Meet Me at the Fair Reviews

While not one of Douglas Sirk's most interesting films, this fine slice of Americana set in 1904 does entertain. Dan Dailey is Doc Tilbee, a crooked medicine show operator who befriends young Tad Bayliss (Chet Allen), a runaway from the local orphanage. With the help of pretty social worker Zerelda Wing (Diana Lynn) and medicine show assistant Enoch Jones (Scatman Crothers), Doc shows the orphanage to be badly in need of reform. He reveals Zerelda's district attorney fiance (Hugh O'Brian), who has accused him of kidnaping the boy, to be one crooked son of gun, and wins Zerelda's love in the process. The screenplay for MEET ME AT THE FAIR is one of several fair-to-middling efforts scripted by Irving Wallace before he became a best-selling novelist. Songs include: "Meet Me at the Fair" (Milton Rosen, Frederick Herbert, sung by Carole Mathews), "I Was There" (F.E. Miller, Scatman Crothers, sung by Dan Dailey, Crothers, Chet Allen), "Remember the Time" (Kenny Williams, Marvin Wright, sung by Dailey and Mathews), "Ave Maria" (Franz Schubert, sung by Allen), "Ezekiel Saw de Wheel" (sung by Crothers), "Sweet Genevieve" (George Cooper, Henry Tucker, sung by the Quartette), "All God's Chillun Got Wings" (sung by Crothers, Allen), "I Got the Shiniest Mouth in Town" (Stan Freberg, sung by Crothers), "Oh Susannah!" (Stephen Foster, sung by Dailey, Crothers, and Allen), and "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home?" (Hughie Cannon, sung by Carole Mathews).