State Fair (1945)

Another of the movies that started showing up in the FXM rotation in the last few months is the 1945 version of State Fair. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 8:50 AM, with another airing on Saturday, and probably more in the not-too-distant future.

I had seen the original 1933 version of State Fair, which Fox produced as a vehicle for star Will Rogers, and knew that the 1945 and later 1962 remakes were both musicals. Although Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein wrote the songs, as far as I can tell the musical was in fact an original for the silver screen and not a Broadway musical, at least not until much later. In any case, the 1945 film is roughly the same story as the Will Rogers movie, plus the music and minus some of the pre-Code elements.

State Fair tells the story of the Frake family, who are going to be visiting the Iowa State Fair in the upcoming weekend. Father Abel (Charles Winninger) is planning to show off his prize pig in the hopes of winning the big prize, while mom Melissa (Fay Bainter) is entering her pickles and her mince pie in the cooking contests. There are also two adult children who have varying levels of enthusiasm about going to the fair. Wayne (Dick Haymes) has a girlfriend Eleanor who has to beg off going thanks to an illness in the family, while Margy (Jeanne Crain) has a drip of a boyfriend. After all this expository introduction and a lot of singing, we're finally off to the fair.

One reason Wayne wanted to go to the fair is that the previous year, he got cheated by the ring-toss barker (Harry Morgan in a role so early he's still being called "Henry" in the credits). Wayne's been practicing, and he finally gets his revenge on the barker fairly early on. Afterwards, he meets lovely singer Emily Edwards (Vivian Blaine) and has a whirlwind romance with her. This even though he should see the warning signs when she lies about being a policeman's daughter. He also runs into McGee, a song hawker who gets Wayne to promote a song for payola.

Margy has a more complicated time. She decides to go on the roller coaster, and in order to fill up the seats, another passenger, journalist Pat Gilbert (Dana Andrews), there to cover the fair. As you can guess, those two also fall in love, and their love is much more real than the romance between Wayne and Emily. But there's a problem in that at the film's climax, Pat gets a job offer he really can't refuse, that of a columnist in Chicago. He'd have to accept almost right away, which would mean stiffing Margy.

There are also extended scenes of the judging of Ma's pie and pickles, along with the judging of Pa's boar. Unfortunately, these feel more like they're bringing the movie to a halt. I'm guessing I got those feelings because Winninger and Bainter are decided supporting players, and not stars who could carry a movie the way Will Rogers could. There's also a lot of music, and when I say a lot, it seems to be more than most musicals if not to the level of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

And ultimately, I think, it's whether or not you like the muisc and the whole musical genre that will determine how much you like State Fair. It's the sort of musical that Fox was quite adept at producing in the 1940s, and I can see why audiences of the day would have flocked to it, wanting something homespun and comforting in the aftermath of World War II.

I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, and to be honest, I prefer Fox's biopic musicals from the same era. But people who like musicals will probably really like State Fair.