Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen

Chapter 12: Celebrity Fulfilled

In 1961, at Phil’s suggestion, Alice decided to make another motion picture. Phil continued to pursue an intense travel schedule, Alice Jr. had just married New Orleans stockbroker Ted Alcus, and Phyllis was about to begin courses at the University of Arizona in the fall. Alice’s family life was fairly settled. So when producer Charles Brackett began phoning Alice “out of the blue” urging her to accept the role of Melissa Frake in a new remake of Rogers and Hammerstein’s State Fair for Twentieth Century-Fox, Alice actually gave it consideration. “He was so persistent, he called three or four times a day for four days,” Alice said. “I looked at the script and told Phil and he said I’d be crazy not to take it. So I said yes, and the next morning I woke up screaming saying ‘what have I done?’” But she admitted that she was flattered too. “I was just a mother and housewife,” she insisted. “Occasionally I took on a TV show and sometimes I accompanied Phil on his golf tournament trips. But it’s nice to be remembered by the fans and the money was nice too.” State Fair also represented the kind of material with which Alice felt comfortable. “It’s the kind of clean, entertaining picture I’d want my daughters to see,” she stated. This would be Fox’s third version of State Fair; the second as a musical. The first version, a nonmusical version filmed in 1933 with Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, and Janet Gaynor, had been directed by Alice’s favorite, Henry King. Had Alice wished, she could have played the 213 Celebrity Fulfilled CHAPTER 12 Vivian Blaine role in the second version, released in 1945 and also starring Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, and Dick Haymes. One of the attractions of the newest version was that Richard Rogers had agreed to write five additional songs for the film, acting as his own lyricist, including a special solo just for Alice called “Never Say No to a Man.” Alice’s old director Walter Lang, who guided her through Tin Pan Alley and Weekend in Havana, had already begun location work in Dallas, and she also had hopes that Don Ameche would be cast opposite her as hog farmer Abel Frake. Despite her anxiety over returning to movies, Alice had high hopes for the project and moved forward with cautious enthusiasm. As soon as Alice committed to the film, the studio publicity machine kicked into high gear. Articles profiling her career, her life, her tastes, and so forth saturated publications nationwide. Columns ran with headlines like “The Queen Returns” and assured viewers that she appeared just as trim and attractive as she ever had. Alice took comfort in how little had changed in the studio’s approach to publicity, and in many respects she found her return to the Twentieth Century lot reassuring as well. Not only was the dreaded Zanuck long gone but scores of technicians and crew members from her previous films welcomed her return with unconcealed delight. One columnist noted, “There was nostalgia in the air as waitresses, studio policemen, and executives came over to greet Alice at her lunch table in a remote corner of the Commissary.” On the first day of filming, when Alice again went through her usual case of the jitters, she took comfort from old familiar faces. “What made it easy for me was that I was completely surrounded by friends,” she said. “Most of the crew and technicians had worked with me on movies sixteen years ago. They all coddled me, kept telling me I was good—and soon I began to believe them a little bit.” As for the jitters, she flatly stated, “I expected it. I had the jitters the first scene of every day I worked on every picture.” On her first day she did get a good laugh from a telegram Bing Crosby sent to her from London, where he was filming Road to Hong Kong—“Welcome back to the taxpayers’ list!” 214 CELEBRITY FULFILLED The honeymoon period of Alice’s comeback proved short-lived, however. Don Ameche did not get the role as Abel Frake. It went instead to Broadway actor Tom Ewell, best known to moviegoers as Marilyn Monroe ’s leading man in The Seven Year Itch. Illness forced Walter Lang to withdraw , and Fox assigned José Ferrer...