Meet Me in St. Louis

This article is about the 1944 film. For other uses, see Meet Me in St. Louis (disambiguation).

Meet Me in St. Louis
Theatrical poster
Directed byVincente Minnelli
Screenplay byIrving Brecher
Fred F. Finklehoffe
Based onMeet Me in St. Louis
by Sally Benson
Produced byArthur Freed
Hal Pereira
StarringJudy Garland
Margaret O'Brien
Mary Astor
Lucille Bremer
Tom Drake
Marjorie Main
CinematographyGeorge J. Folsey
Edited byAlbert Akst
Music byGeorge Stoll
Production
company
Distributed byLoew's, Inc.
Release dates
  • November 22, 1944 (1944-11-22) (St. Louis)[1]
  • November 28, 1944 (1944-11-28) (New York City)
Running time
113 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.9 million[2]
Box office$6.6 million (original release)
$12.9 million (re-releases)[3]

Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 American Christmas musical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Divided into a series of seasonal vignettes, starting with Summer 1903, it relates the story of a year in the life of the Smith family in St. Louis leading up to the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (most commonly referred to as the World's Fair) in the spring of 1904.[4][5] The film stars Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, Marjorie Main, June Lockhart and Joan Carroll. The film was adapted by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe from a series of short stories by Sally Benson originally published in The New Yorker magazine called "The Kensington Stories"[6] and later in novel form as Meet Me in St. Louis. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, who met Garland on the set and later married her. Tony Award-winning designer Lemuel Ayers served as the film's art director.[7]

Upon its release, Meet Me in St. Louis was both a critical and a commercial success. It became the second-highest-grossing film of 1944, behind only Going My Way,[8] and was also MGM's most successful musical of the 1940s. In 1994, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Garland debuted the standards "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", all written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the film, and all of which became hits after the film was released. The film's producer Arthur Freed also wrote and performed one of the songs.

  1. ^ "Meet Me in St. Louis". American Film Institute. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  2. ^ The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study
  3. ^ Box Office Information for Meet Me in St. Louis. The Numbers. Retrieved August 27, 2013.
  4. ^ Variety film review; November 1, 1944, page 10.
  5. ^ Harrison's Reports film review; November 4, 1944, page 178.
  6. ^ Schatz, Thomas (1989). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0805046666.
  7. ^ Arnold Saint-Subber (September 11, 1955). "Obituary: Lemuel Ayers". The New York Times.
  8. ^ "American Movies: Top 5 Box Office Hits, 1939 to 1988: Latter-day Saint Contributions". Ldsfilm.com. Retrieved November 18, 2022.