State Fair is a slice-of-life kind of film revolving around a handful of people who travel to the state fair for a week of excitement and fun. Along the way, there will be romances, a couple of contests, some daredevil spectacle, and a good deal of hometown comedy. There was also a decent amount of risqué moments that, even edited down for its initial release, had to be further censored two years later when the film was rereleased under the umbrella of the Hays Code. Sadly, this was a permanent casualty of the code as the offending scene has never been reinstated and is presumed lost.
Watching a film like this, it is easy to question why it was included in that year’s Best Picture nominees. Quite simply, this was released during the Great Depression and was a showcase of rural America. It was insanely popular during a time when people had less disposable income to spend on movies, so turning a big profit made an impression on the Academy. This film pulled Fox Film Corporation out of the red, and so when it came time to vote on the nominees, Fox made a big push for it, which paid off with the nomination. It couldn’t topple the more popular front-runners Cavalcade and Little Women, though.
The film takes place in the fictional town of Brunswick, Iowa. Abel Frake (Will Rogers), a farmer, prepares to transport his Hampshire pig, Blue Boy, to compete at the Iowa State Fair, confident that he will win and that nothing bad will happen. This leads him to place a $5 bet against his neighbor in favor of Blue Boy. Abel’s wife, Melissa (Louise Dresser), is preparing pickles and mincemeat for the food competition, but when she refuses his suggestion to add apple brandy to the ingredients, he secretly adds some, himself. Not knowing this, she later adds the remainder of the brandy.
Margy (Janet Gaynor), Abel and Melissa’s daughter, reconnects with Harry Ware (Frank Melton), a dairy farmer who wants to marry her. But Margy has no interest in him, seeing his life as more devoted to dairy farming than to her. She also dislikes his opinions on the roles of men and women, believing that as the man she should be compelled to accept his proposal and be subservient to him. He is unable to attend the fair with her because of his preoccupation with his farm. Margy’s brother Wayne (Norman Foster) comes home from college to accompany the family, though and they all set out for a week long trip to the festivities.
After arriving at the fair, Blue Boy appears depressed and despondent, feigning illness. Wayne approaches a carnival hoop toss game and wins every toss just to prove to the crowd of people around him that while the game isn’t rigged, the prizes are all cheap fakes. The previous year he lost eight dollars just to win a pearl-handled revolver that turned out to be garbage. Now he intends to expose the barker for the fraud that he is. To do so, Wayne spent the last year practicing to guarantee wins. The barker (Victor Jory) pays him his eight dollars back to get him to leave before he causes too much trouble. While at the ring toss game, Wayne meets Emily Joyce (Sally Eilers), a trapeze artist who he falls in love with. While she enjoys the physical act of love with him over the course of their time at the fair, when he later proposes marriage, she knows their different lifestyles are incompatible and shuts down the notion of them ever getting together permanently.
Margy meets Pat Gilbert (Lew Ayres) on a rollercoaster and the two of them hit it off pretty quickly. But Pat is honest with her that he has had a lot of girlfriends in the past and is afraid to introduce her to any of his friends lest they assume she is just another in a long line of flighty women in his life. They love each other but Margy tells him about Harry back home, despite her not having feelings for Harry at all. At the end of the week they both agree to go their separate ways. To cap off all these love stories, Blue Boy, still acting lethargic, only perks up when he sees a female pig in the hog competition. This leads to him winning, then getting into a fight with another hog who also has eyes for the sow.
This is primarily a run-of-the-mill drama about romance with a bit of women’s liberation thrown in via Margy and her unwillingness to accept gender roles such as Harry insisting she will marry him because he makes the decisions. We jokingly refer to these kinds of films as Hallmark movies because they are formulaic to a degree. This isn’t exactly a cookie-cutter film, but there isn’t much in the plot that comes as a surprise. It is better written than most of those legitimate Hallmark films, though. For instance, while Margy is fighting against the notion that it’s a man’s world, that is not the relationship she is seeing in her own parents. Abel isn’t domineering over his wife, nor is his wife a battle-axe, either. They are a very believable husband and wife who squabble a little but are basically a loving couple. It helped that the two were a married couple in five separate movies over the years, beginning in 1930s Lightnin’. Their relationship is a real highlight to this film.
Emily and Wayne’s relationship is also a highlight. Emily could easily be seen as manipulative, out for physical pleasure and nothing more; but Sally Eilers doesn’t play it that way. We see that she truly does love Wayne, and it hurts her to turn down his offer of marriage. She is far too experienced in the world and knows that marriage to him would never work out for her. She enjoys the life of the spotlight, and the life he is offering would be one on the farm. Sometimes love just isn’t enough to make a marriage work. Their scenes of intimacy were excised from later prints to appease the production code and are apparently no longer in existence.
In the original novel, there was physical intimacy between Margy and Pat, too. This was written out early so as to avoid battles with the censors who, though not being strictly enforced, were around and could cause problems if a film was too racy. Consequently, though Margy and Pat get the final moment in the film, they are shorted in the movie proper. Phil Strong, who authored the book, was dissatisfied with this change and was outspoken on the subject in later years.
State Fair has been remade a few times, including for the stage and into an elaborate movie musical. But there is something nice about the more laid-back, less produced, 1933 version that speaks more to me than those other adaptations. It’s not a great film, but it does have heart. It also has one of the sweetest endings to a film of its ilk, ending with two lovebirds reunited in the rain and ready to move along, together, into their future. It’s a wonderful moment, beautifully shot, that will threaten to reduce you to tears.
Academy Award Nominations:
Outstanding Production: Winfield Sheehan
Best Writing - Adaptation: Paul Green and Sonya Levien
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Release Date: February 10, 1933
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Janet Gaynor, Will Rogers, and Lew Ayres
Directed By: Henry King
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