We
are closing in on the big day and
haven’t honored some of the greatest
secular songs from the Golden Age of American Christmas Music. In particular we have been remiss in
failing to share the greatest
performance of a modern Holiday
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.
As
the Coronavirus pandemic resurges
and rages yet again, the throat
catching melancholy of Garland’s performance
is more resonate than ever.
In
some ways the role of the second daughter Esther of the
comfortably middle class St. Louis Smith
family was a step back for
Garland to the juvenile parts in
which she had gained she had gained fame.
She had finally broken through
to be cast as a young woman in Presenting
Lilly Mars. But here 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.”
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-aged
director fell in love on the set and were soon married.
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 nearly—but not quite—matched the original.
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