The Chris Moeller Archives

"Right here where we live, right here in St. Louis!"

Allow me to be the first to wish you and yours a very merry Christmas. I'm a big fan of this holiday. In Spanish, you might know, "Christmas" means "more Chris." Anyway, the warmth of the season got me to thinking about my favorite holiday picture-- the 1944 MGM classic "Meet Me in St. Louis," starring Judy Garland.

Released during that magical year of the all-St. Louis "Streetcar" World Series between the National League Cardinals and the American League Browns, the film also arrived in theaters in time for the 40th anniversary of the 1904 World's Fair, which had been held at St. Louis' Forest Park. Set just before that real historic spectacle in late 1903, the film depicts the Smith family-- mom, dad, four daughters, son, grandpa, and a maid-- that live in one of those over-sized, beautiful Victorian homes that still stand in St. Louis' Central West End. The fetching Garland is at her ripest as the second-oldest daughter, Esther (the Denise Huxtable), of the Smith clan. On the set, the actress would fall in love with, and later marry, the film's director, Vincente Minnelli, and their daughter Liza would forever call this her favorite film of either of her parents. The youngest Smith sister is played by Margaret O'Brien, who would win an Oscar for this performance at the age of seven. During the film, the juvenile character announces herself memorably as "lucky enough to be born in her favorite city."

The dramatic arc of "Meet Me in St. Louis" involves the patriarch Alonzo Smith (yes, he's Lon, or Lonnie Smith, if you please) accepting a job in New York City that will force him to uproot the entire family. The children are devastated at the news. They will have to leave their friends, a pair of budding romances for the older girls, and St. Louis itself-- and just before the arrival of the World's Fair-- that is, the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The movie re-introduced the title song (still popular with Busch Stadium organists), and introduced several memorable new songs-- "The Boy Next Door," (or "The Girl Next Door," if you're a heterosexual male with a rich baritone like Crosby, Sinatra or Moeller), "The Trolley Song" (re-popularized later by the Sweeney Sisters on "Saturday Night Live"), and at the very end of the film, the true holiday evergreen "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which is sung mournfully by Garland to a weeping, already homesick O'Brien on Christmas Eve.

It's impossible to see that pained face of O'Brien-- as little Tootie Smith-- without lamenting the real-life fates of the children of Albert Pujols. Their famous first baseman father, like Alonzo Smith, is forcing his family to leave St. Louis for what he defines as a "better" job because it pays him more money, promising the little ones in effect that "next year all (their) troubles will be miles away." Yet as Tootie proclaims, "you can't do anything (there) like you do in St. Louis." How indeed will Santa Claus know how to find them? And heaven have pity on the snowman you try to build in Anaheim, California.

Unlike "Meet Me in St. Louis," there will not be a happy ending to our modern story. A long-term contract has been signed. The Pujols' father, unlike Alonzo Smith, won't come to recognize that "St. Louis is headed for a boom that will make your head spin" until it's much, much too late. It's a Christmas story that's not uplifting at all. It's worthy of neither the enchanting Judy Garland nor MGM's glorious Technicolor. No, it's more like a classic Warner Brothers picture about a tragic fall from grace. The four Pujols children will now just have to muddle through somehow.

To all a good night.

posted by CM @ 7:53 AM