It's clear that Dallas is a prostitute, and that she's headed for the red light district, because she's convinced that she has nowhere else to go, when Ringo stops her and lets her know that he wants her for his wife. I'm sure that was shocking to 1939 audiences, but there was no explicit talk, no obscene language, no sex scenes. The subject matter was handled elegantly, as well as sympathetically. Maybe that's how they got it past the censors.
I love the way, as they traveled further westward, East Coast traditions and prejudices were one by one discarded until, at the frontier, her having been a prostitute was hardly even a consideration.
As I recall, she had been pressed into prostitution by circumstances. It think that was not uncommon in the Wild West.
If made today, Hollywood would make it a skin flick, with as much gross language and explicit sex as they could cram onto the screen. Hollywood is a cesspool today.
***It’s clear that Dallas is a prostitute, and that she’s headed for the red light district,***
And the piano pounder we never see but hear is playing the Christian hymn Lily of the Valley.
“I have found a friend in Jesus, He’s everything to me,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul;
The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see
All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.”
As the Salvation Army band used to say, when they sang bawdy songs with new Christian lyrics...”Why should the devil have the best tunes?”