Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

The Smith family lives in idealistic 1903 St. Louis, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have problems. Serious problems like how can Ester (Judy Garland) get the boy next door to propose if they haven’t even been introduced? And can sister Rose get her boyfriend to propose over that new-fangled tele-phone contraption? Also, where has Tootie buried all of her dead dolls?

Meet Me in St. Louis is a nostalgic, feel-good, high production piece of fluff. Therefore, it was a huge success. The big song is Judy’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas which, unlike the others, has real meaning in the story. Here also is where The Trolly Song comes from, later made famous by the Sweeney Sisters.

The inciting incident comes past the halfway point. With a variety of personal issues in play, dad announces that they will move to New York City. Why live in a gorgeous Victorian in picturesque St. Louis when you can live in a Manhattan tenement? It’s a great opportunity, after all. Everyone must come to terms with this change while celebrating their last Christmas in St. Louis. This is the context of Judy’s song. Tootie doesn’t respond well.

Mary Astor plays Mom and she was hard to recognize, both in appearance and manner. Marjorie Main (Ma Kettle) played the maid. She wasn't hard to recognize. June Lockhart and Hugh Marlowe had tiny roles, but we must talk about Tootie.

Margaret O’Brien at 6 was already an established child star, so her momager decided the studio should pay her accordingly. The studio immediately responded by announcing that the part would go to the daughter of an electrician. The O’Brien’s held out and ended up with the contract they wanted. The electrician responded by dropping lighting equipment from a catwalk near where Margaret was standing. Hollywood is such a warm and inviting place.

The investment in O’Brien certainly paid off for the studio. She just about steals the show and was awarded a juvenile academy award. The same movie framed around her character would have been very interesting. The Halloween segment was, well, quite unexpected. The kids of the town are left to their own devices where they build a bonfire with stolen patio furniture, and throw flour in the face of adults they hate. The talk of hate and blood and murder from the youngest two Smith daughters was delightfully out of place.

But this is Judy’s film and a big hit for her, despite her hairstyle looking like she is hiding horns. And her acting ... wasn’t terrible. Perhaps the lack of gravity in her performance was masked by the mannered style of period costume dramas. The film has only slightly more realism than Oz. Her difficulty on set is an early example of the pill problem that would eventually take her life. At 22 the lines in her face were starting to appear. In the end she pulled out some pretty good performances and would go on to marry the ugly director, twice her age.

Meet Me in St. Louis is the kind of film that it is. Everything is perfectly lit, the colors supersaturated, and all characters, regardless of the circumstance, are impeccably costumed, styled, and made up. But the morbidity of the two youngest sisters is shockingly out of place. Out of place, but oddly not unwelcome. Were it all glitzy confection, it would have less appeal. As such, AMRU 4. It is a delightful piece of fluff.

“It'll take me at least a week to dig up all my dolls in the cemetery.”

In The Good Old Summertime (1949)

A remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), now set in an 1890’s American music shop, and with color, songs, and Judy Garland! What could be better? The original, in every way.

Let’s make a few things clear. Technicolor does not necessarily make a film better, the songs were tedious, and Judy was a poor actress. But let’s give it some credit. The change of setting was a good idea. A music show makes sense given that it’s now a musical. It’s nice to see the older Buster Keaton get a paycheck. Van Johnson wasn’t a terrible substitute for Jimmy Stewart and Judy should have been an improvement on the forgettable Margaret Sullavan. So what went wrong?

It is an almost scene by scene remake of the original excluding the most dramatic parts! The tone was all wrong giving it a more comedic, almost slapstick quality. We are not charmed when the love interests are introduced. I was annoyed. We are left with the formula of add nothing except forgettable songs, subtract much of the charm and drama, and replace actors with poor substitutes. Cuddles Sakall might work in small roles but he was not up to the task of taking on Frank Morgan. And let’s face it. Ernst Lubitsch was the master.

In The Good Old Summertime is not remembered as one of Judy’s best, but fans will like it because that’s what they do. Given my druthers I would have watched Meet Me in St. Louis this season but a DVR issue sabotaged that idea. And after watching this and The Clock, I think I’m done with Judy for a while. If anything good came from this experience, it’s realizing how much I actually like The Shop Around the Corner. AMRU 2.

The Clock (1945)

A serviceman (Robert Walker) in New York on a 48 hour leave bumbles into a young woman (Judy Garland) and coerces her into showing him around town. Despite her better judgement and a total lack of chemistry, he monopolizes all of her free time. Will love bloom?

Robert Walker is better known, to me at least, for his performance in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (Criss Cross), whose premiere he barely lived long enough to see. His hyper-innocent lost puppy dog character in The Clock was reminiscent of his upbeat psychopath on the Train.

Judy is a Hollywood legend, one I have yet to fully appreciate. Despite her legend status she appeared in only 34 feature films, nine with Mickey Rooney. I have a couple of her better films on my life list (this is the second of her films I have seen) but a movie-a-day calendar recommended The Clock. Primarily a singer, this is one of only three films where she does not sing. I’m not sure if that would have saved it. Like her co-star, Judy’s life was cut short by a toxic lifestyle. Our two leads would live to the ripe old age of 79, combined.

Prolific character actor James Gleason has a memorable scene with his real-life wife. A veteran of 135 films over thirty years, he has appeared in four films I’ve seen prior. Keenan Wynn had an amusing scene as a drunk. He has popped up in many movies.

I’m just going to come out and say it. Judy wasn’t much of an actress. She was charming and cute, but I don’t see any reason why her Alice would fall in love with Walker’s Joe. In fact there were more than enough red flags. If your relationship begins anything like how this film depicts, run. Fast.

The Clock is a somewhat amusing non-com romance that some will be charmed with, but not me. It drags in parts, lacks an emotional hook, and the leads have no chemistry. Maybe that’s because Judy was screwing the director. AMRU 2.5.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Initially I had little interest in covering movies like this, wanting to focus on movies I HAVEN'T seen, but it was on TBS the other day, and what the hell ...

Just about everyone has seen the Wizard. It has become part of our cultural language. It has been referenced, spoofed, and copied in more places than can be counted. The movie connections link on IMDb goes on and on, and I'm certain I can find references that were missed. But, for the benthic organisms in the audience, allow me to summarize the story.

Hot chick runs away from home and finds a lonely old con man and says she wants to run away with him. He, for reasons that escape me, convinces her to go home. During a tornado, no less. She returns home and cannot find her family. She gets knocked on the head and falls asleep. She wakes in the technicolor land of Oz. Midgets and a drag queen tell her that a lonely old con man might help her get home, so she goes looking for him after stealing the shoes of a woman she killed.

Along the way she meets up with three magical creatures, one that represents a heartless father figure, another a mindless sack of hay, and a third the courage to do the deed. After a pit stop in an opium den and an experience with some "snow", they arrive at the Emerald City to beg free gifts from the wizard. He asks for an old woman's broom in exchange.

Off they go to steal the broom from the sister of the murdered woman. After the hot chick is captured by flying monkeys, the magical creatures go in to save her. During the rescue the hot chick dumps acid on the old woman, killing her. The guards quickly realize that they aren't going to get paid anymore, so they let her plunder the castle.

The con man of Oz tries to renege on his agreement, so the magical creatures rough him up. They get their booty, but before the hot chick gets safe passage back to Kansas (seriously, she wants to go to Kansas), he makes his escape in a hot air balloon. Just then the drag queen from earlier arrives to tell her he's been jerking her around the whole time and she always could have gone home, phych! Meanwhile, the magical creatures take control of Oz and rule it with an iron fist.

I have a few observations from this viewing. While there are many elements that make this movie work, one I don't think gets enough attention is the work of Margaret Hamilton. As Elmira Gulch, she's a nasty bitch. As the Wicked Witch, she deliciously evil. An unattractive woman, even in complementary makeup, Hamilton was captivating in every scene she was in. If there could have been any acting awards (there weren't, let's be serious), it would have been for her. I would totally buy her crappy coffee. I will say, however, that the witch constantly calling Dorothy "pretty" made me uncomfortable.

One more thing. Early in the film, Glinda establishes that only bad witches are ugly. She then proceeds to ask Dorothy if she is a good witch or a bad witch. Hmmmm. Sounds to me like the old lady had an axe to grind.

AFI called it the number one fantasy film. I don't know about that. Premiere Magazine, however, rated it as one of the 20 most overrated films of all time. That may be so, but it's still a good movie. While watching it I wondered if the Wizard of Oz would have been the Wizard of Oz, if it weren't the Wizard of Oz. Something to think about. AMRU 4. You must see it again. You have no choice.