Country: United States
Language: English

Presented as part of the 2023 edition of Holiday Classics.

About the film:

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.

Nominated for four Academy Awards, Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien star in this heartwarming tale famous for musical numbers seamlessly embedded into the narrative—an innovation at the time for Hollywood—including “The Trolley Song”, “The Boy Next Door”, and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1994.

“a fine-tuned, pastel romp, worthy of its place among the best of the big brass Hollywood musicals”

—Luke Parker for Film Inquiry

Images courtesy of Warner Bros.

About the filmmaker:

Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director who helmed the classical musicals Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Director. Before he was one of the leading directors at MGM, Minnelli grew up performing with his family’s traveling theater company and settled in Delaware, Ohio, before attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He honed his craft as a photographer and costume designer before working his way up to stage director in New York City, catching the eye of major Hollywood studios.

Meet Me In St. Louis 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, and is a perfect introduction to the director described by French journal Cahiers du Cinéma as “an artist who could give substance to the world of dreams.”

MAJOR SUPPORT
Ohio Arts Council
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Columbus Foundation
Campus Partners
National Endowment for the Arts

WITH HELP FROM
G&J Pepsi
WOSU Public Media