Judy Garland @ 100: "Meet Me In St. Louis"
Thursday, June 2, 2022 at 2:00PM Team Experience is revisiting a dozen Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here’s Ben Miller discussing her biggest hit...
Meet Me In St. Louis marked a number of notable events in Judy Garland’s life. Her love affair and eventual marriage to director Vincent Minnelli came from filming. The film itself was Garland’s biggest box office success in initial release, becoming the second most popular film of 1944 (behind only the Best Picture winner Going My Way). But more than anything else the film completed Garland's transition from teen stardom to adult roles. In Meet Me in St Louis Garland was at the absolute peak of her star power and on-screen magnetism...
Garland stars as Esther, the second-eldest daughter of the upper-class Smith family. Esther schemes to get her older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) married off, while pining after the boy next door John (Tom Drake). Though Esther is the focus it's a family film with all the dynamics that implies as Esther lives with her overworked father Alonzo (Leon Ames), her sweet mother Anna (Mary Astor), her similarly lovesick brother Lon (Henry H. Daniels Jr), and they all deal with the shenanigans of her younger sisters Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O’Brien who received the Juvenile Oscar for her performance).
The well-documented behind-the-scenes struggles faced by Garland in no way translate to her performance in the film. She is positively luminous. Her real undernoted brilliance in this film is the ability to take center stage when the scene calls for it, but also sink organically and comfortably into the ensemble. Regardless of how it happened off-screen, Garland’s willingness to share the limelight with the rest of the Smith family shines through. And it’s not just the credited co-stars. Go and watch the famous trolley scene again and her rapport with the crowd; this is not an actress mugging for camera attention.
That doesn’t mean Judy doesn’t shine. Whether it’s Esther \beating John after a misunderstanding, or her show-stopping performance of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” Garland knows how to take charge and hold the spotlight.
Garland’s St Louis look was in no small part to finally getting the glamour treatment for the film, despite playing an 18 year-old. Makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel worked specifically to bring out Garland's natural beauty. She arched Garland’s eyebrows, removed nose discs, and threw away dental caps. According to Ponedel, Garland was pretty enough without them. She is also the one who first introduced Garland to her signature bright red lip color and false eyelashes.
On top of it all, future five-time Oscar-winning costume designer Irene Sharaff (seven years before Oscar took note) complements Garland’s beauty with eye-catching costumes at every turn. Starting out in a blue and white striped tennis outfit (believe it or not), transitioning to a frilly green number, shifting to simple black with lace, and crescendos to the blinding red dress at the highly anticipated ball. While the earlier costumes cover Garland up, the red number finally transitions her from an on-screen teenager to the woman she was desperate for the world to see.
Meet Me in St. Louis was a massive hit and solidified Garland's adult movie stardom. Though she would go on to star in other box office hits and gain even greater critical acclaim, the combination of Garland’s talent, charisma, beauty, and likeability reaches its absolute apex in this film. Despite how rocky her personal life was, it never got better onscreen than in 1944.
More for Judy's Centennial here at The Film Experience
• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Babes on Broadway (1942)
• Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
• The Clock (1945)
Reader Comments (6)
As much as I love The Wizard of Oz, this one feels more personal to me as a major Judy Garland fan, so it's my favourite Judy Garland picture even if A Star is Born contains her best performance and Oz may well be her finest film. If that makes sense.
My favourite Judy film, one of my favourite films period. it's just perfect. The ensemble works so well together and I completely agree with your point on how she effortlessly reigns in her performance to work with the family. There are few film scenes more pleasurable than the early family dinner scene or the skip to the lou party scene or the turning out the lights scene or the Trolley Song or the dance card scene or the...etc etc etc
Plus one of my favourite line readings: "I don't hate you. I just hate basketball."
Really a great film that transcends its mainstream Hollywood trappings to become something timeless and beautiful.
I was born and raised in St. Louis, so this one is special to me. The trolley is (controversially) back and some of the buildings of the World's Fair are still in Forest Park.
There was a rumor that the Ferris Wheel was buried where 2 of my teen hood homes were. Shrug.
A monumental achievement. Well recapped, thanks.
Don't know how I missed this one!
The picture is bandbox pretty and it deserves its reputation but something keeps me from fully embracing it. I like it without loving it totally. Everyone loves Tootie much more than I do. The child has all the markings of a serial killer in the making, though I do LOVE Agnes and feel that she got short shifted in favor of the overly precious Tootie.
However as a showcase for Judy it can't be beat. I can understand her reluctance to undertake Esther following the backward step that Girl Crazy had presented to her age-wise. In her two previous to that-For Me and My Gal & Presenting Lily Mars-she had played young women but grown up ones who were on their own and then Girl Crazy had her back just starting college with St. Louis she would be back in high school! Understandably she felt she was moving in reverse! But she never really feels like a high school student and its only alluded to in the abstract so it weirdly moved her fully into adulthood in a way the others didn't.
She does look great and that's a nice observation about how she was able to adjust her presence so she could blend into the ensemble or stand out as need be. That's a skill set that not all stars possess and one that didn't jump generations to Liza. It's part of what makes The Trolley Song so much fun, it's a spotlight number but as she weaves through the crowd it does have a feeling of her singing of her plight to her girlfriends.