Featuring Judy Garland’s wistful rendition of the instant classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis is a soulful and exquisitely beautiful technicolor ode to family, home, and tradition. Made during WWII, but set four decades earlier, the film chronicles four seasons in the life of the close-knit Smith family as they navigate everyday joys and disappointments while eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair. While her older brother Lon Jr. prepares to leave for Princeton, her older sister Rose waits for an overdue marriage proposal and her precocious younger sister Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) causes mischief, seventeen-year-old Esther Smith (Judy Garland) finds herself falling in love with the boy-next-door. When their father announces that he is moving the family to New York, the Smiths must decide if they are willing to give up the charm of small-town life in St. Louis in exchange for the glamour of the big city. Warm and lovingly detailed with with a gentle undercurrent of melancholy, Meet Me in St. Louis‘s portrait of a family in transition hints at the upheavals of wartime while offering a nostalgic, rose-colored vision of togetherness and abundance.
View our open exhibitions at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. From delicate glass pieces to painted portraits, we have everything you are interested in.
