Sources disagree concerning the running time. According to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department, author Phil Stong was paid $15,000 for the motion picture rights to his novel and was hired by Fox to do an adaptation and treatment. Director Henry King went to the 1932 Iowa State Fair and Exposition in Des Moines with Stong and a camera crew at the invitation of the fair and filmed background material there. IP notes that Joe Valentine and Ed Hammeras photographed background plates, atmospheric shots and race sequences at the fair and used the new Eastman Grayback Background Negative film stock. (The rest of the production was shot an Eastman Supersensitive Negative stock and used two cameras wherever possible, according to IP). Fox purchased three hogs from the fair, including the grand champion, Dike of Rosedale, who was cast as "Blue Boy." Subsequent to the filming, the hogs were given to the California State school system in a presentation by Will Rogers. Blue Boy died in Jan 1934. Beckmann and Gerety's World Best Shows, of Lincoln, Nebraska, purveyors of the fair's midway, demanded $5,000 for the right of Fox to use any of the footage that King and his crew shot of the midway. Although the Fox legal department offered them $500 and then threatened not to use the footage, the studio eventually agreed to pay Beckmann and Gerety $3,500 and to use two shots in the film that show their complete name and trademark.
       A HR news item states that Spencer Tracy was originally cast in the lead, but that he left the film to replace Charles Farrell in Face in the Sky (see above). According to a HR news item, Lew Ayres was borrowed from Universal. Scenes of the Frake farm were shot at the farm of I. V. Ashcroft near Corona, CA. According to a news item, Fox persuaded Ashcroft to let the company film there by agreeing to paint his farmhouse, put in several hundred feet of white picket fence, build new chicken houses and plant some shrubs. The loop-the-loop aerial acrobatic stunt performed by "Emily" in the film was provided by Edgar Vess of Los Angeles, who also furnished a man and woman to double for Sally Eilers to perform the stunt and a woman teacher for Eilers.
       Letters in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, establish the fact that Jason S. Joy, director of the AMPP's Studio Relations Committee, convinced the producers to change the relationship between Margy and Pat from a sexual encounter, as it was in the novel, to a romance leading to marriage. The relationship between Emily and Wayne was left substantially as it was in the novel. After the film's release, Carl E. Milliken, MPPDA Secretary, wrote in a letter that "we have had more protests against what the preview groups described as, 'the ugly and totally superfluous incident of the son's adventure,' in State Fair, than regarding any other motion picture in the last two years." Milliken surmised that the protests originated because "the [bedroom] scene is presented as being entirely incongruous and unnecessary" and "because the public has grown accustomed to relying upon Will Rogers' pictures to provide unobjectionable humor for the entire family." In 1935, this bedroom scene between Emily and Wayne was cut from all circulating prints in order for Twentieth Century-Fox to receive a certificate of approval from the PCA. In the deleted scene, according to a screen continuity, Emily and Wayne talk offscreen as the bed in which they presumably are lying is shown along with her negligee strewn across a chair. Emily convinces Wayne of the innocence of their affair, and the scene ends as she says to him, "We have been happy and no one is ever sorry when there's a little bit more happiness in the world."
       The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Writing (Adaptation). It was picked as one of the ten best films of 1933 by the National Board of Review and was fifth in the FD Poll of Critics. The film was reissued by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. on 7 Aug 1936; only Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor were listed above the title for the reissue. Twentieth Century-Fox remade the film twice as musicals with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II: in 1945 with Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews, directed by Walter Lang; and in 1962 with Pat Boone, Pamela Tiffin, Bobby Darin, Tom Ewell, Alice Faye and Ann-Margaret, directed by José Ferrer (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1961-70; F6.4688). In 1976, CBS broadcasted a sixty-minute television movie based on the novel and films, which was produced by Frankovich-Self Productions in association with Twentieth Century-Fox Television.