Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Credits: Producer: Arthur Freed Director: Vincente Minnelli Screenwriter: Irving Brecher and Fred Finkelhoffe (from stories by Sally Benson) Original Music: Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin, George E. Stoll Cinematography: George Folsey Art Direction: Lemuel Ayers, Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith Costumes: Irene Sharaff

Cast: Judy Garland: Esther Smith Margaret O'Brien: 'Tootie' Smith Mary Astor: Mrs. Anna Smith Lucille Bremer: Rose Smith Leon Ames : Mr. Alonzo Smith Tom Drake: John Truett Harry Davenport: Grandpa Prophater Joan Carroll: Agnes Smith

Key Concepts/Terms/Figures to Know this Week:

vaudeville, burlesque, revue, operetta, Busby Berkeley, Technicolor, backstage/backyard musical, choreography, integrated/nonintegrated musical number

Background

Though Minnelli had over a decade’s experience as a Broadway director/choreographer, this was only his third Hollywood production. Virtually all of his films would be made at MGM; many, but not all, were musicals.

The film is based on a series of nostalgic stories published in the New Yorker. Sally Benson’s stories don’t particularly emphasize Esther Smith (as the film does), don’t feature the ‘Boy Next Door’ at all, and deal with the film’s major dramatic problem (the threatened move to New York) is less than three pages.

The producers were consciously trying to gear the film towards an already-existing market for middle-America sentimentality.  Studio executive I.H. Prinzmetal said: “In making the pictures . . . we will want to make them something like the [Andy] Hardy series. . .”  He refers here to a very popular series of films starring Mickey Rooney as an all-American small town boy, dealing in a light-hearted manner with the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Nevertheless, one early version of the script had Esther as the victim of a blackmail/kidnapping scheme!

Garland was initially unwilling to take the role, partially because she had tired of playing adolescents. She at first attempted an “ironic” interpretation of Esther, but was overruled by Minnelli. Despite her reservations, this turned out to be one of her favorite roles, and several songs from the film (“The Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door”) became standards in her repertoire.

Other Minnelli films:

The Clock (1945); Undercurrent (1946); Madame Bovary (1949); Father of the Bride (1950); An American in Paris (1951); The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); The Band Wagon (1953); Lust For Life (1956); Tea and Sympathy (1956); Gigi (1958); Home From the Hill (1960).

Other Garland films:

Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938); Babes in Arms (1939); The Wizard of Oz (1939); The Harvey Girls (1946); Easter Parade (1948); A Star is Born (1954); Judgment at Nuremberg (1960); A Child is Waiting (1962).

Discussion Questions:

1. Meet Me in St Louis is the first of two musicals we’re watching this semester.  During the classical Hollywood period, musicals were consistently popular, dependable moneymakers—this one included.  Based on this film, what are some of the important formal characteristics of the classical Hollywood musical?  How are song and dance integrated into the narrative?  Note that the film uses both ‘naturalistic’ and ‘stylized’ musical numbers (that is, some songs grow naturally out of relatively realistic situations, while others are obviously stylized).  How are these two styles used in the film?  Consider what sorts of situations or feelings tend to trigger both stylized and naturalistic performance.
2. Can we divide this film into discrete parts?  Why is it designed this way?   How does Minnelli signal shifts from one section to another?  What recurring motifs or image patterns serve to unify the film, and to reinforce its themes?
3. Minnelli started off as a set designer, and all his films are famous for their sophisticated mise en scene and structural integrity: balanced compositions, expressive use of color, detailed sets.  What evidence do you see of Minnelli’s attention to mise en scene in the film?  In particular, how does color convey emotional and psychological information?
4. Nostalgia has been described as an attitude that “renders the past as warmly remembered.”  How does this film work as a nostalgia film?  Some critics have argued that nostalgia films, which are set in the past, are really about the present, addressing contemporary values and anxieties.  This film was produced at the height of World War II.  How then might it be addressing its wartime audience?
5. In Strains of Utopia, Caryl Flinn argues that the film embodies a struggle between an older, ‘safer’ world, and the promise of an exciting new technology-enhanced century.  Explore this tension in the film, and decide whether you think it is resolved.
6. Describe the Smith family in the film.  Who runs the family, and who makes important decisions?  What values and ideas are important to these characters?  How is the family structure organized and reinforced, especially along gender lines?
7. The film spends a lot of time detailing childhood experience, and the uncertainties of adolescence.  How does Minnelli express young peoples’ psychology?  What sort of problems do these characters deal with?  Are they resolved in the film?  Do the adolescent characters reach any sort of maturity in the film?  What constitutes “maturity” for them, and how is this inflected by gender?
8. Why do you think the 1904 World’s Fair is so important to these characters, and to the film?  Though the production didn’t have the money to make a big spectacle out of the Fair, it was still considered important to end the film there.  Why might it be dramatically significant?  How does the Fair create a sense of closure and satisfaction?  Is this closure absolute, or does it imply unresolved issues?