I got the 2-DVD "State Fair" yesterday. I was only able to skim through a little of the 1962 version, which I've only seen in P/S on TV.
The glory of this movie is the musical underscore...Alfred Newman's last, contract-fulfilling work for 20th Century-Fox. He became music director at Fox in 1940 (having guest-conducted/arranged/composed for the studio the previous 5 years at Darryl Zanuck's bidding), and was rather unceremoniously stripped of his music department in the late 1950s.
From having a staff orchestra and offices one day to having to share offices on a sporadic basis, and having to contract orchestra members for specific recording session dates the next.
Of course, when this happened, Zanuck was gone. Most movie studios had divested themselves of staff orchestras. Unions had taken over for the musicians. Everything in Hollywood had changed.
I'm told Newman's last project with the staff orchestra was for pre-recordings on "South Pacific." After that, he still had the same musicians, but they had to be hired for specific jobs on a limited basis. He scored "Diary of Anne Frank" and "The Best of Everything" in this manner. And although contractually committed to score another Fox film, he did some work at Universal for "Flower Drum Song", and he scored "The Pleasure of His Company" and "The Counterfeit Traitor" for Paramount.
All his future work, after completing his Fox contract with "State Fair", was for other studios, notably MGM for "How the West Was Won," Warner Brothers for "Camelot" and Universal for "Airport."
Ken Darby, Newman's associate from 1950 onward, has said the MGM job was the happiest he and Newman had experienced. I'm sure he meant "since the dissolution of Newman's Fox department," but it speaks volumes about Newman and Darby having been badly treated at Fox in the late 1950s.
(That's just my way of clearing trivia from my brain...no need to be alarmed).
