Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1903, the Smiths live comfortably in St. Louis. Alonzo and Anna have a son, Lon Jr., and four daughters: Rose, Esther, Agnes and Tootie. Esther, the second oldest, has fallen for John Truett, the boy next door, who takes little notice of her at first. Rose, the eldest, hopes Warren Sheffield will propose. Tootie, the youngest, rides with Mr. Neely, the iceman. The family holds a farewell party for Lon Jr. before he leaves for college, and there Esther and John meet properly. Esther hopes to meet him again on the trolley run out to where the World's Fair is being built.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lyricist Hugh Martin's opening lines for "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were "it may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past"; Judy Garland, Tom Drake and Vincente Minnelli found them too depressing, and years later more changes were made for Frank Sinatra, who objected to the downbeat tone.
- Judy Garland balked at Minnelli's heavy schedule of rehearsals and prerecording, but he won her confidence and the two became lovers, cohabiting by post-production and marrying soon after the film's release; earlier in the production Garland had a brief affair with her costar Tom Drake.
- Garland suffered an acute addiction to amphetamines and recurring migraines, and production reports show she disrupted the schedule with fits of hysteria, habitual lateness and absences, missing an entire week of shooting because she claimed to have an ear infection.
- Illness delayed the shoot, with Mary Astor down with pneumonia and Joan Carroll with appendicitis, and severe rains and flooding around Los Angeles held up exterior scenes; filming ran from December 1, 1943 to April 7, 1944, behind schedule, with a final budget near $1.8 million.
- Arthur Freed hired the husband-and-wife team of Victor Heerman and Sarah Mason in mid-1942 to add intrigue, but he found their blackmail plot involving Esther Smith inappropriate and had staff writer William Ludwig, a specialist in adolescent romance, cut it and weave in courtship stories.
- The Smith family's former house at 5135 Kensington Avenue in St. Louis fell into disrepair after being sold and was demolished in 1994, while the backlot house used for the exterior later served as the Gilbreths' family home in Cheaper by the Dozen.
