"Meet Me in St. Louis" is Judy's Garland's film and nobody else. Producer Arthur Freed and Director Vincente Minnelli lavish Garland with plush Technicolor, great tunes and photography that showcases Judy in a way that she had never been seen. She was never more beautiful on screen.The story centers around the affluent Smith family of St. Louis: Father Alonzo (Leon Ames), Mother Anna (Mary Astor in an inspired bit of casting), daughters Esther (Garland), Rose Lucille Bremer), Agnes (Joan Carroll) and cutsie Tootie (Margaret O'Brien). Also there is Lon Jr. Henry H. Daniels Jr., Grandpa (Harry Davenport) and the maid Katie (Marjorie Main). They all live in a palatial mansion, wear all the latest fashions and generally live lives that few of us could imagine.The time is 1903 six months before the opening of the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. Esther and Rose are looking for husbands. Rose has her eye on New York socialite Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully) and Esther on the boy next door John Truett (Tom Drake), who doesn't seem to have any family but lives in an equally palatial mansion. Tootie and Agnes are up to no good on Halloween. As the year ends, Alonzo announces that he is moving the family to New York. everyone becomes despondent. But at the last moment..........................The songs in this film are memorable. Tunes such as "The Boy Next Door", Clang, Clang Clang Goes the Trolley" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" have since gone on to become classics. Garland pretty much has center stage all to herself. There is no "A" list leading man for example, to detract from her performance. She sings all of the songs and sings them well.Garland and Minnelli would soon become an item and would eventually marry resulting in daughter Liza Minnelli. None of the supporting players would achieve major stardom except for a bit player who played the Iceman: Chill Wills.

BEWARE OF FALSE REVIEWS & REVIEWERS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME. NOW WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE MOVIE. IF ITS A NEGATIVE REVIEW THEN THEY MIGHT HAVE A GRUDGE AGAINST THE FILM . NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 300 HOLIDAY FILMS & SPECIALS. I HAVE NO AGENDAThe backdrop for Meet Me in St. Louis is St. Louis, Missouri in the year leading up to the 1904 World's Fair.It is summer 1903. The Smith family leads a comfortable upper-middle class life. Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) and his wife Anna (Mary Astor) have four daughters: Rose (Lucille Bremer), Esther (Judy Garland), Agnes (Joan Carroll), and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien); and a son, Lon Jr. (Henry H. Daniels, Jr.). Esther, the second eldest daughter, is in love with the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake), although he does not notice her at first. Rose is expecting a phone call in which she hopes to be proposed to by Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully).Esther finally gets to meet John properly when he is a guest at the Smiths' house party, although her chances of romancing him don't go to plan when, after all the guests are gone and he is helping her turn off the gas lamps throughout the house, he tells her she uses the same perfume as his grandmother and that she has "a mighty strong grip for a girl".Esther hopes to meet John again the following Friday on a trolley ride from the city to the construction site of the World Fair. Esther is sad when the trolley sets off without any sign of him, but cheers up when she sees him running to catch the trolley mid journey.Even though the there is barely a story-line the film works. IT gets a tad slow here and there but Margret O'Brien steels every scene she is in. Judy Garland however is always a delight to watch. If you like her in this then make sure to see "In the Good Old Summertime". This film was beautifully filmed. If you can watch it on a Blu-ray.

In the year before the 1904 St Louis World's Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York.This film took me a while to warm up to. Judy Garland, the star of the film, is dressed horribly with awful hair, and frankly I find her singing voice quite atrocious. How can this be? In others films ("Wizard of Oz" and "A Star in Born") she sings so nicely. Of course, the songs in general are pretty awful in this one... not fun like other musicals (e.g. "State Fair").I would have rated the film lower, but the Halloween scene redeemed it. Kids starting fires, dumping in old furniture, and smashing people in the face with flour? Priceless.

Next to "Easter Parade", "Meet Me In St. Louis" is my favourite Judy Garland vehicle from the MGM film-factory days. Chock full of those freshly scrubbed, wholesome family values that Hollywood used to love to propagate (if not necessarily emulate), the picture is a warm, endearing fantasy with just enough realism to keep it out of the treacle jar. Opening in the summer of 1904, it starts innocently enough with Esther Smith (Judy Garland) mooning over boy next door John Truitt (Tom Drake), older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) pining for Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully) with everyone happily laughing and singing about the impending world's fair coming to St. Louis next spring. So far, so predictably good. But then the plot gets seriously leavened as we are introduced to Tootie Smith (Margaret O'Brien), the youngest sister of the clan whose girlish pranks and blood-curdling prose mix a little comedy with some genuinely mean-spirited Halloween behavior that take us to the darker side of human nature, adding some much needed sinister malevolence when it is most needed. But there's more as the plot thickens still further when patriarch Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) imperiously (albeit with the best of intentions) informs everyone, the day following Halloween, that the family is leaving St. Louis for New York. Initially laughed off, this unexpected announcement turns out to be one post-Halloween trick that is no treat as nobody, wife Anna (Mary Astor) included, is much amused. "I don't believe it!" "It's true: I'm to start the first of the year. We'll leave right after Christmas." With noteworthy attention to period detail, the film is brilliantly directed by Vincent Minnelli, trumpets some excellent acting from its ensemble cast, and includes an engaging Ralph Blane/Hugh Martin score that, for the first time in motion picture history integrates the songs directly into the plot, something pioneered for the stage a year earlier by Rodgers and Hammerstein when "Oklahoma" premiered on Broadway. Better yet, "Meet Me In St. Louis" also deftly combines Christmas candy and homespun virtue with the contemporary reality of the danger of making the business agenda, the bottom line, the sole arbitrator of what really counts, even if that wasn't the film's original purpose. Indeed, with the Smith's standing in for all of us, the movie is not just an enjoyable, warm/fuzzies romp through a bygone era. It is also a timely reminder that even the best of well intentioned actions can elicit unforeseen responses, that people, not impersonal automatons, are the final repository of all human actions, noble, imperious or mean-spirited.