Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames, Marjorie Main, Joan Carroll and June Lockhart.
It was adapted by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe from a series of short stories written by Sally Benson that was originally published in "The New Yorker" magazine under the title "5135 Kensington" and later written in novel form as "Meet Me in St. Louis."
Plot[]
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
"Meet Me in St. Louis" takes place in St. Louis, Missouri (beginning in the summer of 1903 and lasting until the year leading up to the 1904 World's Fair) and focuses on the Smith family: Alonzo & Anna and their five children: daughters Rose, Esther, Agnes & Tootie and son Lon Jr.
Esther has a crush on John Truett, the boy next door, who doesn't notice her at first while Rose is expecting a phone call from Warren Sheffield, whom she hopes to be proposed marriage to.
Esther finally gets a chance to meet John when he is a guest at the Smiths' house party, but her chances of romancing him don't go to plan when (after all the guests are gone) while John is helping her turn off the gas lamps in the house & tells Esther that she uses the same perfume as his grandmother and she also has "a mighty strong grip for a girl".
Esther hopes to meet John again the following Friday on a trolley ride from the city to the construction site of the World Fair. Esther is sad when the trolley sets off without any sign of him, but cheers up when she sees him running to catch the trolley mid journey.
On Halloween, Tootie comes home injured & claims that John attacked her. Infuriated, Esther confronts John, physically attacks him & scolds him for being a bully. When Esther comes home, Tootie confesses that John never attacked her and that he was only protecting her from the police after a prank they pulled went wrong.
After learning the truth, Esther rushes over to John's house and apologizes to him & they end up sharing their first kiss. Alonzo announces to the family that he'll be sent to New York on business and will eventually move there. The family is devastated over the news, especially Rose & Esther (who is disappointed that they'll miss the World's Fair).
On Christmas Eve, Esther is devastated when John is unable to take her to an elegant ball because his tuxedo is at the tailor's and is unable to get it, but cheers up when her grandfather offers to take her instead.While at the ball, Esther fills up Lucille Ballard (a visiting girl)'s dance card with losers because she believes that Lucille is Rose's rival, but when it turns out that Lucille is interested in Lon, Esther switches the dance card and dances with the awkward & clumsy partners herself.
John eventually shows up at the ball after being able to get a tuxedo and he & Esther dance together for the rest of the night & John later proposes to Esther which she accepts. When Esther comes home from the ball, she sees that Tootie is upset, so Esther soothes her by singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but Tootie is still upset over moving & runs outside into the cold to destroy the snowmen they made.
From an upstairs window, Alonzo sees Tootie's outburst and later announces that the Smiths won't be leaving St. Louis after all realizing how much moving away would affect his family. Meanwhile, Warren finally proposes to Rose.
Around April of 1904, the Smith family attends the World's Fair and it ends with the whole family (including Rose & Esther's fiances and Lon's new love interest) overlooking the Grand Lagoon at the center of the World's fair just as the thousands of lights are illuminating the grand pavilions.
Cast[]
- Judy Garland as Esther Smith
- Margaret O'Brien as Tootie Smith
- Mary Astor as Mrs. Anna Smith
- Leon Ames as Mr. Alonzo Smith
- Lucille Bremer as Rose Smith
- Tom Drake as John Truett
- Marjorie Main as Katie the maid
- Harry Davenport as Grandpa
- Henry H. Daniels Jr. as Alonzo "Lon" Smith Jr.
- Joan Carroll as Agnes Smith
- June Lockhart as Lucille Ballard
- Robert Sully as Warren Sheffield
- Hugh Marlowe as Colonel Darly
- Chill Wills as Mr. Neely the iceman
Music[]
The musical score for the film was adapted by Roger Edens (who also served as an uncredited associate producer). Georgie Stoll conducted the orchestrations of Conrad Salinger.
Some of the songs in the film are from around the time of the St Louis Exposition & other songs were written for the movie.
- "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" Kerry Mills and Andrew B. Sterling, 1904
- "The Boy Next Door", Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, 1944, performed by Judy Garland.
- "Skip to My Lou", Traditional, with section sung to the tunes of "Kingdom Coming" and *"Yankee Doodle" arranged by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, 1944
- "I Was Drunk Last Night," performed by Margaret O'Brien.
- "Under the Bamboo Tree," Words and music by Robert Cole and The Johnson Bros., 1902, performed by Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien.
- "Over the Banister," 19th-century melody adapted by Conrad Salinger, lyrics from the 1888 poem "Over the Banisters" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, adapted by Roger Edens (1944), performed by Judy Garland.
- "The Trolley Song", Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, 1944, performed by Chorus and Judy Garland.
- "You and I," Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, sung by Arthur Freed and D. Markas, mimed by Leon Ames and Mary Astor.
- "Goodbye, My Lady Love," (Instrumental), Joseph E. Howard, 1904.
- "Little Brown Jug", (Instrumental), Joseph Winner, 1869.
- "Down at the Old Bull and Bush," (Instrumental), Harry von Tilzer, 1903.
- "Home! Sweet Home!", (Instrumental), Henry Bishop, 1823/1852.
- "Auld Lang Syne", (Instrumental)
- "The First Noel", (Instrumental)
- "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, 1944, performed by Judy Garland. The lyrics for "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" were originally different. The lyricist, Hugh Martin, wrote lyrics deemed too depressing by Judy Garland, Tom Drake, and Vincente Minnelli (They were: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past / Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Pop that champagne cork / Next year we may all be living in New York"), so Martin changed the lyrics. Further revisions were made when Frank Sinatra objected to the generally downbeat tone of the piece (the most notable changes included "Next year" becoming "From now on", "Once again, as in olden days / Happy golden days of yore / Faithful friends that were dear to us / Will be near to us once more" becoming "Here we are, as in olden days / Happy golden days of yore / Faithful friends that are dear to us / Gather near to us once more", and "Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then we'll just have to muddle through somehow" becoming "Through the years we all will be together / If the fates allow / Hang a shining star upon the highest bough"). The latter revised version is the one most commonly performed.
Production[]
"Meet Me in St. Louis" first began filming on December 1, 1943 and ended on April 7, 1944.
When Judy Garland was offered the role of Esther Smith, she scoffed at the idea of portraying another teenager (at the time filming began, she was 21 years old) and didn't want anything to do with the film and her mother even went to then-MGM chief Louis B. Mayer on her behalf. Vincente Minelli was able to convince her to play the role and Judy fell in love with the story. She would later say that "Meet Me in St. Louis" was one of her favorite roles.
Judy Garland indulged in some bad habits during production. She would complain of illnesses & headaches, often arriving late to the set and kept the cast and crew waiting for hours. She ended up missing 13 days of work which caused the production to take 70 days to complete from the original budgeted 58 days.
Margaret O'Brien's mother wanted more money for Margaret to play "Tootie" in the film, but the studio then originally cast the daughter of a lighting man (who was working on the film) for the role, but Margaret was later given the role. When Margaret was playing a scene, the lighting man intentionally dropped a heavy spotlight to the sound stage which narrowly missed her. He ended up being taken away and actually admitted to a mental institution for a time because of what he did.
Actor Van Johnson was originally cast in the role of John Truett, but Tom Drake took over.
While singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", Judy refused to sing the grim original line, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last" to Margaret O'Brien, so the line ended up being dropped from the final version of the song.
The Halloween sequence on the street outside of the Smith home was primarily filmed from low angles so that the audience would experience the Halloween night as though they were viewing it through the eyes of a child. When Tootie is shown embarking on her adventure to the Braukoff home, the houses appear to be large and looming.
The success of Meet Me in St. Louis had encouraged MGM to create further movies involving the Smith family and was to be based on further tales of Sally Benson's family.
MGM wanted to make sort of a deluxe color group of serials in the spirit of the popular "Andy Hardy" series. A proposed sequel titled "Meet Me in Manhattan" was in the works in which the Smith family actually moved to New York, but the project never happened.
Box Office[]
Meet Me in St. Louis was a massive critical and commercial success, earning $5,016,000 in the US and Canada during its theatrical release and $1,550,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $2,359,000.
Critical Reception[]
Time called Meet in Me St. Louis "one of the year's prettiest pictures", saying: "Technicolor has seldom been more affectionately used than in its registrations of the sober mahoganies and tender muslins and benign gaslights of the period. Now & then, too, the film gets well beyond the charm of mere tableau for short flights in the empyrean of genuine domestic poetry. These triumphs are creditable mainly to the intensity and grace of Margaret O'Brien and to the ability of director Minnelli & Co. to get the best out of her."
O'Brien drew further praise from Time; "[her] song and her cakewalk done in a nightgown at a grown-up party, are entrancing acts. Her self-terrified Halloween adventures richly set against firelight, dark streets, and the rusty confabulations of fallen leaves, bring this section of the film very near the first-rate."
The film is a New York Times Critics' Pick: after seeing it at the Astor Theatre, Bosley Crowther called it "a warm and beguiling picturization based on Sally Benson's memoirs of her folks."
Crowther concludes: "As a comparable screen companion to Life With Father, we would confidently predict that Meet Me in St. Louis has a future that is equally bright. In the words of one of the gentlemen, it is a ginger-peachy show."
Writing in The New Yorker, Wolcott Gibbs praised the film as "extremely attractive" and called the dialogue "funny in a sense rather rare in the movies," although he thought it was too long.
Trailer[]
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Official Trailer