Saturday, December 18, 2010

CHRISTMAS MOVIE TRIVIA … MEET ME IN ST LOUIS

 

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1.    Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland met on this movie, and married soon afterwards. Minnelli was the director for the film. Garland claimed she married him because she felt extremely beautiful during the film.
2.    Director Vincente Minnelli worked hard to make the movie as accurate to the times as possible. Not only did its novelist, Sally Benson, give explicit directions as to the decor of her home down to the last detail, but the movie's costume designer took inspiration for many of the movies costumes right out of the Sears & Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, and Marshall Fields catalogs from the time period.

3.    Judy Garland recorded "The Trolley Song" in a single take. "The Trolley Song" was inspired by a caption in a book about the history of St. Louis. The book had a page with a picture of a turn-of-the-century trolley car, captioned "Clang! Clang! Clang! went the jolly little trolley."

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4.    The success of the film had encouraged MGM to create further movies involving the Smith family and was to be based on further tales of Sally Benson's family. MGM wanted to make sort of a deluxe color group of serials in the spirit of the popular "Andy Hardy" series. A proposed sequel titled "Meet Me in Manhattan" was in the works in which the Smith family actually moved to New York. (This happened in real life to Sally Benson's family.) However, the project never got out of planning stages and the film was never made.

5.    Judy Garland scoffed at the idea of portraying yet another teenager (she was 21 when filming began) and wanted nothing to do with the film. Her mother even went to MGM chief Louis B. Mayer on her behalf. However, Vincente Minnelli convinced her to play the part of Esther Smith, and Judy later fell in love with the story. In her later years she considered it one of her favorite roles.

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6.    "The Trolley Song" was ranked #26 and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was ranked #72 by the American Film Institute in 2004 on the 100 Greatest Songs in American Films list.  In "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", Judy Garland refused to sing the grim original line, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last" to little Margaret O'Brien. The line was dropped from the final version of the song.

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7.    The street on which the Smith home stood was built specifically for "Meet Me in St. Louis." Located on MGM's vast Backlot #3 that was at Jefferson and Overland Boulevards in Culver City,it was known at the studio as "St. Louis Street" and all of the houses that were on it were used in various film and television shows throughout the next 27 years, until Lot 3 was demolished to make way for an apartment and condominium project. Even in 1970, the last year of Lot 3's existence, the Smith home still looked like it did in 1944, minus the set dressings, of course.

8.    The Broadway stage version of "Meet Me In St. Louis" opened at the George Gershwin Theatre on November 2, 1989, ran for 252 performances and for nominated for the 1990 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Book and Score.

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9.    Also going on at the time of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition were the Third Summer Olympic Games. They were the first Olympic Games to be held in the United States. Originally awarded to Chicago, President Theodore Roosevelt had the Games switched to St. Louis so that they would run at the same time as the World's Fair. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The Games merely became a side attraction to the fair's other events and turned out to be a first class disaster. They took nearly six months to complete and were very poorly run. Many competitors went to their graves without knowing that they had competed in the Olympics. As a result of these Games, the Olympic movement almost came to an end.

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10.    The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition has been claimed by some to be the birthplace of the ice cream cone.

 

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