State Fair (1933)
Wet Hog American Summer
Hurry, hurry, step right up to another ILTBTA post! For just ten cents minutes of your attention, you can have a chance at winning the grand prize of this here newsletter: learning about a random movie from the 1930s that you’ve never heard of! Other prizes include laughs from silly jokes and fun facts1 from Wikipedia. So step on up and try your luck with a quintessential summer family film, State Fair!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: Never heard of it, mainly makes me want to go to the rodeo.
Tyler: Normally I’d say something like “This movie could be about anything” but given that it’s from the 30s I have a feeling it is literally about people going to a state fair. I’d love to be wrong, though!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): An Iowa family finds adventure, love, and heartbreak when they spend a week at the state fair.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
Join us in the fictional town of Brunswick, Iowa, where roadside billboards are proudly advertising the annual State Fair! The denizens of the Frake farm are as hyped as anybody. Abel has his sights set on winning the hog contest with his Hampshire pig (Blue Boy), Melissa is entering mincemeat and three types of pickles in the food competition, son Wayne is determined to obliterate the ring toss2, and daughter Margy is simply excited to raise hell3! She’s perhaps also excited to escape her childhood friend and potential boring fiance Harry. Abel is so confident that he bets his pessimistic friend $54 that Blue Boy will win and everyone in the family will get home safe and happy. Melissa has meanwhile omitted the brandy from her mincemeat, but Abel “helpfully” pops some in while she’s distracted. When she later believes no one is around, she also adds a healthy dram to the mix!
Ellen: We see this more in the car ride in the next bullet, but this family seems to genuinely like each other. There’s equal parts joking and complaining, all in a loving but not saccharine way that feels almost modern. I’m shocked!
Tyler: Same! The only thing more surprising than their downright healthy familial dynamic is Margy’s dare-I-say feminist outward desire to make her own decisions about her future. Let’s see if she (and, by extension, the movie) can keep this up throughout …
Onward ho! The fair is 125 miles away, and the family good-naturedly banters and bickers to pass the time. They set up a pretty elaborate campsite once they arrive, and Melissa begins to plan the week at the fair! Abel’s sole focus is Blue Boy, and he even goes so far as to sleep by his pen when the pig seems to be sick and refuses to move. Wayne meanwhile heads immediately for the ring toss, where he promptly wins $3 and nigh every prize (which he proves to the crowd are junk) from the crooked proprietor as revenge for embarrassing him last year. The carnie looks ready to throw hands, but smooth-talking Emily Joyce diffuses the situation with a lie. She invites Wayne to buy her an orangeade and meet her at a show at 8:00 PM. He eagerly looks for her in the crowd, only to discover she’s performing as a trapeze artist!
Tyler: Maybe it’s supposed to be implied or for some production reason they couldn’t get an actual trapeze artist or something, but Emily kind of just … swings up there? Based on some quick Wikipedia sleuthing, it seems like she was doing a “swinging trapeze” act but we just weren’t privy to any of the tricks, which eliminates some of the “wow” factor that the movie’s trying to get at. Or maybe people in the 30s were wowed by that, who knows.
Margy gets tired of waiting for her brother to escort her around and ventures into fairgrounds. Glass blowers, ventriloquists, a mind reader, snacks, rides! She decides to try the roller coaster on her mother’s advice. Margy does not take the advice of the single rule on the coaster5, however, and stands up! She would have perished if the hottie next to her hadn’t pulled her back down. His name is Pat Gilbert, and his press credentials allow them to ride twice more without waiting! They discover a tenuous connection in Brunswick, and that’s enough to convince Margy to get lemonades and go on the airplane swings.
The next morning, both of the Frake children are in a lovey dovey mood, but Melissa primarily focuses on the food competition and beating that hoity-toity Mrs. Metcalf. Margy is there for emotional support, but she shoos Pat away. He hovers around the edges, chatting with the judges and covering the event for his paper … allegedly. The judging proceeds, and Melissa sweeps all three pickle categories! When the time comes for mincemeat, one judge in particular is very taken with it, and she wins again! Pat materializes to take her picture with her winner’s plaques for the paper. He and Margy abscond to watch the harness horse races, and Margy may or may not now be addicted to horse betting. On the walk back that evening in the woods … THEY SAY I LOVE YOU?! Let’s check in on the boys, I can’t …
Ellen: I thought Pat talking to the judges would… matter? Like we’d find out he’d interfered and we’d get a lecture from Margy on hard work and country values? Or he’d reveal he hadn’t done a dang thing and that she shouldn’t be so judgmental of city folk? But nope: it was nothing.
Tyler: Much like the drama with Blue Boy in the next couple bullets, this movie seems to struggle injecting worthwhile drama into its parent-based subplots.
Abel is trying to get Blue Boy to perk up, and the only thing that stirs the hog is seeing a female named Esmarelda. That’s basically it. Meanwhile, Wayne is up in Emily’s apartment! He has his very first liquor ever, and he seems to be about to have another first when she pulls the old “slip into something more comfortable” move and appears in a silk robe with a butterfly on the back. Sounds like none of my business!
Tyler: The back and forth snorting (flirting?) between Blue Boy and Esmarelda has some super quick cuts and goes on for like 15 seconds straight, making it so much funnier than it had any right to be.
The next morning, it’s Blue Boy and Abel’s big day! The hog has already won for his class, but winning the Best In Show equivalent is the goal today. Blue Boy reluctantly is led into the show space, and his apathy is palpable. Not even the sight of a congressman in full white tie regalia can stir his spirits! At the last second, Blue Boy pulls through, and he takes first place! Then the final two hogs start tussling and the scene just… kind of ends. There’s a trophy and a parade and everything. Back at the campsite, Abel and Melissa read the paper and see that one of the judges had a “small delirium” from Melissa’s winning mincemeat and apple brandy could be smelled on his breath! The two share knowing looks, each assuming they were solely responsible.
Wayne heads off to see Emily again, and he’s excited about the prospect of marrying her, because obviously that’s where this is going, right? She gently explains the idea of a fling to him, and it’s over. Meanwhile, Pat and Margy go on one last roller coaster ride, and he actually does propose! But she’s not really feeling it, and she’s guilty about Harry waiting back home and the idea of leaving everything she knows. Margy turns him down. While their kids experience romantic turmoil, Abel and Melissa treat themselves to a night out in the fairgrounds, complete with snacks, rides, and even a burlesque show!
Ellen: Outside the show, Abel kind of looks at Melissa like, “oh man, should we be bad?” And she looks over the tent and almost slyly heads inside, reminding us that Frake is just an anagram for freak!! I’m so proud.
On the way home, Melissa notices her children are relatively despondent. She assures them that next year’s fair will be around before they know it. Once home, Melissa and Abel finally realize that they both put brandy in the mincemeat! Margy is not super excited to see Harry, but then, the phone rings: it’s Pat!! She runs out to meet him in the rain, and he sweeps her into his arms and into a cab. Thus, Abel wins his $5 bet!
Tyler: I wonder if this is the first movie that used kissing in the rain for a dramatic romantic climax.
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Melissa Frake’s Award-Winning Mincemeat!
Uhhh, oh my, hi guys!! Have you um *hic*, tried any of this here mincemeat yet? You haven’t?? Hoooo boy, you simply must get yourself a *hic* heaping spun-full, I mean, um, spoonful! I’m serious, it like, doesn’t even need a pie crust or anything, you can just take it straight. Take it straight, like a shot, get it tee hehe?? Anyway, you enjoy *hic* yourselves, and don’t do anything I would do! I mean, that I wouldn’t do!
Tell Ma that ILBBATTA … ILT *hic* … that this newsletter sent you and get a free helping of *hic* her prize-winning pickles!
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
State Fair’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
State Fair the movie is (unsurprisingly) based on State Fair the book, published in 1932 and written by Phil Stong. Of his career as a writer, Stong once said “Fell while trying to clamber out of a low bathtub at the age of two. Became a writer. No other possible career.”
The Iowa-raised Stong set State Fair at the Iowa State Fair, with the Frake childrens’ relationships representing the tension between urban Des Moines and the more rural parts of Iowa. Based on the book’s plot synopsis on Wikipedia, it seems that the movie stayed relatively loyal to the source material, with the main difference between being the “Hollywood ending” the movie gave Margy and Pat.
Stong was displeased with director Henry King’s Hollywood ending deviation from his book. However, Stong released a sequel twenty years after the movie came out called Return in August in which Margy (a widow after Harry’s sudden death) and Pat resume their romance at the state fair.
Ellen: Bold to whine about a contrived ending when the gears are probably already turning for your nostalgia sequel cash-grab.
Tyler: In his defense, he did wait twenty years.
Fun fact about King: he won the first ever Golden Globe Award for Best Director for his work on the movie The Song of Bernadette. He was also one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, also known as the titular Academy.
State Fair was adapted into a movie several other times and went to Broadway once:
The 1945 film adaptation was a musical with original music from Rodgers and Hammerstein, with Jeanne Crain (from A Letter to Three Wives) and Dick Haymes starring as the Frake children. It is the only R&H music written directly for film.
The 1962 version was also a musical but was instead set in Texas as a family drives through Dallas. It was directed by José Ferrer (whom we met in our Moulin Rouge post) and starred singer Bobby Darin.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role6. And the nomnomnominees are:
Mincemeat with way too much apple brandy
Ma’s prized pickles
An orangeade and lemonade with your respective fair crush
Your first sip of liquor ever
Blue Boy’s leftover slop in the trough
And the Oscar goes to your first sip of liquor ever! Unfortunately one nip of whiskey was enough to make Wayne storm the stage, demanding another try at the ring toss, so we will accept this award on its behalf.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to buy The Academy a nice orangeade, a thing I’ve never heard of and now want very badly, but it might not be as complex as I’d like. This was cute! I had extremely low expectations for this one, and it definitely exceeded them. The plot is simple with few surprises, plus a couple of of-the-time pitfalls, such as the near instantaneous “I love you” between Margy and Pat. There were also maybe some story tensions that translated better in the book, but I just couldn’t work myself up over Blue Boy. I knew he’d be fine. What won me over were the characters! I really enjoyed the family dynamic, the kids felt distinct from each other and were making interesting choices, and even the parents got more to do than be lukewarm comic relief or antagonists. The plot is whatever, but worth it for the characters, see you next year!
Tyler: I’d like to give The Academy a participation ribbon. I must admit, I liked this more than I thought I would. Like Ellen, I enjoyed the Frake family actually seeming to like and support each other in more-than-superficial ways and the plot is just interesting enough. The idea of getting swept up in an exciting but fleeting romance is #relateablecontent, and I’m glad that both siblings got to play along and it wasn’t all focused on one at the expense of the other. That being said, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I almost wish that this was longer! The siblings’ respective relationships with their flirty strangers end up feeling really rushed, and the “drama” with the parents/Blue Boy was seemingly all for naught. (Is that what passed for narrative tension in the 30s?) Maybe this is why the book was so successful, since it has more room to flesh out the characters and their respective sub-plots, but it ultimately left me wanting.
Let The Credits Roll
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Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Well take me out to the ballgame and buy yourself some Cracker Jack: our next post will cover the 1942 sports drama The Pride of the Yankees! Starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and with a special appearance from Babe Ruth, The Pride of the Yankees is the dramatized story of the life and career of baseball legend Lou Gehrig. These dang Yankees7 are available to stream on Prime, YouTube TV, Tubi, Pluto, etc.
Until then, go whole hog!
We recognize that “fun” is extremely subjective.
Sounds like my ex-wife!
Wayne cannot and will not relate.
That’s over $120 in today’s friendly wagers!
The sign literally says to not stand up.
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.
Not to be confused with Damn Yankees, which is a whole other thing.