Review Essay
Part of the fun of the Film for the Holidays experience, for me, is finally sitting down to watch a movie I have been meaning on some level to watch for years, only to find that it’s not quite what I was expecting. Sure, sometimes this is a negative experience, but more often it’s a neutral or positive one as I find myself recalibrating my expectations on the fly: it’s more interesting, at least, to be surprised. In the case of 1944’s movie musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, I was expecting to be mostly dialed in for the star power of the incomparable Judy Garland, and don’t get me wrong, Miss Show Business is here and as fabulous as any of us would expect. But sometimes in these holiday films, you get kind of fascinated by a truly charismatic supporting player—they’re not always even in sync with the rest of the cast or screenplay, but they’re so undeniably magnetic that you find yourself leaning in every time they’re on screen. Think Dan Levy as Abby’s flamboyant friend John in Happiest Season. Anyway, there’s a performance like that in Meet Me in St. Louis, and it tickled me.
Let’s handle the central story of the motion picture first, though—this is the story of the Smith family, and in some ways it’s an almost Austenesque premise wherein the oldest girls, Rose and Esther, are both pretty keen to land a guy (and grappling with some societal hurdles and conventions to do so) while maneuvering around a difficult parent (here, Mr. Alonzo Smith, their father). It’s also a story about turn-of-the-century American optimism—St. Louis as a city “on the grow” about to welcome the whole world to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a place western enough that the big cities back east are a different country you can only reach by means of echoing long-distance phone lines but also connected enough that kids from the local high school head to the elite universities of the Atlantic Seaboard pretty routinely. And it’s at least attempting to also be a story about the pressures on a lower middle class family: Mr. Smith’s worried enough about money that he’s willing to uproot the family to make a big move for his work, but not so worried about money that he can’t change his mind about that, at least in theory. The film doesn’t really land this last punch, I’m afraid, since the family hardly ever seems low income (given their pretty lavish digs in a lovely neighborhood, with the girls expecting to head off to college, and Mr. Smith’s professional standing as a lawyer), and this is a problem since a lot of the conflict in the story hinges on the idea that the Smiths are so in need of the promotion/raise that they’re willing to throw away a whole lot of happiness in order to get it. Sensible plots aren’t exactly the hallmark of the Golden Age Hollywood musical, and it’s probably fair to say that most people are being drawn here for that mix of MGM talent and Tin Pan Alley songwriting that make for a bit of a sensory extravaganza. But I still think we can do a little better than this.
In some ways the movie’s a bit more grown up than you might expect: both Rose and Esther Smith are pretty savvy about boys. Esther (the character Judy Garland plays) at one point informs her big sister that “I’m going to let John Truett kiss me tonight.” When Rose chides her, saying, “Men don’t want the bloom rubbed off,” Esther quips back, “I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that’s the trouble with men.” These ladies know a thing or two about the need to attract a fellow’s attentions without, shall we say, overindulging either themselves or the fellow in the process. And of course it’s the 1940s, so the film’s going to ask us to play along with romanticizing things like a young man getting passionate enough that he grabs a young woman and kisses her, no permission sought: the fact that we know very well it’s what she wants doesn’t really make the moment 100% fun, from my perspective, but maybe I’m being too much of a wet blanket about it. Nobody in this film manages to seem like a bad person for more than about five minutes (and only for the sake of creating just enough conflict to keep the story humming along). When the meanest character in your motion picture is *checks notes* a devoted father who thinks he needs to relocate his family for their economic well-being, well, the stakes are pretty low.
I teased you a little up-front, though, with my claim that the show here is stolen by a high charisma supporting cast member, and I need to deliver the goods, so here it is: Margaret O’Brien, the child actress, is incredibly compelling as “Tootie” Smith, the youngest of the family’s five kids. We’re introduced to Tootie having wandered away from the family home to help deliver ice on a horse-drawn wagon, entertaining the delivery man between stops by discussing her plans for the burial and mourning of one of her dolls who she plans to have “die” later that day—as she tells him, the doll has four fatal diseases, “and it only takes one.” Later, on Halloween, we follow her through the neighborhood in an era predating the “or treat” option: Tootie’s all tricks, all the time, and her idea of a trick is on the level of stealing lawn furniture to add it to a bonfire, throwing flour at neighbors in an act of mock assassination, and, most memorably, the attempt to derail a double-decker streetcar by placing a hastily prepared mannequin on the tracks. She is a menace to society, and I love her. Admittedly, Tootie’s also young enough to be scared of the mayhem she’s capable of, but I think that only adds to the impressiveness of the mischief she accomplishes in one brief night out. She’s endlessly quotable and really my big complaint of the film’s second half is that it spends way too much time worrying about getting Esther and John’s romance sorted out (over, it has to be said, the most comically miniscule of hurdles) and far too little time letting me watch Tootie, I don’t know, pursue a career as a juvenile arsonist or weigh the pros and cons of poisoning her grade school teacher or whatever other kinds of sheer chaos she is probably up to, off screen.
Now, here’s where I probably ought to admit a certain amount of favoritism at work here, or at least my predisposition to cheer for spunky kids like Tootie Smith in St. Louis in 1903. Two of my great-grandparents were small town Missouri children in 1903-1904: my great-grandfather Warren was a scamp (injuring his hand as a 12 year old in an “accidental revolver discharge”…lord knows what Warren’s parents were doing at the time) and my great-grandmother Opal, who I will always and only ever think of as “Nana”, was a bright and brave woman all her life. In 1904, the year of the Exposition, Opal was a 9 year old living in Lewistown, Missouri: at 150 miles from St. Louis, she was too far away to get to go to the Fair with her father and grandmother, but her dad gave Opal and her younger sister Nellie the consolation prize of a trip to Quincy, Illinois (about 30 miles away) to see Barnum and Bailey’s Circus that summer. It was pretty easy for me to enjoy this 1900s peek into a Missouri family’s life, sanitized and historically inaccurate as I know much of it is, since it let me muse just a little about what it might have been like for Opal and Warren to hear tales of the World’s Fair or play a prank on Halloween. If you feel any kind of connection or kinship to this part of the country or that era of history, I bet this will work a little better for you, too.
And of course, what this movie does best of all is its music, which I haven’t really touched on. It’s a mix of songs: I’d never heard “The Boy Next Door” before but Judy Garland can make anything sound like a classic the moment she gets started. I was familiar with the chorus of “The Trolley Song”—and I bet many of you, too, know “Clang! Clang! Clang! went the trolley”—probably from the Looney Tunes or some similar source. And I could certainly sing all of this movie’s biggest hit and the one that pulls it squarely to Christmas (yes, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the conceit of this blog): Esther, in an attempt to soothe the fragile and frantic emotions of an agitated Tootie, pulls her little sister into her arms and sings, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” We get about 25 minutes of Christmas out of the film, but it’s a climactic 25 minutes, coming as it does at a point where the family’s preparing to move to New York, and treating the holiday as a huge final farewell—one last dance, one last tree in the front room, one last chance to maybe see if that John kid can get his act together and propose. At its best, it’s a perfect Golden Age holiday sequence—red and green gowns that dazzle the eye, a real humdinger of an emotional song performed beautifully, and a finish that affirms love and family and togetherness in the way we want all our holiday flicks to end. It’s just not always able to hold onto that perfection, since some of the machinations of the plot at the end are creaky, and while the song is beautiful and in Judy’s confident hands it packs an emotional heft out of the gate, its lyrics are sometimes a strange fit for the moment and the characters involved. The movie works, but it doesn’t work as well as it wants to believe it does. What it does do, aided so much by the energy of Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien, is give us the Smiths as a convincing and loving family, whose holiday celebration is genuinely joyful to look in on, and at this time of year, what else do we really want?
I Know That Face: We just saw Tom Drake of course, who here is Esther’s beau, John Truett, when he appeared as Pat Dingle, a similarly fresh-faced boy next door, in The Great Rupert. Margaret O’Brien, one of the last surviving child stars of the 1940s and the adorably gremlin “Tootie” Smith in this film, has voice acting roles in Elf Sparkle Meets Christmas the Horse and Elf Sparkle and the Special Red Dress (playing Mrs. Claus in the latter), as well as portraying Mrs. Foxworth in This Is Our Christmas. And Margaret also plays Beth March in 1949’s Little Women—a film that, much like this one, incorporates a significant Christmas sequence even though it’s not exactly a “holiday movie”—and she’s not alone, since the March parents in that version of Little Women are played by Leon Ames and Mary Astor, the same actors portraying her parents in this movie, while Harry Davenport, who’s Tootie’s grandfather in this film, appears in the Alcott adaptation as Dr. Barnes.
That Takes Me Back: This film’s set so long ago that it’s not so much making me nostalgic for things I remember as it makes me curious about things that maybe my grandparents or great-grandparents would have been nostalgic for. Would the making of your own household ketchup have been such an engrossing enterprise back then, as it seems to be in the opening scenes? Did people really tie ribbons in bows around the necks of housecats back then? I associate this more with animated Disney films, in part because most of the cats I have known would have declared a vendetta against anyone subjected them to such indignities, and yet there the bow is on Tootie’s cat. As I mentioned earlier, the film gives me a glimpse of a Halloween full of tricks only, and honestly, the chaos and vandalism is overwhelming enough that I can understand the citizenry of St. Louis getting together after Halloween 1903 and agreeing to the new “tradition” of trick-or-treating as a kind of public safety measure. Anyone who knew Tootie Smith would have gotten to work the next day in an attempt to invent the fun size candy bar. Oh, and there’s some shenanigans involving a dance card, which made me wonder when the end of the dance card era was (and why it ended).
I Understood That Reference: Tootie’s waiting up for Santa Claus, but of course he won’t show up until she’s asleep. How will he find the family next year in New York, though? Gosh darn it, Tootie, you’re too dang cute sometimes. When you’re not feeling murderous, that is.
Holiday Vibes (4.5/10): As noted above, the final half hour or so of the film really does a pretty good job of realizing an emotionally resonant and colorfully delightful Christmas holiday. The addition to the canon of a now-ubiquitous holiday song has to count for something here, too. But the score can only get so high before I say, hang on a second, the vast majority of the running time unfolds without even any reference to a winter holiday. The score of 4.5 is probably generous, all things told, but like all my numerical scores, it’s to be taken with a grain of salt.
Actual Quality (8/10): At its best, this is a lot of fun—a couple of great songs, a lovely Christmas tableau, a charming performance from a child actress. At its worst, it’s super forgettable: some of the music isn’t all that catchy, there’s so little conflict of any real consequence, and the film’s biggest questions as we get to the third act are a mixture of problems that will clearly be resolved with ease and problems that barely seem like problems. The plot’s not strong enough to be a selling point, but it doesn’t give itself over into spectacle quite enough to get away with a weak story the way that other films frankly do (the plot of White Christmas, for instance, isn’t better than the plot of Meet Me in St. Louis, but that movie finds way more ways to captivate an audience and let the plot take a back seat). Shaking all that up, this ends up a B/B- of a movie for me as an artistic product (even if I felt a little more charitable towards it, as a viewer).
Party Mood-Setter? There’s not quite enough Christmas in the film to work for this purpose. But it’s so gentle and full of nostalgia that I don’t think it would particularly distract you if you did turn it on.
Plucked Heart Strings? I mean, I was not expecting this, but I really did find myself getting emotional at the Christmas gathering: the love of the people involved, and their gratitude for each other, got to me on some level.
Recommended Frequency: I’d say that Meet Me in St. Louis is a film that, if you watched it for a few Christmases in a row, would become “a Christmas movie” just as much as a lot of other films that are not set primarily at Christmas but have some key Christmas scenes—in the vein of It’s A Wonderful Life or White Christmas in that way. I’m not sure it’s quite great enough for me to make that effort, but it’s more than good enough for a viewing and it’s one I will absolutely watch again, as much for the old-time nostalgia of it as for the holiday elements.
As with so many other films this year, you can watch this (with ads) on Tubi. It’s rentable on streaming from almost all the places you might think to pay to rent it, too. The Blu-ray is cheaper than the DVD at Barnes and Noble, if you know you want to own it, and Worldcat will help you find it in over 1,800 libraries worldwide.
