The long road to this song started with a novel, State Fair by Phil Strong, written in 1932. Its unifying event is . . . wait for it . . . the three days of the Iowa State Fair, in which a farm family consisting of a husband, wife, daughter and son have various adventures and romances over that period. And in case you were wondering, yes, the fair is still being held. I just looked it up. Now it lasts 11 days instead of three; the 2021 dates were August 12-22. It’s quite a production these days with all sorts of entertainment and events, some separately ticketed and some included with the general admission charge. There are still the various competitions including livestock, beekeeping and beermaking, and, of course, you can still get food in ample supply—including anything and everything you can eat off a stick. The fair had some COVID advisories in place this year but nothing mandatory; the fair was, however, canceled in 2020, marking the first cancellation of the event since World War II.
Novelist Phil Strong was born in Iowa and attended Drake University in Des Moines. (Fun fact: Elaine Hagenberg, one of the hottest young composers of choral music around today, also attended Drake.) He’d worked as a newspaperman for a number of years and written 12 unpublished novels when in 1932 his wife suggested that he write a novel centered around the fair. I have no idea what those other novels were about, but Strong clearly found his voice with this setting. The fair constitutes a logical meeting place for locals and outsiders, with lots of opportunities for telling details.
The novel became a best-seller, enabling Strong to quit his newspaper work, and it inspired a number of adaptations. A straight dramatic film version was produced in 1933 with Will Rogers playing the father. The musical from which “Grand Night” is taken was filmed in 1945. The stage version came after the film, so the typical sequence was reversed in this case. The team of Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the score, and it’s to them, and this particular song, that I now turn.
First, who did what in this team? Richard Rodgers was the musical composer and Oscar Hammerstein II the lyricist/dramatist, with this work as their only one written directly for film. They wrote some of the world’s greatest musicals, with their final one’s being The Sound of Music. It’s worth taking some time here to discuss how Hammerstein changed American musical theater even though he didn’t write music. Until he came along, musicals tended to have light and frothy plots with musical numbers that had little to do with the actual story line. His early masterpiece, produced with Jerome Kern in 1927, was Show Boat, which tells a unified and dramatic story and deals with themes of racism and tragic, enduring love. By 1943 Hammerstein had teamed up with Rodgers to write Oklahoma!, which “furthered the revolution begun by Show Boat, by thoroughly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, with the songs and dances arising out of and further developing the plot and characters.” (quoted in Wikipedia)
When 20th Century Fox decided to remake the 1933 version of State Fair as a musical, they called on Rodgers and Hammerstein. The two screenwriters who had written the original script for the 1933 film are also credited for the musical, but I don’t think they had input beyond their original work. (Another fun fact: One of those screenwriters, Paul Green, also wrote the dramatic/musical play The Lost Colony, about the colony of Roanoke, Virginia, which has been performed with very few interruptions at an historic outdoor theater near Mateo, North Carolina, since 1937. Andy Griffith got his start as an actor in that play. I’ve attended it myself—it was great!)
As for the “Grand” song itself, I don’t see a big dance scene in the 1933 film version. There is, however, a horse race that gives everyone a chance to interact. Changing the race to a dance gave an excuse for the song, which is performed by a popular big-band singer of the day, William Marshall. The dance takes place about midway through the film (on the midway, by the way) and is excerpted and reprised at the end. While this particular song won no awards, another one from the film, “It Might As Well Be Spring,” did win the Academy Award for best original song that year.
I’ve done some bopping around to see if there’s anything about the specific inspiration for the words but so far haven’t found anything. What I did discover is that a typical R&H collaboration consisted of Hammerstein’s presenting Rodgers with finished lyrics to which the composer then wrote the music. I’m sure there were then plenty of backs and forths between the two before they felt that both elements meshed perfectly. It’s not clear how much in the way of dialogue and stage directions Hammerstein used from the 1933 screenplay. I guess if I were really dedicated I’d watch the earlier film, then watch the musical one, jotting down bits of dialogue and plot points, and then compare the two. If I were really, really dedicated, I’d also read the novel. And if I were really, really, really dedicated I’d also watch the 1962 re-make starring Bobby Darrin and Ann-Margaret. But there are limits.
Besides, there are a couple of other interesting sidelights about this song that I’d like to cover before completely wearing out my readers. First off, its title is also used as that of a revue of Rodgers and Hammerstein music that was produced in 1993. After numerous previews and a cabaret-style presentation at Rockefeller Center it ran on Broadway—but only for 52 performances. I found it interesting that even using all pre-written music with no strong unifying plot, the work still required: 1) a writer of the minimal spoken material and stage directions linking the songs, 2) a director as well as 3) a conductor, 4) a choreographer, 5) a couple of orchestrators, and 6) an arranger.
And what about that job of “arranger”? I write these posts about choral music, not theater music. While some groups may perform theatrical music, whether from operas or musicals, as semi-staged “concert” versions and use the same voicing and accompaniment, for the most part any pieces that were originally performed in a different medium, or indeed with different instrumentation, will need an arrangement to make them workable for another type of group. Indeed, there’s so much to be said about the art and craft of arranging music that I plan at some point to write a whole post dealing exclusively with that subject. For now, though, I’ll content myself with a few facts about the arranger of “Grand,” Jerry Rubino.
Have to say that just reading his bio with all of the activities and organizations he’s a part of left me worn out. Rather than my trying to list all of his accomplishments and responsibilities let me instead provide a link to the bio page on his website. It would be fascinating to look at just one page from his calendar! For this post, though, the relevant piece of his career involves the 23 seasons he worked with the Dale Warland Singers as associate conductor, director of special projects and music education, pianist, singer and arranger. In that last capacity he wrote the arrangement of “Grand” that my choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is singing. I will be including some of the information he shared with me in my article about the art of arranging; here I will simply say that he was tasked by Dale Warland with producing material that avoided the typical pitfalls of show tune versions sung by choirs. As I said to him in our conversation, “Your arrangement is not simple!” To which he replied, “That’s due to Dale Warland.” We’ll try to do it credit in our performance, as I’m sure any choir worth its salt will do.
Below is the scene from the 1945 movie. It’s . . . pretty grand!
