DIRECTOR: Vincente Minnelli
JUDY GARLAND’S BEST FILM
Produced by Arthur Freed for MGM, this greatest of all movie musicals contains no explicit gay plot, yet it radiates queerness from every frame. With the extraordinarily stylish direction of Vincente Minnelli, three classic songs by gay songwriter Hugh Martin (with his partner Ralph Blane), musical arrangements by the indispensable Roger Edens, and the glorious costumes of Irene Sharaff, the film has GAY written all over it. A favorite of gay men since its December 1944 premiere, it features Judy Garland in her first fully adult role—and she looks breathtaking in Sharaff’s designs, set against Lemuel Ayers’s lovingly detailed early‑20th‑century interiors and George Folsey’s sumptuous Technicolor cinematography.
Structured as a series of seasonal vignettes beginning in the summer of 1903, the film follows a year in the life of the Smith family of St. Louis, leading up to the opening of the 1904 World’s Fair. Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe adapted the screenplay from Sally Benson’s stories originally published in The New Yorker. The cast is a dream ensemble: Mary Astor and Leon Ames as the parents; Garland, Lucille Bremer, Joan Carroll, and Margaret O’Brien as the children; Tom Drake as the boy next door; June Lockhart as a neighbor; Harry Davenport as the grandfather; and Marjorie Main as the family’s stalwart cook.
Garland gets to introduce three of her most iconic songs, all by Martin and Blane:
- The Trolley Song
- The Boy Next Door
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
