it all plays out, because I won’t be able to say anything that really surprises you, but it’s still more fun to watch the story unfold all by yourself.

At first I had my doubts as to how this simple, brief film managed to make its way onto my list, as it offers nothing new or groundbreaking into the western genre. The more I consider it, however, the more I think that there is great value in simply getting everything just right, and there is no ground breaking required. Winchester ‘73 is almost sneaky in its perfection. You don’t realize you’ve watched a great little movie until it’s over and done with, and you can’t think of a single note it missed while you play it over thoughtfully in your mind. Which you will, and which I am doing right now.

This movie contains early appearances by Tony Curtis (here billed Anthony Curtis) and Rock Hudson. I knew that before I watched it. I spotted Tony Curtis easily, and completely missed Rock Hudson. Armed with the closing credits, I had to go back and look again. Sure enough, there he was, hiding in plain sight.