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)