Philip Strong's book about annual Iowa State Fair attracting a good-hearted farming family was previously filmed in 1933, but this version added a musical score by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (Hammerstein also penned the screenplay) and, despite some lags, is a wholesome entertainment with colorful Leon Shamroy cinematography. Fay Bainter looks a little old to be the mother of two post-pubescent youngsters (and she acts more like their grandmother anyhow), but Jeanne Crain is lovely as the moony-eyed lass who falls for newspaperman Dana Andrews. Best sequence involves Henry Morgan as a dishonest carnival barker--it's really only the scene that has an edge to it--but the direction and the pacing are tight and the musical numbers well-enough staged (the songs themselves are an iffy lot, with a large reliance on old-fashioned phrases like "it's dollars to doughnuts" that make one's teeth ache). Remade again in 1962, with Pamela Tiffin in Crain's role (the best sequence in that version--the mincemeat contest--is done much more smoothly and slyly here). **1/2 from ****
Review of State Fair
