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Monday, December 19, 2011


Part Two of Meet Me In St. Louis

My greatest pleasure in St. Louis' Halloween section has always been the Braukoffs, having grown up in a neighborhood with latter-day counterparts in abundance. An all-time fave-for-me shot is Tootie’s first glimpse through their window (seated Mrs. Braukoff is a particularly frightful image). I grew up near several houses as forbidding and might readily have imagined certain of my neighbors with boxes of dead cats. The Braukoffs seem less sinister than people who just want to be left alone. Ann and I talked a lot about them after watching Meet Me In St. Louis. She felt they were more sinned against than sinning, and might have been more sociable had the community not ostracized them so.


As it is, we get the impression that the Braukoffs have run out of patience with Kensington Avenue youth well before Tootie comes knocking at their door. In view of the couple's standing among neighbors, it probably comes as no surprise to Mr. Braukoff that she would throw flour in his face. For characters that appear so fleetingly, I’ve expended more thought on the Braukoffs than anyone else in Meet Me In St. Louis, maybe just for having encountered so many ominous (and maybe misunderstood?) figures like them.


Vincente Minnelli Directing The Halloween Sequence

Halloween concludes with a nicely disturbing segment wherein Tootie accuses John Truett of tearing open her lip. Meet Me In St. Louis at this point seems to be spiraling toward dark direction as the child recounts what sounds like a molestation by a boy next door we’re still not quite sure about (after all, he’s made no move to kiss Esther, despite her invitation). John’s exoneration is slow in coming. We spend nearly a reel imagining the worst. For having caused the mess, Tootie becomes herself a reasonable candidate for intervention. Such hysterical behavior and subsequent tearful business as knocking down snow people would today be addressed by way of Lithium or Zoloft regimen, putting paid to talk of doll cemeteries and rivers filled with dead bodies. Result: a twenty-first century Tootie neatly lobotomized and no further cause for family alarm.


I’m still not past this business of Rose dating her brother to the Christmas dance. The way it’s set up is distinctly creep-inducing. Did these actors realize their characters were siblings? Henry H. Daniels plays Lon. This was his first film. There wouldn’t be many more, and few of those saw him credited. Daniel’s line readings are weirdly fey. When he’s finally persuaded to ask his sister to the prom, they both play it way too boy-girl for comfort. It’s always fun watching first-time viewers squirm a little during all this. Then there’s the added fill-up of Esther being fitted for her corset in the next scene. Turn off the picture and just listen to the sound next time. It’s as close as you’ll get to a moment of Judy ecstasy beyond what she conveyed singing on stage and screen.


Why couldn’t John simply borrow Grandpa’s tuxedo? That would have been too cruel, I know, but the thought always occurs to me. As it is, the old man has the number of every geek and social outcast in St. Louis. Clinton Badger, Hugo Borvis, Sydney Gorcey. Everyone’s a perfect horror, says Rose (another reason I find her largely unsympathetic). Actually, there are several Clinton Badgers in Meet Me In St. Louis. Some wear glasses and all are adjudged not good enough to dance with the Smith girls (one is unbilled Our Gang alumna Joe Cobb). Esther rigs nemesis Lucille Ballard’s dance card so that she’ll be stuck with the three pariahs. There’s a shot of them looking on with approval, from vantage point of the wallflower’s section, as Esther waltzes off happily with late-arriving John Truett. A follow-up to Meet Me In St. Louis might profitably have explored the lives of Clinton, Hugo, and Sydney, as I’ve no doubt many audience members would have more readily identified with them.


Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas as sung by Judy makes me a little weepy even when I hear it in the car. As lead-up to the big emotional meltdown and cathartic finish of Meet Me In St. Louis, this is the song remembered best from the film. That it’s become a Yule standard helps too. Part of my enduring sentiment for MMISL comes of having lucked into a brand new 16mm print in late autumn of 1976. To own such a blockbuster was as intoxicating as Christmas morning itself, especially as we scarcely had St. Louis on the syndicated tube around here. There was a space heater I ran while projecting it that glowed fireplace red. Having Meet Me In St. Louis around the house enhanced a lot of Christmases. If there was ever justification for collecting film in those days, this one supplied it. Warners' new Blu-Ray looks better than most any print, but there’s no duplicating the exhilaration of threading up a rarity seemingly unavailable to anyone else at the time. I wonder if CBS ever considered leasing St. Louis for possible Christmas runs after their 1956 success with The Wizard Of Oz. Trade press at the time doubted any oldie could do perennial duty like Oz. Nothing else was in its class, they said. Still, there might be evergreen status to this day for Meet Me In St. Louis had one of the networks elected to play it yearly for the holidays.


MGM's St. Louis street would serve as backlot shrine and setting for nostalgic themes explored by filmmakers to come. One of them was Rod Serling, who walked down Kensington and saw visions of his own Binghamton, NY upbringing. How many others responded similarly? Serling would translate his sentiment to a Twilight Zone episode called Walking Distance, wherein ad exec Gig Young reclaims simplicity of youth via time travel back to "Homewood," which could stand in for nearly anyplace one was raised during the first half of the 20th Century, being perhaps best represented by familiar street and sets that bred Meet Me In St. Louis (Young's character points out John Truett's MMISL house as the one he grew up in). The culture has changed enough by 2011 for that to no longer be the case, but for many Twilight Zone viewers in 1959 at least, there was, in those St. Louis false-fronts, cherished link back to lives of their own.

11 Comments:

Blogger Mike Cline said...

Referring to the pic of the Braukoffs and their dog, I couldn't help but notice how much this shot resembles the shot in GONE WITH THE WIND with the ladies sitting in Mrs. Meade's parlor, while the men are out skirmishing on Decatur Road.




Re: The Twilight Zone

Much of the episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" takes place in Andy Hardy's front yard.

8:59 AM  
Blogger MDG14450 said...

This is another one that I know I should watch but have a hard time getting past my general hatred of musicals. Always tempted, though, back since an 80s article on John Carpenter referred to the opening of Halloween as a syntheses of the Psycho and the snowman scene in this.

12:37 PM  
Anonymous Paul Duca said...

Presumably, kids are growing up in that same geographic place today...the MGM backlot was developed into condominiums.

1:25 PM  
Anonymous Bob said...

Always loved this movie ... but it was always an oddly love-hate relationship. I really like Leon Ames (poor Mary Astor is wasted), but I had the feeling that the internal dramatics were driven by some teenage girls I didn't like very much...

I interview Margaret O'Brien onstages years ago at a film convention. I thought she was slightly ... unhinged!

4:30 PM  
Anonymous DBenson said...

Always did wonder about that tuxedo business. I just assumed I was missing some nuance that rendered it logical. Now I'm guessing somebody came up with the scene of Judy "magically" changing partners and they hacked together a few lines of dialogue to set it up.

At times it seems the film is all about finding false alarms for poor Judy to be upset and then relieved about: Boyfriend misses the trolley (but catches up); is accused of slugging kid sister (but cleared); bails on dance (but shows up). Then there's the central issue of moving away. Dad simply calls it off with no evident consequences.

It's almost like a series of old sitcom episodes, where every minor confusion ends with everybody happy and exactly where they were before, ready for the next episode. Then again, maybe that's by design. During the war there must have been a hunger for such a safe, predictable world.

5:15 PM  
Blogger Tom Ruegger said...

Margaret O'Brien steals this movie. I think she what makes this film special and lasting.

11:15 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer shares some further thoughts on MMISL:


"Meet Me in St. Louis" is a very special movie musical because it doesn’t try to create a spun candy sort of world. The turn of the century must have seemed an intensely nostalgic period for a country entering the last months of World War II, a time of peace and plenty. Everywhere, the Axis powers were in retreat, but the war was still hard going at home and abroad. The Battle of the Bulge and the invasion of the Phillippines were just a month away when the movie was released, and the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa would be fought early the following year. It would have been tempting to go for some “laffs,” as so many pictures were during this period, but Vincente Minnelli understood that the gaiety people sought was in the midst of uncertainty and darkness. He also understood that if this was especially pronounced at that particular time, still, there was never any other time entirely without it.To acknowledge this aspect of life would make the characters deeper and more affecting and the hopeful denouement more real, as indeed, it did. “Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas,” wasn’t in the style of the music of 1903, but the sentiment is timeless. Always, it seems, we have to struggle through somehow, and find that happiness we sought not now, but at another time and, finally, when time itself is no more.



The film is also remarkable for the character of “Tootie” and the way Margaret O’Brien plays her. It seems so rare to find a child or adolescent in pictures of the time who is really like a child or an adolescent. So often they seem like little dolls, without lives or fears, or even worse, like small adults. Andy Hardy might have been an amusing character, but he was a comedian who never saw his father cry. Tootie, however, dwelled within that strange realm between her imagination and a world she was just beginning to learn about, between the comfort of a warm kitchen or the embrace of a loving mother or sister, and the darkness filled with ghoulies and ghastlies and things that go bump in the night. "Curse of the Cat People" had been released just a few months before with its own melancholic take on childhood. It would be interesting to know if that small picture intended for quick play dates and double-billing had an affect on this much more prestigous one. Margaret O’Brien is so touching, however, that much credit must go both to her, for the instrument she was, and for the way in which Minnelli used her. She is emotionally transparent, with every eddy or disturbance immediately apparent and true to her character. There are performances to compare to it— Joan Fontaine’s superb realization of Tessa in "The Constant Nymph," Ann Carter in "Curse of the Cat People," and Peggy Ann Garner in "Jane Eyre" — but few others.



Daniel

8:09 AM  
Blogger Mike Cline said...

Had to look at today's MARNIE masthead twice and ask myself, "Who are these people?"

9:29 AM  
Blogger Linwood said...

Margaret O'Brien was not especially pretty (like Judy), so perhaps she had to be a better actor than most of her "doll-like" contemporaries. Despite my aversion to most musicals, your observations have convinced me that I'll have to take another look at this one, for it's dark side.

8:42 AM  
Blogger Tom Ruegger said...

Thanks, Dan Mercer, for your beautiful analysis of Margaret O'Brien's performance in MMISL. I think her Tootie makes it into the top five kid performances in the history of Hollywood. They got more than a great performance from her -- they got a genuine kid living in the moment -- on film. Miraculous.

8:00 PM  
Anonymous heather said...

Thanks for your posts! I really enjoyed them. I've always been fascinated by--and mostly felt sorry for--the Braukoffs too, so it's nice to see that somebody else felt similarly.

Tootie's darkness is what makes this movie, in my opinion. Without it, it would have been very easy for the whole thing to get too cloyingly sweet or (due to the Garland/Bremer plots) lightweight, but her wonderful weirdness balances out the rest of it, and grounds it a little bit. It's a perfect recipe.

4:04 AM  

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