Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien Impeccably Meet in Minnelli's Masterful St. Louis

             A beautiful slice of early 20^th Century Americana, which movie-loving WWII audiences turned out for in droves, 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis offers a supremely tuneful, charming tale involving a year in the life of the Smiths, leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair. Crafted with care and exquisite taste by director Vincente Minnelli, St. Louis (based on Sally Benson’s 1942 novel, which originally appeared as a series of vignettes in The New Yorker) blends humor, drama, romance, nostalgia and a great roster of songs, both of the period and newer compositions by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine, in lovingly recreating a specific time and place, as the viewer is drawn into the Smiths’ personal successes and travails throughout the 1903-1904 seasons. With typical MGM glossy production values (via Arthur Freed and Hal Pereira) ideally utilized, lush Technicolor cinematography by George J. Folsey, an era-evoking score by George Stoll in sync with each season presented, and a colorful, entertaining screenplay by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe that artfully incorporates key songs into the proceedings, St. Louis is the rare original film musical that works on every level, with credibility never strained as a variety of scenarios and moods are conveyed with freshness and creativity by Minnelli and a glorious cast.

                For Minnelli, St. Louis served as affirmation he would be the major player at MGM he indeed became for the next two decades, after making an impact via his directional debut at the studio the previous year via Cabin in the Sky. Starting out in theater as a costume and set designer (at no less than Radio City Music Hall) and artistic director for multiple productions and also working at Paramount Studios in the 1930’s prior to his MGM tenure, Minnelli’s taste, style and exacting process with each film would serve in him well in a variety of genres, and this is clearly evident in St. Louis. Although at heart a musical, there are also sequences of drama, suspense (specifically the Halloween passage) and comedy that lend much more believability and truth to the characters and situations involving the Smith’s strong family dynamic than normally found in a musical. He seamlessly switches from one season to the next without harming the overall tone of the film and stages each musical number and set piece with skill and beauty. Minnelli would continue to turn out Class A productions at MGM, including two Oscar-winning Best Pictures, An American in Paris and Gigi, which also brought Minnelli his Best Director Academy Award. Although his output would become more uneven in terms of box-office returns and critical reaction as the Studio Era waned in the 1960’s, the superb quality of Minnelli’s work during his peak years at MGM stand tall among the most entertaining and enduring movies of their day, with St. Louis holding a chief position among his oeuvre.

                By 1944, Judy Garland was near her apex as one of MGM’s top talents and box-office names, after achieving stardom with The Wizard of Oz and a string of ideal outings with Mickey Rooney in light musicals, including possible hitting their peak as a team via the previous year’s Girl Crazy. With St. Louis, Garland’s stock among the Hollywood elite would continue its steep rise, with her ingratiating, touching and humorous playing and unmatched vocal prowess creating one of her signature performances as the romantic, jaunty and alert Esther Smith. Working in flawless accord with Minnelli after an uneasy start, the director shows Garland to her best advantage, and at her loveliest in every shot, and his leading lady consistently rewards him with a seemingly easy, natural professional grace in each scene, incorporating each of Esther’s changing moods in deft, believable fashion. As for her big musical numbers, Garland switches from melancholic while Esther yearns for “The Boy Next Door” to ebullience in the uplifting “The Trolley Song,” expertly staged by Minnelli on the title vehicle, and possibly the liveliest moment in the film, then back to a more somber rendering for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” as Esther ponders the family’s future while serenading a downcast Tootie. After her triumph in St. Louis, Garland would reteam with Minnelli for possibly even better work in 1945’s The Clock, one of the best WWII romances, while romance was in the air as well off-screen, with Garland and Minnelli marrying in 1945. Garland would go on to more success at MGM with The Harvey Girls, Easter Parade and In the Good Old Summertime, before leaving the studio after 1950’s Summer Stock, going on to cement her legend as one of the centuries’ finest performers with constant concert work on stage, including a legendary Carnegie Hall outing in 1961, a recording of which took Garland to the top of the Billboard album chart and won her richly-deserved Grammys, and occasional forays back into film, with many still of the mindset Garland warranted another top award for her prime post-MGM movie, 1954’s A Star is Born. A second Oscar nomination came for stark work in Judgement at Nuremberg, then Garland took on the onerous task of doing a television show during the 1963-64 season, before continuing as a headliner on stage and television until her passing in 1969 at age 47.

                Margaret O’Brien found herself a sudden star at MGM as, after gaining a bit in the Garland-Rooney 1941 tuner Babes on Broadway, she was selected for the title role in 1942’s Journey for Maragret, wherein the five-year-old astounded critics and audiences by displaying some of the best dramatic gifts ever seen by a moppet on film. Duly impressed and knowing what they had, MGM swiftly maximized her innate, prodigious thespian skills in top productions such as Madame Curie, Lost Angel and The Canterville Ghost (and on loan-out to 20^th Century Fox for Jane Eyre, wherein O’Brien impressed along with two other usually gifted child thespians, Peggy Ann Garner and Elizabeth Taylor) before St. Louis offered the precocious talent her most iconic role. As Tootie, the Smith’s inquisitive, somewhat morbid youngest (Tootie explains her doll has four fatal diseases) O’Brien handles her choice assignment with a minimum of cuteness and maximum conviction. She pairs beguilingly with Garland for the “Under the Bamboo Tree” number and is mesmerizing in the Halloween segment Minnelli artfully builds around Tootie and her desire for acceptance by the older children in her group. O’Brien goes even deeper in the movie’s most piercing emotional moment, wherein Tootie destroys her “snow people” while hysterically sobbing to Esther she’d rather kill them if they can’t move with the family to New York. The depth of feeling O’Brien exhibits in this extraordinary scene powerfully resonates with a viewer, making it easy to understand why O’Brien was rated the preeminent child star of her era, both in terms of skill and audience appeal, as O’Brien placed in the Quigley poll of Top Ten Box Office stars for 1945 and 1946, following her ascendancy to top-tier stardom via St. Louis. O’Brien would remain a top draw for the rest of the decade, with Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (opposite another great child star, Jackie Jenkins) and Little Women two of her best efforts, before the onslaught of adolescence found O’Brien moving on to stage and television work, with outstanding comic work in George Cukor’s 1960 Heller in Pink Tights providing a later-career screen highlight for O’Brien.

                As Esther’s intended, John Truitt, Tom Drake also gains his signature role, lending appropriate boyish charm to the proceedings and matching up very well with Garland. Mary Astor brings warmth and strength to her portrayal of the matriarch of the family, while Leon Ames as Mr. Smith is amusingly blustery for most of the film, before sharing some calmer, moving moments with Astor and others as more serious issues are addressed by the Smiths. Lucille Bremer, owning a beauty and poise exactly right for the period, makes a lovely impression as Esther’s older, marriage-minded sister Rose, leading to her teaming up with no less than Fred Astaire onscreen directly after her impact in St. Louis. Marjorie Main and Chill Willis add humor to the film, utilizing their colorful, patented rural personas to great effect, while young Joan Carroll and mature Harry Davenport also help to keep the tone light and lively. Finally, Hugh Marlowe and June Lockhart can briefly be seen to good advantage in early roles.

                Released in November of 1944, St. Louis quickly became one of the top hits of the war years, with the January 5, 1949 Variety “All-Time Top Grossers” list placing the film second in revenue for 1944 to Going My Way. The movie also gained placement on the National Board of Review’s Top Ten list, with O’Brien mentioned on the “Best Acting” list, and garnered four Oscar nominations (for Adapted Screenplay, Color Cinematography, Score and Best Song for “The Trolley Song”), while O’Brien won a special Oscar for Best Juvenile. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” has of course gone on to become a Christmas standard, in the process helping St. Louis to also become a holiday perennial, with viewings of the movie every Yuletide season on TCM and elsewhere exposing the classic to new generations. Meet Me in St. Louis’ ability to captivate, amuse and move audiences as impactfully as it did on initial release attests to the sublime, enduring work Minnelli and company generated while creating one of the best film musicals and holiday-themed entertainments ever.