Apparently,
the French are the only people who pronounce St. Louis without an s. Consider,
for instance, the Louis kings of France. You most likely think Louis with a
French accent. The folks who settled St. Louis in 1764, Pierre Laclède and
Auguste Chouteau, may have assumed that the city (named after Louis IX) would
have always kept its proper pronunciation.
Missourians,
however, identify you as an outsider if you leave off the s in
the name of their beloved St. Louis. It's St. Louis (“lou-is”), and
that’s that.
Regrettably
for me, I've visited St. Louis once only (other than the airport).
That was over thirty years ago, yet the impression the city made on me has
endured as if it were yesterday.
Ascending the massive Gateway
Arch was one of my life’s all-time highs, no pun intended. The first
people to move up the 630-foot structure on the western bank of the
Mississippi River did so in 1967 when it opened to the public. It remains
the highest man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere in 2015. (At
least ten other structures in the world are currently built higher. The
tallest, the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, stands at 2,722 feet.)
A striking
45,000 sq. ft. Museum of Westward Expansion is built at the base of the Gateway
Arch. President Jefferson understood America’s survival as an self-sufficient
nation as successful expansion into the lands west of the
Mississippi River. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase increased the size of the
United States by 100%. It extended from Canada to the north to New
Orleans to the south; from the Mississippi River to the east and to the Rocky
Mountains to the west. I was especially
impressed by the history and, well, the expansiveness of the museum.
1903 was
the 100th year after the Louisiana Purchase and naturally, St. Louis was chosen
to host the celebration. The Louisiana
Purchase Exposition or 1904 World’s Fair opened the next year. At the time, St. Louis was a city of over
half a million people and significant corporations such as Ralston-Purina and
Anheuser-Busch were founded there. The much-anticipated World’s Fair was built
on 1,400 acres of land with 1,500 buildings. Nearly 20,000,000 people attended
the fair during the seven months it was open. The 1904 Olympic Games were also
held at the same time, but the fanfare was unspectacular. Apparently, Puffed Wheat
and Dr. Pepper, both which debuted during the fair, were much more exciting and
overshadowed the sports competitions.
My list of
beloved Christmas movies (among those my family finds especially annoying, such
as Love Actually) includes National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Trapped
in Paradise, and standards like White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street,
and the other usual suspects. As early as Thanksgiving weekend, a more
recent favorite film, the Family Stone (2005) finds its way onto my DVD
player just as it has found its way into my heart and to the very top of my
must-sees.
One of the
scenes in The Family Stone is a cut from the brilliant Technicolor film, Meet
Me in St. Louis. In one scene, Judy
Garland (playing Esther in the Smith family) sings to her littlest
sister in an effort to cheer the five-year old up.
Garland croons Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in
especially poignant way. In yet a different scene, Esther dances
with her grandfather to the orchestral music of Auld Lang Syne. Both film
cuts portend the grief that the New Year will bring to the Stone family,
just as they are touching scenes in Meet Me in St. Louis.
Shortly
after Christmas, the Smith family is about to move to New York,
a decision their father has rashly made that will effectively
ruin all four of his daughters’ lives. But it’s Christmas Eve and the
ballroom in the fine house is elegant, the handsome, young
gentlemen are plentiful, and Judy Garland and her gorgeous red dress are lovely
and memorable.
Judy
Garland’s performance was considered as somewhat her debut as
the beautiful woman she had become. She had left her awkward
childhood and adolescence behind at 21. Director Vincent Minelli
was equally as enchanted. He and Garland were married the
next year, in 1945.
Meet Me in
St. Louis was based on short stories by Sally Benson. They were
published in a series of vignettes in The New Yorker between June of 1941
and May of 1942. The eight-part series titled 5135 Kensington was based on
Benson’s childhood growing up on St. Louis' fashionable Kensington Avenue. Four
stories were added to the collection and an entire book was published
by Random House as Meet Me in St. Louis just as the as the movie script was
being finalized. A copy of the hard-to-find book is in the Minuteman Library
Network's catalog.
Interestingly,
the film was not actually shot in St. Louis but was filmed in a large back lot
of the MGM studios in Culver City (near Hollywood.) Large Victorian houses were constructed on a
fictitious grand avenue to replicate the Kensington
Avenue neighborhood of 1904. Author Sally
Benson approved the interior and exterior designs. The interior of the
house is exquisite and the luxury of the day is not lost. In fact, it’s easy to
imagine Kensington Avenue in Norwood at the turn of the 20th Century – the home
of George Morrill, benefactor of the Morrill Memorial Library was very similar.
The film
was remade for television in 1966 and the Broadway musical debuted in 1989 and
successfully ran in New York for one year.
Two songs, Meet Me in St. Louis (written in 1904) and the Trolley Song
(“ding, ding, dong goes the trolley” written for the film in 1944) became great
hits along with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The film is
considered Judy Garland’s most memorable one after The Wizard of Oz.
It made massive profits for MGM. Certainly,
moviegoers have loved it for over 70 years; it is
a favorite among those of us who meet each other in St. Louis for the
Christmas season every year.
