Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.
We are
closing in on the big day and it’s
way past time to honor the greatest
performance of a modern secular
Christmas song ever. Period. No
arguments. The crown goes to Judy Garland singing Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Margaret O’Brien in the 1944 film classic Meet Me in St. Louis.
In some
ways the part of the second daughter
Esther of the comfortably middle
class St. Louis Smith family was a step back for Garland from the juvenile parts where she had gained
fame. She had finally broken through
being cast as a young woman in Presenting
Lilly Mars. But she was back to
playing a love struck high school girl.
On the
other hand producer Arthur Freed was
planning to biggest MGM musical to
date in Technicolor and directed by studio ace Vincent Minelli. In addition to Garland and O’Brien—the most
popular child star since Shirley Temple the cast included Mary Astor as Mother, Leon Ames at Father, Louise Bremmer as older sister Rose,
and Tom Drake as the boy next door. It also featured solid support by veteran
character actors Henry Davenport, Marjorie Main, and Chill Wills.
The
film was adapted from auto-biographical short stories by Sally Benson, originally published in The
New Yorker. It was divided into
a series of seasonal vignettes,
starting with Summer 1903 of a year in the life of the Smith family in St.
Louis, leading up to the opening of the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition—the St. Louis
World’s fair in the spring of 1904.
Journeyman songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were commissioned to write
songs for the film, although other composers
were also expected to add numbers including Boys and Girls Like You and Me by
Rodgers & Hammerstein original written for their Broadway musical Oklahoma! but cut prior to its opening. The same fate befell the song when Minnelli
reluctantly cut it because the film was running long. Martin and Blane’s contributions became
American classics and standards—The Trolley Song, The Boy Next
Door and of course the Christmas song all sung by Garland.
Judy
Garland herself intervened to demand
important changes to the lyric of Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Martin’s
original lyrics began, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your
last / Next year we may all be living in the past.” She recognized that it was way too depressing
to sing to the inconsolable child mourning
the imminent departure of the family from St. Louis to New York City. “I’ll look
like a sadist,” Garland complained. The words were changed to the now familiar “Have
yourself a merry little Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on your
troubles will be out of sight.”
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Garland was never more appealing or vulnerable than in this famous serenade.
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A performer herself since the age of 3
and understanding the pressure that stage parents and the studio put children through, Garland
formed a special protective bond
with young Margaret O’Brien and spent much of her time off camera with the
girl. It was a memory they would both
treasure and often talk about.
Garland
never looked lovelier than she did
in this film with her hair dyed auburn and
smitten director Minnelli literally caressed
her face on screen. The young actress
and the middle age director fell in love on the set and were soon married.
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In 1966 Garland reprised the song on her CBS Television series singing it to here younger children.n Lorna and Joey Luft. The episode is the most down-loaded of the shows on YouTube.
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Many
other versions of the song have been recorded.
Frank Sinatra had lyricist Martin
revise the words to “lighten them up” from the still melancholy version sung by Garland for his 1957 album A
Jolly Christmas. The only
version to come near to the power of Garland’s performance was by The Carpenters from the 1978 album Christmas
Portrait. Karen Carpenter in
The Carpenters the 1978 album Christmas
Portrait nearly—but not quite—matched the original.
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