Vincente Minnelli (1944)
Meet Me in St Louis has the reputation of being a witty, heartwarming family musical whose delights include an angst-free Judy Garland. And so it is, up to a point – a point that occurs during the film’s Halloween scenes. The story comprises four seasonal episodes – in the sequence summer, autumn, winter and spring – and culminates in the opening of the World’s Fair held in St Louis in 1904. (The Fair – officially the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – overshadowed the Olympic Games, hosted by the city in the same year but which don’t get a mention in the film.) Judy Garland plays Esther, the second of four daughters of banker Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) and his wife Anna (Mary Astor). There’s also a son, Lon (Henry H Daniels Jr). At the start, Esther and her elder sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) are already in love: their romantic hopes are the focus of the opening scenes. Rose is awaiting a long-distance phone call from a young man called Warren Sheffield, which she hopes will include a marriage proposal. It doesn’t: to add insult to injury, Rose has to take the call during dinner with the whole family present. Esther’s heart belongs to John Truett (Tom Drake), the boy next door whose status gives Garland’s opening number its name. According to the lyrics, he ‘doesn’t know I exist’ but that soon changes and the summer section climaxes with a rightly celebrated number, ‘The Trolley Song’. The conveyance, jam-packed, is bound for the World Fair construction site. Esther is disappointed there’s no sign of John – until he chases after and jumps on the trolley mid-journey.
Autumn in the film consists entirely of Halloween night, with the Smiths’ two younger daughters, Agnes (Joan Carroll) and, especially, Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) playing a larger role. Their Halloween preparations, under the supervision of their mother and the Smiths’ maid Katie (Marjorie Main), are jolly enough but the kids’ antics round a bonfire – a health and safety nightmare to modern eyes – and Tootie’s daring visit to throw flour in the face of a disliked neighbour give a sense of foreboding that’s soon vindicated. Tootie returns home hurt and bizarrely claims that John Truett attacked her – an accusation that her elders, no less bizarrely, unquestioningly believe and which Esther acts upon. The charge is unfounded, of course, as Tootie, whose injuries are only superficial, soon admits: she and Agnes played a silly, dangerous prank that went wrong and John tried to protect them. This is probably just a bit of perfunctory plotting on the part of the screenwriters (Irving Brecher and Fred F Finklhoffe, who adapted short stories by St Louis native Sally Benson that first appeared in the New Yorker) but the impact is strong, thanks to the scary acceptance of the child’s lie and to Judy Garland’s emotional power, both when Esther takes John to task and when she then apologises to him. With Tootie rapidly recovered, the Smiths gather to eat a special cake baked by Katie and Alonzo announces what he thinks is good news. He’s been promoted by the bank; in the near future, he’ll take up his new position in NewYork City and the family will move there with him. Alonzo’s wife and daughters are dismayed and show it. He does what he can to cheer them up.
The narrative moves forward to winter and Christmas Eve, a few days before the move to New York. More immediately, a Christmas ball is taking place in St Louis. Esther’s excitement turns to renewed dismay when John turns up to announce his dinner jacket is still with a tailor, now closed for Christmas, so he can’t escort her to the ball. Esther’s grandfather (Harry Davenport), who lives with the family, takes her instead. Halfway through the evening, John appears unexpectedly (as he did running after the trolley) and wearing a tuxedo, to make everything all right again. Once more, what seems offhand plotting has a disproportionate effect. Esther’s anguish that John will miss the ball is convincing enough to make you try to think how he can get hold of another DJ at short notice – hasn’t Esther’s brother got a spare or something? – but nothing is suggested on screen. I felt I’d been made a fool of when John turned up without the script even bothering to explain how the damned tuxedo materialised.
The events of the evening also put the impending move to New York out of the viewer’s mind – until, that is, John proposes to Esther before they go their separate ways after the ball. She then returns home to find Tootie crying about the prospect of leaving St Louis. Esther sings another famous number, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, to try and console her kid sister. It’s no surprise that the effect of the song, with its yearning melancholy melody and lyrics that are hardly designed for a young child, is counterproductive[1]. Esther then assures Tootie she’ll be able to take all her toys to New York – everything, says Esther, except the snowmen the girls have built in the garden. Tootie marches out in her nightdress and furiously decapitates the snow sculptures. Margaret O’Brien’s distress seems even more deeply felt, and is even more distressing, than Judy Garland’s in earlier scenes.
I’m emphasising the unhappy elements of Vincente Minnelli’s film to what many people who love it will think an absurd degree. I’ve omitted mention of, for example, the amusing interludes at the ball. Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully), back in town, is accompanied not by Rose but by a rival called Lucille Ballard (June Lockhart). Esther, outraged for her sister, fills up Lucille’s dance card with the least prepossessing and clumsiest chaps available. But Lucille likes the look of Lon and pairs up with him, leaving Warren and Rose together after all. To conceal her shameful behaviour, Esther takes the dance card intended for Lucille as her own, before being rescued by her grandfather. This is all deftly and enjoyably done. Yet the woe cuts deep. Seeing from an upstairs window what Tootie does to the snowmen, the paterfamilias also sees the error of his ways. He calls a family conference and announces his decision not to go to New York after all, ensuring a happy Christmas for everyone else. The last and much the shortest section of the film is the next spring’s celebratory outing to the World Fair – the whole family plus Warren and John, now engaged to Rose and Esther respectively. The explicit closing message loudly echoes Judy Garland’s The Wizard of Oz mantra, ‘There’s no place like home’. This left me feeling uncomfortable and even more depressed than as a result of the earlier episodes. It’s true that staying put in St Louis facilitates the romance between Esther and John but the film, perhaps significantly, doesn’t show them registering the consequences of her father’s change of heart. The priority here seems to be to preserve family life. Given the age of some of its members, this comes across as a rather desperate attempt to make time stand still.
Other than the comedy clodhopping at the ball, there’s not a lot of dancing in Meet Me in St Louis but there’s plenty of movement and not only in the musical numbers. Vincente Minnelli keeps things admirably mobile – in the way, for example, that characters move through rooms or up and down the staircase of the Smiths’ home. The colouring is vivid too, if occasionally on the candied side. The cast is mostly very strong. Judy Garland, in her early twenties at the time, is great in the early stages: her natural passion gives ‘The Boy Next Door’ and ‘The Trolley Song’ a depth of feeling that’s elating. Even when things get anguished, Garland seems more in control than she does in some of her later heartbreak roles. She’s excellent in the comedy bits and her hand movements are charming. In spite of my reservations about the film, this is one of her most successful performances. Seven-year-old Margaret O’Brien is an exceptional child actor. Before her spirits droop, Tootie is exuberantly ghoulish and Margaret O’Brien makes this very funny. Mary Astor is probably too good an actress for her role but she’s eloquent and moving when Anna Smith quietly registers her husband’s decision to stay in St Louis. Leon Ames is likeably exasperated as Alonzo. Harry Davenport and Marjorie Main are both good value (though Katie oddly disappears after the Halloween episode).
Robert Sully has a funny moment when Warren finally barks out a demand for Rose’s hand in marriage but the bland young men are otherwise dull enough to be indistinguishable. Tom Drake’s John Truett makes so little impression in the early scenes that it took me a little while to realise it was he, not Esther’s brother, trying to catch the trolley. The three main numbers, by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin, are original to the film. The title song, by Kerry Mills and Andrew B Sterling, dates from 1904. ‘Meet Me in St Louis, Louis’ really was written to celebrate the city’s World Fair.
13 December 2018
[1] According to Wikipedia, it could have been even worse. The lyricist Hugh Martin changed the opening lines at the request of Judy Garland, who felt, reasonably enough, that ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past’ was too depressing. Years later, Frank Sinatra demanded and got a more extensive reworking of the words to make the song less downbeat.
