It Might as Well be Spring (Sheet Music): from the Movie, State Fair

It Might as Well be Spring (Sheet Music from the Movie, State Fair)


by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II Publisher: Williamson Music, NY, 1945
picturing Jeanne Crain, Dick Haymes & Vivian BlainePaperback
8.95 x 11.9 inches, 5 pages (page 3,4 is missing)

"It Might as Well Be Spring" is a song from the 1945 film State Fair. which features the only original film score by the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. "It Might as Well Be Spring" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for that year.

The song is sung early in the film by Margy the teenage daughter of the State Fair-bound Frake family. Oscar Hammerstein, the lyricist for the Rodgers & Hammerstein team, mentioned to Richard Rodgers that although state fairs were held in summer or autumn, for Margy - flushed by the stirrings of womanhood - "it might as well be spring". Rodgers immediately advised Hammerstein that the latter had just named the song.

An early version of the composition exists with an alternate melody. Music historian Todd Purdum described the alternate version in 2018:

It is the only Rodgers and Hammerstein song for which a complete alternate melody, different from the final version, is known to exist. Rodgers' initial take was a legato musical line, but as he pondered Hammerstein's words he thought better of his first idea, and instead substituted a syncopated melody that jumped from interval to interval, as if the notes themselves were puppets on strings."Rodgers envisioned "It Might as Well Be Spring" as a cheery uptempo number, it being the decision of the musical director of State Fair, Alfred Newman, to present the song as a moody ballad. Rodgers canvassed the film studio to protest Newman's decision, but did ultimately admit it was the right choice.

In the 1945 film Jeanne Crain played Margy Frake, Margy's singing voice being dubbed by Louanne Hogan. In the 1962 remake of State Fair, in which Pamela Tiffin portrayed Margy, Anita Gordon provided the character's singing voice. Andrea McArdle as Margy performed "It Might as Well Be Spring" in the 1996 Broadway production of State Fair: reviewing State Fair's pre-Broadway engagement at the Golden Gate Theater, Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Examiner deemed the "wondrous" song "It Might as Well be Spring" to be "as achingly wistful a romantic reverie as has ever been penned"