# Meet Me In St. Louis....th' hell??? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 22, 2005, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092 "2005-01-22T15:44:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/1 "2005-01-22T15:44:35Z")
All these years of being a musicals fan and I’d never actually gotten around to seeing one of MGM’s most famous musicals: _Meet Me In St. Louis_. Oh, I’d seen bits and pieces here and there, and of course the “Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” are endlessly replayed, but I’d never seen the whole thing front to back. I now have. Um. :eek: If the movie was about a turn-of-the-century household having to cope with two mentally ill children, shouldn’t they have actually dealt with the issue? And if it wasn’t, why introduce the issue? The older of the two youngest daughters is dangerously violent (she threatens to stab the maid in her sleep through the heart and then chop up the corpse…and makes other, similar threats to others), a psychopathic liar (she tells people that she’s seen a neighbor murder his wife while drunk on whiskey–actually on second thought, this may have been the younger kid) and an attempted mass-murderer (the “wouldn’t it be fun to cause a trolley full of people going at about 40 miles an hour to derail and kill everyone on it” incident–and either she or her sister actually _says_ words to the effect of “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if everyone on the trolley _did_ die?” The movie makes it absolutely clear that A) they understand the concept of death and B) they were not only completely aware of the potentially lethal consequences but they were _planning for them_.) The youngest one is A) morbidly obsessed with death–not in a twee “Daddy, did Fluffy go to heaven” way, but in a Wednesday Addams sort of way. Her dolly has four fatal diseases and she goes on at great length about how she’s going to bury it (and she constantly talks about death and dying and murder). B) a psychopathic liar (she tells everyone that Judy Garland’s boyfriend beat her up when, in fact, he did nothing of the sort) and C) the aforementioned trolley incident. And the entire family thinks it’s just marvellously thrilling that the two kids are insane. They get rewarded with cake and ice cream after the family has a jolly laugh that the two kids stated that they were trying to kill about 50 people. Um. I know that musicals tend to exaggerate characteristics of people, but this seems a bit much. They’re not played as mischevious, they’re played like junior Hannibel Lectors. Look, I know times change and things that back then would have seemed mischevious (tying a firecracker to a dog’s tail) now seem horrific, but trying (and nearly succeeding) in murdering about 50 people?? That wasn’t “mischief” then and it sure isn’t now. So what’s up with the two psychotic kids? How are we supposed to take them in the context of the movie given that they’re _literally_ psychotic. As in “needs to be institutionalized.” Ok, the two youngest daughters (Tootie and Agnes) were played by some of the most awful actresses ever, but even so and even granting that the actresses couldn’t get any nuance beyond “shriek” and “pout” and “sob” there’s still their dialogue which makes it clear that their (quite literally) behavior is _intentional_ and Vincente Minnelli and Arthur Freed are good enough that I don’t think this characterization was just a sloppy oversight. This is just bizarre. Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/2 "2005-01-22T17:37:17Z")
Just a couple of high-spirited young’uns. They’ll grow out of it, just like Esther and Rose did. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/3 "2005-01-22T17:49:28Z")
Lighten up, **Fenris**. The screenplay just acknowledged what is known from common experience: that children often have morbid fascinations. The family saw through their bluster; you should too. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/4 "2005-01-22T18:20:37Z")
Morbid fascinations, fine. I agree. But acting on those fascinations, not so much… they point-blank said they’d set out to kill (their word) a large group of people and acted on it (by putting a mock-up of a body on the trolley tracks at night in hopes that the trolley would either derail as it ran over the ‘body’ or would stop suddenly and derail) and expressed disappointment when they failed–but they DID all got a jolly laugh that they’d caused hundreds or thousands of dollars of damage to the trolley, even if no-one was actually killed). And the younger kid doesn’t just talk about funerals for her dolls, she actually goes to cemeteries and buries her dolly next to real corpses and digs them up again. That ain’t normal by the standards of 1903 (when the story takes place), 1950-something (when the movie was made) or today. It just strikes me as bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/5 "2005-01-22T18:47:41Z")
It was 1944 and so in the middle of WWII. Maybe making fun of morbidity was a way to lighten up the atmosphere. Or the dummy body had a Hitler mustache. OK, I admit I’ve never seen the whole movie either. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/6 "2005-01-22T20:12:56Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > All these years of being a musicals fan and I’d never actually gotten around to seeing one of MGM’s most famous musicals: _Meet Me In St. Louis_. Oh, I’d seen bits and pieces here and there, and of course the “Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” are endlessly replayed, but I’d never seen the whole thing front to back. > > I now have. > > Um. :eek: > > If the movie was about a turn-of-the-century household having to cope with two mentally ill children, shouldn’t they have actually dealt with the issue? And if it wasn’t, why introduce the issue? > > The older of the two youngest daughters is dangerously violent (she threatens to stab the maid in her sleep through the heart and then chop up the corpse…and makes other, similar threats to others), a psychopathic liar (she tells people that she’s seen a neighbor murder his wife while drunk on whiskey–actually on second thought, this may have been the younger kid) and an attempted mass-murderer (the “wouldn’t it be fun to cause a trolley full of people going at about 40 miles an hour to derail and kill everyone on it” incident–and either she or her sister actually _says_ words to the effect of “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if everyone on the trolley _did_ die?” The movie makes it absolutely clear that A) they understand the concept of death and B) they were not only completely aware of the potentially lethal consequences but they were _planning for them_.) > > The youngest one is A) morbidly obsessed with death–not in a twee “Daddy, did Fluffy go to heaven” way, but in a Wednesday Addams sort of way. Her dolly has four fatal diseases and she goes on at great length about how she’s going to bury it (and she constantly talks about death and dying and murder). B) a psychopathic liar (she tells everyone that Judy Garland’s boyfriend beat her up when, in fact, he did nothing of the sort) and C) the aforementioned trolley incident. > > And the entire family thinks it’s just marvellously thrilling that the two kids are insane. They get rewarded with cake and ice cream after the family has a jolly laugh that the two kids stated that they were trying to kill about 50 people. Um. I know that musicals tend to exaggerate characteristics of people, but this seems a bit much. They’re not played as mischevious, they’re played like junior Hannibel Lectors. Look, I know times change and things that back then would have seemed mischevious (tying a firecracker to a dog’s tail) now seem horrific, but trying (and nearly succeeding) in murdering about 50 people?? That wasn’t “mischief” then and it sure isn’t now. > > So what’s up with the two psychotic kids? How are we supposed to take them in the context of the movie given that they’re _literally_ psychotic. As in “needs to be institutionalized.” Ok, the two youngest daughters (Tootie and Agnes) were played by some of the most awful actresses ever, but even so and even granting that the actresses couldn’t get any nuance beyond “shriek” and “pout” and “sob” there’s still their dialogue which makes it clear that their (quite literally) behavior is _intentional_ and Vincente Minnelli and Arthur Freed are good enough that I don’t think this characterization was just a sloppy oversight. > > This is just bizarre. > > Fenris “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is hardly a cheerful song considering its words and in context to the movie, much like “We Need A Little Christmas” from Mame, they were trying to squeeze some happiness from some dire circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/7 "2005-01-22T20:36:07Z")
It’s all there in Sally Benson’s autobiographical novel, too, written in 1941. Nice mixture of charming nostalgia and an acknowledgement that childhood can be terrifying and very dark, too. I thought Margaret O’Brien was brilliant in that movie, by the way! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/8 "2005-01-22T21:07:38Z")
But you’ve got to love the songs _Clang ,clang, clang went the trolley Ding, ding, ding went the bell Scream, scream, scream went the riders As they all went to go burn in Hell_ ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/9 "2005-01-22T21:41:56Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > but they DID all got a jolly laugh that they’d caused hundreds or thousands of dollars of damage to the trolley A trolley derailment was not an uncommon occurance; it happened at least [once a month](http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/hooves/6.html) in some cities. When it happened, usually a push from the combined passengers, or a pull from a nearby team of horses, was enough to put it back on the tracks. So, a trolley in 1904 cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/10 "2005-01-22T21:53:53Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > So, a trolley in 1904 cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Who knew? ’ I don’t know how much a trolley actually did cost in 1904, but I’ll point out that he did say hundreds **or** thousands, not hundreds **of** thousands. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2005, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/11 "2005-01-22T23:19:35Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > It’s all there in Sally Benson’s autobiographical novel, too, written in 1941. Nice mixture of charming nostalgia and an acknowledgement that childhood can be terrifying and very dark, too. Huh. I’d never known that it was based on a book…I’m a sucker for this sorta book (fictionalized period piece autobiographies). I’ll have to see if I can find a copy. Thanks **Eve**! > [@](#): > > I thought Margaret O’Brien was brilliant in that movie, by the way! Urk. Um. Suffice it to say that our tastes strongly differ on this particular point! 😉 😛 (As a pal of mine would say “It’d be a funny old world if we all agreed on everything.”) ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/12 "2005-01-23T00:28:52Z")
I have to admit, while I like MMISL, if you had a little girl today who ran into the backyard in the middle of the night and in a massive rage violently knocked the heads off the snowpeople, who explicitly were supposed to represent her family, you’d definitely put her into therapy toot sweet. Or at least not let her near anything sharp or heavy and blunt… ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/13 "2005-01-24T00:21:03Z")
I believe that in 1904 St. Louis no one would have called those public conveyances “trolleys”. St. Louis had “streetcars”. That was what my mother and grandmother (who was born in 1904 in St. Louis) told me. Of course, trolley works a lot better in a song than “streetcar”. ---
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/14 "2005-01-24T00:59:59Z")
> [@BobT](#): > > I believe that in 1904 St. Louis no one would have called those public conveyances “trolleys”. St. Louis had “streetcars”. That was what my mother and grandmother (who was born in 1904 in St. Louis) told me. The trivia section of the IMDb entry for Ralph Blane, the lyricist for MMISL, has this to say about that: > [@](#): > > When he was assigned to write a song about trolleys for “Meet Me in St. Louis”, he was stumped. He went to the public library for inspiration, and there found a book with a picture of a St. Louis trolley with the caption “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley”, which became the nucleus of “The Trolley Song”. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/15 "2005-01-24T03:22:58Z")
From the autobiographical novel _Meet Me in St. Louis_ (1941), by St. Louis native Sally Benson (1900-1972): > [@](#): > > The yard to the house at 5135 Kensington Avenue stretched back about three hundred feet to the alley, down which the trolley cars ran. > [@](#): > > “Oh, yes.” Mr. Smith chewed on his mouthful of pie slowly. “I did get on the same trolley as Johnson this morning. As a matter of fact, I sat in the same seat with him.” > [@](#): > > Rose stepped back from the window and covered her eyes. “The trolley!” she screamed. “I heard it shake the house when we were in our room. I’m almost sure I heard it shake the house.” ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/16 "2005-01-24T04:15:35Z")
You could also track down a copy of “Streets and Streetcars of St. Louis” by Andrew D. Young, published by Archway Books in 2002. You can also go to this link: [http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/streetcar.htm](http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/streetcar.htm) and scroll down to the ad for the Lindell Hotel from 1901 where the hotel is described as “street car serviceable” Also this link from the city of St. Louis’ webpage about transportation history, [http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/transport.htm](http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/transport.htm) that “streetcars” is the term used. You could also go to numerous baseball history sites and read about the 1944 World Series between the Cardinals and Browns, which is almost universally referred to as “the Streetcar Series”. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/17 "2005-01-24T05:54:26Z")
A do question how relevant a 2002 book and a 1944 World Series\* are to the question. - Where an alliterative parallel was being made to New York’s “Subway Series”. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meet-me-in-st-louis-th-hell/286092/18 "2005-01-24T20:23:55Z")
Yes, but what about the 1901 advertisement? I have in my hands another book by Andrew D. Young, published in 1988 entitled “The St. Louis Streetcar Story”. On the front page, there is a reproduction of what looks to be a 1940s era map of transit routes in St. Louis. There are two types listed: 1. Bus routes 2. Street car routes The book also has numerous photos from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from the turn of the century which use the word “street car” or “streetcar” to describe what many (including the woman who wrote “Meet Me in St. Louis” would call a trolley). I don’t know if this question can be answered to your satisfaction unless a living, breathing native St. Louisan who lived there prior to 1966 (when the streetcar lines were discontinued) chimes in. All I can say is that my native St. Louisan grandmother and mother (both deceased) told me in no uncertain terms that they called the public transportation in St. Louis “streetcars” or “buses”, not “trolleys”.