State Fair
Directed by Henry King
Written by Sonya Levien and Paul Green from a novel by Philip Stong
1933/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Abel Frake: Wayne’s got a girl.
Storekeeper: So did Henry VIII, eight of them, but he always showed up at every state affair with a new one.
A little bit hokey but entertaining.
The highlight of a farm family’s year is the State Fair. Will Rogers, the father, is obsessed with his prize hog Blue Boy who will compete at the fair. Ma Louise Dresser has spent hours baking and worrying about the mincemeat pies she will enter into competition. Grown children Janet Gaynor and Norman Foster leave their cares and pesky significant others at home. Nature takes its course, in this case in the persons of hoochie cootchie dancer Sally Eilers and reporter Lew Ayres.
Nothing too pre-Code about this one. In fact it was remade almost exactly in the 1945 Oscar and Hammerstein musical State Fair with Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain in the Ayres and Gaynor parts. The best adjective I can find for it is “wholesome”. It was fun to see these endearing actors do their thing.
State Fair was nominated for the Best Picture and Best Writing, Adapted Oscars.
Credits
