It's not clocking to you.

I'm standing up business.

Do you see that?

No, I haven't seen.

That it's Justin Bieber and a paparazzi and he goes, it's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business and I'm obsessed with that because I have no idea what I mean.

Hello and welcome to the Sunday Presents with me, Kieran Maloney.

Happy Christmas.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, even.

Ohh spoiler.

This is a podcast where Dean and I show each other favourite films of ours that the other has never seen.

And this is of course a Christmas Spooktacular, as is annual tradition.

And last year we did a film that is, of course, immensely popular, Adult Swim, Yule Log, because it was Dan Stern.

But now it's my turn.

So we're doing like a like a famous movie.

It's not that famous, but it's it's more famous than I'll Swim Your Log and more a movie are usually not in Arguably it does have a very famous song in it.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Very famous Christmas song.

It's also got several other very famous songs, actually.

Yeah, but that one is Christmas related.

It's Meet Me in Saint Louis or Louis.

Characters in the film pronounce the name of the city both ways, but in the song it's Saint Louis.

So I think the title of the movies Meet Me in Saint Louis Bush.

I don't know.

Yeah, I I was gonna ask that we addressed this early on so we could figure out what we're going to do for the episode, which I'm fine if the answer is just slip between the two and not really care.

I'm fine with that also.

Cool, but the film is called Meet Me in Saint Louis because that's what the song is.

Ohh, me Louie, Louie, meet me at Don't tell me the lights are shining Any place but there we will dance the hoochie coochie.

I will be your.

Tootsie wootsie.

Meet me in Saint Louis.

In Saint Louis, Louis, I'll be out in a minute like this.

This is a musical.

Yeah.

It's it's it's Meet Me in Saint Louis, in fact.

The.

Musical directed by Vincent Minnelli, starring Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, a bunch of other people.

And do you want, do you want to tell us about it?

I I would just note before I go into the summary that it is the film by virtue of which Liza Minnelli exists.

That is, that is true.

You know what?

It's his loss, it's his loss.

It's his.

Loss Meet Me in Saint Louis is a 1944 period musical starring Judy Garland.

It's based on a series of short stories that were published in The New Yorker and later collected in a book called Meet Me in Saint Louis, and the film follows the Smith family of 5135 Kensington Ave., St.

Louis, MO, your first hired as in the months leading up to the World's Fair of 1904 through a series of seasonal vignettes, summer, autumn and winter of 1903.

The book is named after and the film features a song from the time of the World's Fair.

There's a mix of songs that were, you know, like this, like contemporary songs for the time period it's set in and songs that were written for the movie by Hugh Martin and Ralph Plain films produced by Arthur Freed of the Freed unit.

The most like the the best musical producing unit of a studio ever?

I don't know.

Yeah, The MGM musicals, those are the freed musicals.

Yeah, yeah.

So the Smith family consists of Alonso and Anna Smith, their son Long Junior, their four daughters, Rose, Esther, Agnes and Tuji, and Grandpa Long Junior, the eldest, is heading off to college.

Rose, 18, is in a courtship with a man named Warren Sheffield.

Who is, uh, still hasn't proposed.

God damn it.

Esther, 17, played by Judy Garland, is a high school senior infatuated with the boy next door, John Truitt, who has lived there for three weeks and who has never spoken to her.

Agnes and Judy are the youngest.

They're like a pair of little hellraisers.

2D is 5 and add This is probably like 10 or 11.

And a little younger.

Younger and then grandpa is grandpa.

Specify whose father he is.

I think he wanders around the house smoking and wearing silly hats.

That's Grandpa.

We're introduced to all the characters on a summer's day.

Anna is cooking ketchup with their housekeeper, Katie.

As the rest of the family comes home 1 by 1, Lane Junior is excited that his Princeton catalogue has arrived.

Agnes has been out for a swim and arrives home sopping wet.

As she walks through the house, she starts singing Meet Me in Saint Louis.

She sings it and then she hands it off to Grandpa and then Esther and her friends finish it as they are drop her home in a horse and carriage, but it's shot exactly like they were dropping her home in a car.

It's wonderful.

Ohh.

La La La La La La.

Me.

Esther is very anxious that dinner we moved an hour earlier that day from 6:00 to 5:00 because Rose is getting a long distance phone call from Warren Sheffield in New York that evening and she thinks it's going to be the proposal finally and their phone is in the dining room.

So she convinces Katie to convince Anna to move dinner so she doesn't have to take the call in front of everyone.

She specifically says.

That the whole family here in the room.

She may be loath to say the things the girls compelled to say to get a proposal out of a man.

Which is very, very funny.

When Rose gets home, she and Esther still on the porch to try and get John through its attention, but he doesn't even look at them.

He just goes inside again.

Rose tells Esther she'll get one of her friends to bring John Dylan's going away party because Esther is very determined that John will be hers.

And that's when Esther slash Judy hits her first solo, which is the boy next door.

It's clear to see there's no hope for me.

No, I live at 5135 Kensington Ave.

And he lives at 5133.

Ohh can I goodnight next door I love him then I can say.

Tuesday is the last of the kids who arrive home.

She's been at her after school job selling ice from an ice cash.

She just rides in the back shed and who wants ice?

Basically she tells the man she works for about how her Dolly is terminally illl and how she's going to have to be buried.

Which is when I knew that 2D was going to be my favourite character.

She's amazing.

I suspect she won't live through the night.

She has four fatal diseases.

And it only takes 1.

But she's going to have a beautiful funeral and a cigar box my Papa gave me, all wrapped in silver paper.

That's the way to go.

You have to go.

Ohh, she has to go.

Last home of all is Alonzo.

That's the dad.

Who comes home to Rose and Esther singing Meet Me in Saint Louis, which he's so fucking sick of hearing people saying all the time, even though the World's Fair isn't until the following year.

Which, you know, I could imagine.

Actually, I, I remember what it was like when Rockstar by Nickelback was on the radio too much.

Imagine if a whole city was just singing one song for just like a year.

Maybe in Saint Louis is is better than Rockstar by Nickelback.

Yeah, by some distance.

He's had a bad day at work as a lawyer, and he just wants to go upstairs and soak in a tub for an hour.

When he's told he can't because dinner has been moved up an hour, ostensibly because Katie has to go visit her sister, he tells them move it back cause he's getting in that goddamn tub.

There's not a single thing any of you could do to stop him at this point.

Despite Esther's initial attempt to be discreet about it, everyone except Alonso knows the real reason dinner has been moved up is Rose and her phone call with Warren.

And when he finally comes down late, they all try to rush through dinner.

To his increasing bafflement, they tried to, like, skip straight from soup to dessert.

Corned beef is like shaved out into like tiny tiny pieces.

Yeah, it's like kebab.

Like, it's incredible.

When the call does come through, he picks it up and it's like.

You speak louder, please, New York.

No, I'm not calling New York.

And hangs up, at which point it is finally explained to him that everyone in the room has been engaged in a conspiracy to get him out of the room before Rose has to take her phone call in front of the entire family.

Of course, once Alonzo is done being pissed off at everyone, Warren Sheffield calls back.

And that's exactly what happens.

Rose has to take the phone call in front of everyone.

And it's wonderfully awkward because 1.

Warren Sheffield is clearly kind of dumb.

And two, it's a telephone in 1903, so they're yelling at each other and they can't really hear each other and there's just the two that just screaming down the photos of each other.

Well, did you want to discuss anything in particular?

I said.

Was there anything special you wanted to ask me?

I can't hear you, Ron.

That's funny.

I can hear you plainly.

Isn't this great?

Here I am in New York and there you are in Saint Louis and and it's just like you're in the next room, I said.

It's just like you're in the next room.

He's calling about nothing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's just calling to say hello.

Yeah, he's called cause he, he literally just called to be like, wow, ain't these telephone machines something else like.

I'm in New York and you're in Saint Louis.

Even though he doesn't propose, Esther saves face by saying well.

I bet there isn't another girl in Saint Louis who's had a Yale man called her long distance just to inquire about her health.

And everybody's hardly agrees.

A few days later, it's Alan's going away party.

We get a big dance sequence that starts as Skip to My Lou and then interpolates other songs.

You secretly do not, Terry, but if I do, it's up to you to let me dance with Harry.

Skip.

Skip tomorrow, my darling.

Address and Tooty are called watching from the stairs and managed to convince Esther to do a little dance number with 2D to the song under the bamboo Tree.

When the party ends, Esther continuously drags out her goodbye with John Truitt.

She hides his hat so he's the last to leave and then every time he steps away from her she like runs the high into him and he turns around and she's like right there again.

And then she asks him to escort her around the house and help her turn out all the light.

Cause they're like gas lights so they each have to be turned off individually.

Yeah.

And like when she goes up the stairs to turn down the ones on the staircase, and then the light switches so that it's like shining through the, the like, stained glass window and she's bathed in life and she starts quoting poetry at her and she starts singing the poetry back at him.

And despite all that, she strikes out.

She's like, she was like, I'm gonna kiss in this very night.

And she doesn't she shake.

She shakes his hand.

He shakes her hand.

That's true.

He shakes her hand and tells her.

You've got a minute strong grip for a girl.

However, before that she did persuade him to join her in her friends on a visit to what will soon be the fairgrounds.

So the next day they're all taking the trolley down to the fairgrounds and she arrives in time for the trolley.

But he doesn't.

And she's very, you know, distraught as she gets on the trolley and all the other passengers start singing the trolley song, the second most iconic original number.

But then Esther sees he's running to catch up and he's about to jump on and she starts singing the trolley song.

And it's shot like she's like gabbing to her friends about how into this boy she is.

With my high starch collar and my high top shoes and my hair while high upon my hair, I went to lose a jolly power on the trolley and lost my heart instead.

And then right at the end, he slips into the seat next to her and she gets all bashful.

That summer we get like a little seasonal transition card into autumn.

It's Halloween night, which gives us, among other things, a fascinating insight into weird regional shit that American children get up to before Halloween was standardised.

In this case, Agnes and Two dress up as what they describe as the ghosts have awful people.

Just people who people who are cursed to be ugly in death because they were ugly in life, I guess.

It's like like a like a big jacket that's kinda tashy and torn up and, and just like dirt on your face and like a fake nose with the hair coming out.

Or a skull mask for for Agnes and they go out to the street where there's lots of other kids dressed up, including and like boys with drag noticed.

Which Can you imagine the riot that would cause if Meet Me in Saint Louis was released today anyway?

And the other kids are like just burning a pile of broken furniture in the middle of the street.

Is, to be fair, what Halloween is all about.

The game, their version of trick or treat, I guess, is that they run up, they're not going to people's doors, and you'll just throw Flower in their face and run away.

And they're all the bigger kids are doing that.

And they keep telling to you she's too small.

And she gets indignant about this and resolves to go up to the scariest house on her own, the Brockhoff, who were scary because they have a big bulldog.

But she goes up and she throws Flower and Mr.

Broca's face and tells him she hates him and runs away screaming.

He smiles and his bulldog licks up the flower.

When she gets back to the others, she is declared the most horrible, which brings tears of joy to her eyes, and she is finally given permission to throw stuff into the bonfire.

In the Most horrible.

In the Most High.

A while later, Rose has dropped home from the ice cream parlour by a handsome kernel.

She and Esther here too, he screaming just after hearing the trolley.

And they run, assuming she was struck by it.

The whole family goes, you know, and they bring back Tuji, who has a split lip.

And she says John Truett tried to kill her and she screamed and he ran away.

And Esther doesn't believe her.

But when the doctor comes to stitch up her lip, he finds a tuft John Truitt's hair with the follicle still in in her hand.

And she was like, wow, it must have been a real struggle.

And Esther goes to fucking 90 immediately and goes storms next door.

Just slap the shit out of John Trust.

I've come here to ask you something.

You mean hitting a 5 year old child?

At this time, somebody pick on somebody your own side.

Ohh if there's anything I hate, loads of spies and abominate, it's a bully.

But then she goes back into the house just as Agnes comes back and reveals that she and Tudy stuffed dress to look like a person and threw it onto the trolley tracks to try to derail it, and that John had been dragging them away to stop them getting arrested.

For attempted mass murder.

And Esther goes back to, you know, apologise to John, and after some towing and froing, he finally plans to kiss on her, to which she responds.

You gotta body.

Strong grip for a boy.

And that she heads off.

She wanders back into her eyes, dazed and, you know, daydreaming.

And she needs to be like, basically instructed to either remember to eat her ice cream.

And then Alonzo comes home with a cake and cheerfully announces to the whole family that he's been given a promotion and they're all moving to New York.

What?

He is shocked to discover that almost everyone is very upset that he's just decided they're going to move 1000 miles away and leave behind every one they've ever known.

He brought home a cake.

No one wants any.

And the kids and grandpa won by one retire upstairs, leaving Alonso and Anna downstairs.

And he's, you know, talking about how he's just trying to what's best for the family and, you know, provide for them and all the things they need.

And she used to stand at the piano and starts playing a song and he gets up and starts singing along.

Whatever made you think of that?

You.

And.

Years confirm weather.

I'll put it down in your key.

One by one everyone comes back downstairs, just sit in the parlour and watch and they all eat cake.

And then we go to winter and it's Christmas Eve.

The three eldest Smiths are due to go to a dance, their last dance in Saint Louis.

But Rose and Long Junior are both out of a date because Lucille Ballard, the girl from New York the Lawn is interested in, is going with Warren Sheffield.

After some cajoling from Katie, LON and Rose agreed to go together.

Esther is going with John, obviously, but just after Rose squeezes her into a corset, John arrives to tell her he can't go to the dance because he was late picking up his tuxedo after basketball practise and now the tailor is is closed.

Esther is despondent about this, but eventually Grandpa is able to cheer up by offering to take her as his date.

Initially after John pulls out, we will all go together and she's like, I'm not going to the dance with my brother.

Yeah.

Yeah, after she had been like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that is a great moment at the dance.

Rose and Esther tried to screw with Lucille Ballard by signing her up to dance with all the biggest losers in Saint Louis.

But when Lucille arrives, she's not the stuck up snob they thought she'd be.

She's really, really nice.

And she actually tells Rose that Warren won't stop talking about her and that she and Warren should be each other's dates, while Lucille should pair off with Lawn.

And everyone's happy except Esther, who not only doesn't have her John with her, that she has to save face for screwing Lucille by taking Lucille's dance card and giving Lucille hers.

So she ends up dancing with the biggest losers in Saint Louis who are in order, a fat guy, a tall guy, and a barely pubescent boy before Grandpa steps in to save her And.

But while they're dancing, he spots someone come in and dances her behind the Christmas tree.

And when she dances out, she's dancing with John, who was able to secure his tuxedo after all.

After the dance, John proposes to her and Esther accepts but is clearly conflicted about the prospect of staying in Saint Louis with him or going to New York with her family and have she doesn't want he wants to be with him either way, but like she's like considering a long distance engagement.

Maybe.

When she arrives home, she finds 2.

She's sitting in a window listening to a music box and waiting for Santa to come.

She's worried that Santa won't be able to find their new address in New York.

Esther sings her.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas to the tune of the Music Box.

You're so merry little Christmas.

Let your heart be light.

Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight.

This is a great moment.

I do want to know that.

I was shocked that it begins with a music box that has two horrible looking little monkeys turning on it.

They're so they're like 2 like really uncomfortably realistic monkeys on the music box.

But then.

But then Esther puts it down, says okay.

After this, Kong 2D runs outside and starts smashing up the snow family that they've been building, which is the only one of her possessions she can't take with her to New York.

Alonso wakes up and watches the scene unfold from the window.

He walks through the house, cheques on a sleeping Agnes, sees the grandfather clock in the staircase wrapped in newspaper.

The walls are all covered in empty spaces where paintings used to hang.

He sits down in the dark of the parlour to smoke a cigar as Esther and Judy come in and climb the stairs.

But just as he lights his match, something occurs to him.

Some unspoken thought runs through his mind, and he turns on all the lights and calls everybody down and tells them they're not moving in New York, dammit.

They're staying right here in Saint Louis.

And I don't want to hear a word about it.

We're going to stay right here.

We're going to stay here till we rot.

Everyone is delighted.

Then Warren Sheffield just runs in the door and is like.

Rosmit, we can't go on like this any longer.

I positively decided we were going to get married at the earliest opportunity and I don't wanna hear any arguments.

That's final.

I love you.

And then leaves.

I don't even think Rose says yes, I think he just leaves.

And also was like, who is that boy?

In the spring, The Smiths travelled down to the World's Fair.

The girls bring their bows with the young couples are all happy, and as the Grand Pavilion lights up, Esther is awestruck to see this incredible spectacle right here where we live.

Here in Saint.

They live in Saint Louis.

That's what the movie is about.

Yeah, it's about how the greatest place anybody could be in 1903 to 1904 was St.

Louis, MO.

Don't worry about what happens later.

Be great forever.

And definitely don't worry about what happened before.

No, this is about Missouri's on the way up.

Yeah.

Buzzing, they got trolley.

It goes Ding, Ding, Ding.

Yeah, Something I did you mentioned, like the little bit where Esther is like, I can't go to the dance with my brother to Rose.

There are so many bits that I had to cut, like lots of bits and like gags like that and bits of character business that I just couldn't get into because of the time.

And I wanted noted because one of the things that like spoiler alert, I really loved me.

And slowly, it's so lively and lived in.

There's always something happening.

Characters are constantly interacting with each other at different combinations.

Like a lot of the introduction sequence is structured around various characters tasting Anna and Katie's ketchup as they cook it, and giving their input, too.

Sweet.

Too flat.

Too thick.

Apart from the length it would take, I also there's no way I could have captured all that in the synopsis.

But it is actually like the heartbeat of the storytelling, like the character dynamics, Dr.

the story scene to scene and drive the action more than the plot per se.

Yeah, I for me, Me, Me and Saint Louis is a very different film than you might expect it to be.

One of the things you might expect is how funny it is.

It's so funny.

There's so many great lines.

I mean, I don't hate you, I just hate basketball.

Like if that was in a movie now it would be, it would be like, this is the funniest line that's ever been and it's just like a throw away in Meet Me Inside Louise.

There's so much good stuff.

It's also it has this really, the structure of it is really interesting because on one hand it's quite episodic, like you're just kind of floating through their lives.

But it also does have this like, cumulative narrative propulsion in terms of the development of the relationships, in terms of this, their relationship with the city and their community.

And like, the idea of moving to New York is like horrible.

Like, like, and I don't think I've ever seen a movie where moving to New York, it's such a horrible prospect because I mean, like Esther says.

Everybody dreams about going there, but we're luckier than lots of families because we're really going.

To try and cheer Judy up.

But like, and, and that's, it's true.

You see so many movies about people who dream of going to New York and there's a film about people who really don't want to go to New York.

They want to stay and stay in Saint Louis and where there's going to be the World's Fair.

Yeah.

To me, it feels, it feels very like, like really well structured in that respect.

But it had a lot of production problems, not least because the the script was being basically constantly rewritten.

No one was happy with it.

And including Judy Garland, who especially hated that Minnelli wanted to do lots of rehearsing and she was sick a lot.

Whether whether you want to put quotation marks around that, it's up to you.

Margaret O'Brien was also sick and I, I don't know if if they got her hooked on amphetamines or if they'd face that out of being a child star and moved on to just, you know, regular abuse.

But Margaret O'Brien, Margaret Brian, who plays Judy, One of my favourite performances in like any movie.

She's so great.

Incredible.

And there's two particular highs.

1 is basically all of Halloween night.

Ohh yeah.

Yeah, or she reveals herself to be the biggest psychopath in history.

Like she's she was gonna murder all those people and she doesn't feel bad about it.

And just her absolute Glee of being declared the most tolerable is so wonderful.

And and then the other is, is almost the opposite of that, which is the scene where she cries and knocks down the, the snow people.

And the way she cries in that scene, it's, it's like so big and ugly and loud, like it's, it's like real little kids sobbing.

You see, then we're going to have wonderful, but the main thing today is we're all going to be together just like we've always been.

That's what really counts.

We could be happy anywhere as long as we don't get it.

And she's so vulnerable and is so much the heart of the movie in that moment.

And it's like the fact that she has this like range of like, like sociopathic Glee to to that level of like vulnerability that makes her the heart of the film is both incredible and also like so encapsulates what children are.

Yeah, yeah.

And and I love her so.

Yeah, no, she's like by far my favourite character in the movie.

She's she is the heart of it, like you said, like she is what makes the Halloween sequence by far my favourite part.

Like I, I should like maybe we should talk a little about the is this Christmas film question, which like we both agree it is, but.

It's interesting which films get this debate or not, because I would say I think it's a Christmas film.

A very small percentage of it overall takes place at Christmas.

Like it's one of the sections.

Yeah.

And it's not even the final section because then they have the the opening of the World's Fair right here where we live is Saint Louis.

But it is like consensus considered a Christmas film.

And I think that's interesting in a way because Die Hard, which we have the link, our episode on Die Hard, Die Hard is subject to this.

Is it a Christmas film thing while being set entirely at Christmas?

Yeah.

And featuring several more Christmas songs in this film, which has one.

It is very a very famous song.

But yeah, like, literally in the first scene, everyone is sweating because it's so hot out.

Yeah.

So I think part of why it doesn't get that debate is because it's like a film about, like, family and home, which feels Christmas.

That's also what Die Hard is about, how I think about it.

But Die Hard has more people getting shot and stuff.

Almost no one gets shot in the.

I do also wonder if the fact that there's basically there's festivities in each section help sort of psychologically, Yeah.

Like, like because there's lawns going away party and then Halloween and then Christmas.

So it it's not like there's no like cheerful company and singing and family warmth and all that stuff.

That's certainly a special occasion film.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I think it's very easy from certainly from a distance to like think that lawns going away parity happened at Christmas, you know, because it's not that different from what they do at Christmas, which is they have a ball.

I mean, I'm glad that there's not a bunch of people out there trying to argue that.

Meet me in Saint Louis.

Isn't.

I'm kind of annoyed there aren't.

Just because it would be, it would just.

Cause just for variety and consistency, like, yeah, you know, like, you know, I stand by you, stand on business.

Know what that means?

I I don't know.

Obviously, the the there is no true one true answer to the great Christmas film debate.

But it's because it's a fake debate.

It's like the pineapples on pizza thing.

People just make up shit to argue about.

I've never even tripod on pizzas.

I bet it sounds gross, but I'm not gonna check it.

I'm not.

Gonna I'm sure some people like it and some people don't.

And isn't that just life?

Definitely don't need to theme television ads around it you seen.

That Why are all TV ads about pineapple on pizza?

Like all of them, Whatever.

I really liked the mix of two things in the music.

One, the mix of new songs and existing songs and two, the mix of diegetic and non diegetic music because like the skit, like skip the sketch of my loose sequence is so good.

Like it switching in like basically keeping the lyrics of Skip to My Lou, but but but changing it to melodies of what is it like Yankee Doodles in there and and Turkey in the straw And yeah, the coordinating that big elaborate dance in that not that big parlour set.

Ohh, gags inside the dance.

Well, you know, having or not having a partner, switching partners, coordinating perfectly with the dance.

It's all just like, and that gets to be not just a great performance, but because it's diegetic, it gets to be like like an actual experience for the characters and like, it used to be a lot more just singing and dancing in people's homes in the world and.

Before radio came and ruined everything.

I'm not.

I'm not from a dancing family from any by any means, but I have a singing family on one side.

Everyone grew up singing and you know, like at every party, every family gathering, everybody gets drunk and then somebody is assigned to be the YouTube DJ who puts on people's songs so that we can you know.

And then like, as I mentioned with the with the trolley song, like I I really love the way that even though that's non diegetic, it's not actually a bunch of people singing about being on a trolley when Judy Garland is singing her solo bit the way it's shot, like she's having like a conversation with their friends that people are sticking their noses and musicals used to be so fucking good.

Like holy shit.

This is, I don't know if I'll describe this properly, but I feel like this uses, I guess non diagetic songs in the sense that they're, you know, like you start singing in the an orchestra appears or whatever in like diegetic songs.

So like they're singing like someone would in real life, but like more so.

Umm.

Like have yourself a merry little Christmas is well, I actually that is digetic cause there's a a music box, but there's also an orchestra, So what?

So whatever.

Yeah, and the song doesn't didn't exist until she sang it also like.

You know, that's true.

The trolley song, it's it's not like people singing like usually non diegetic songs in musicals are like character revealing or like are like their inner.

It's like their inner voice speaking almost.

But with like the trolley song, that's just they're having fun singing a song in a scenario where in real life you wouldn't have everyone singing about being on the trolley.

But like, the emotions that that Esther is going through in the trolley don't match the lyrics of the song in a cool way, where it's like she's singing like the she's singing about being in love with a guy, but it's like a totally separate, unrelated thing.

Yeah.

And meanwhile she's looking out for John getting on the trolley and then he comes and.

It makes sense to me that that became one of the most iconic sequences in movie musicals.

You know, it's just so well put together.

Here for a second.

Yeah.

Nerd Divergent King question mark.

That artistic lumberjack son of a bitch.

I hadn't thought about it, but now that you say it, very possibly.

OK, Firstly, OK, when he meets Esther, he's like he falls in love with her straight away, right.

And still he he says, I really like your perfume.

It's just like the one my grandma uses.

And then when she goes in for the kiss, he goes in for the handshake.

Yeah, and and even though he's and normally if you saw a scene like that in a movie where the guy where the the love interest goes for a handshake instead of a kiss, that would be like, ohh, they're not interested.

He's very interested.

He just was not picking up her extremely obvious signals.

Certainly it's dark in here with the lights off.

It certainly is.

Shall we do the dining room next?

He was late for the trolley, he was late to pick up his tuxedo cause he was so distracted by playing basketball, which he brings up all the time.

And then when he asked her to marry him, she starts crying.

And he's like, well, I'm glad you didn't laugh.

Like he, I don't know, he's on a different planet.

You're making a compelling argument.

I have to say.

I think you've sold me.

I think John Truett during Diversion King.

Yeah.

Because the thing about the tux right is in most movies the guy forgetting to pick up his tux would be the moment.

You're like fuck this guy, he doesn't give a shit.

He doesn't care about her.

He's not putting her first right?

That's not it at all.

He just forgot.

Not even forgot, but was late.

Yeah, and he used a straw and he's like.

I wouldn't blame you if you never spoke to me again.

Yeah, exactly.

Like he, he's like, as upset about it as she is.

It's like something happened to him almost.

Yeah, he's mortified.

He's a sweet boy.

I absolutely cannot pick up a vibe.

She lays it on so thick.

Oh my God, just she laid on thick.

Well she needs to cause he.

Yeah, that's true.

He doesn't know what's going on.

Yeah, he takes getting this shit smacked out of him very well also, it should be said.

He he really liked it.

He was like, ohh, it's fun when it's with a girl.

If you're not busy tomorrow night, could you beat me up again?

Honestly it was so funny that I rewound to rewatch it a few times.

Um, because like it was a stage slappable because of how hard you to go out and swung and weirdly, the fact that she kind of missed and goes under his jaw, it ends up being this really big.

Like it looks like she decks him like like not just like gave him a like a love tap or some shit.

Like she's like fucking.

This is after it's like properly injured.

Yeah, and he's like a foot taller than her.

Like it's, it's pretty.

It's pretty.

Fast little lady.

She's Judy Garland.

That's why her and Mickey Rooney go together.

Hmm.

Cause both little.

Obviously, this is later.

This is like grown up Judy, even though she's playing a teenager.

I don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This isn't like her first role since she was an adult by any means, but it was sort of the film that created adult duty because Aiden part.

This was the film where she met the makeup artist she would use for the next 25 years and who, like, changed up her look to stop her looking so young and girlish, which some of it is like really was was through really subtle makeup stuff.

But also, so that was like, they used to put like, rings inside Julie Garland's nostrils to like, hold her nostrils open, like to make her nose look more like, I don't know.

The stuff they were doing at that time, like, you know, the conspiracy theory that Shirley Temple was an adult woman.

I am not familiar with that conspiracy theory, but I feel like I.

Should be.

So when she when she was a child star, obviously she was subsequently an adult woman.

But when she was a child star, a lot of people believed that she was a adult woman pretending to be a child.

And one of the reasons for that was that he she appeared to have never lost a tooth, but that was because she wore dentures.

Huh.

For continuity reasons.

That is bizarre.

There's no, unfortunately, no point where we can say that Judy Garland was free of the things that started when she was the child.

Star Very true.

But for people who don't know, let's just say that in the early days of Hollywood, child labour laws didn't exist.

Really.

Think about how terrible any child star is had in like the past 20-30 years that you've heard about, which you've of course heard about.

And then like, that's after massive waves of regulation to prevent child stars from being exploited.

That's after multiple waves of legislative reform at the state and federal level in the United States.

The Jackie Coogan Law, named after Jackie Coogan from uh, Oh my God, the kids.

The kid from the kid who was all his money was stolen by his parents.

Um, among other things.

Fuck you, Jackie Coogan's parents.

Judy Garland as a as a tough child star of the definitely the 30s.

I'm not sure when she actually debuted, but regardless, she was getting pumped full of amphetamines to stay awake to work all day and then pumped full of barbiturates to fall asleep at night.

Um, yeah.

I mean, this was the time period when it had only basically recently been decided that you couldn't just murder extras like yearly.

The behind the scenes on the early days of Hollywood.

They fucking loved not having labour laws.

They loved it so much.

Do whatever you want with them.

There's cattle.

That's the beauty of new industries, isn't it?

Yeah.

Do you want me to talk about the World's Fair?

Yeah.

Do you talk about the world Fair?

Definitely.

OK, so the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis, St.

Louis, St.

Louis, Saint Louis, it's it's one of those cities where two names like Derry, Londonderry.

The 1904 World's Fair was to commemorate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase a year late was the centenary was in 1903.

It cost $15 million in 1904 money, which is a lot of money.

It was 1200 acres in size with 1500 buildings, most of which were just torn down after Iran from April to December of 1904, the year after this film was set, and there were tonnes of different exhibitions, amusements and all and the like.

The there was a palace of electricity that demonstrated all kinds of neat things that electricity could do.

They had a wireless telephone, ohh, wireless telephone, an X-ray machine, an incubator, like you have a NICU.

People claim that like, kind of false, kind of false, or hot dogs or other classic American foods were either invented for or at the fair, but there's no evidence of that because it's not true.

The Olympics that year were held at the fair.

Ohh wow I didn't know that.

CS So that's that's all really cool, but there were also many displays of just people like here are hundreds of Filipinos.

That's the exhibition.

Enjoy.

So what are the legacies of the World's Fair is, you know, establishing A ongoing American imperial narrative, setting out a contrast between American innovation and the supposedly primitive cultures of the places they were colonising.

I wouldn't just say non white cultures because Japan spent a lot of money on their exhibition to make sure that they they came off looking good.

What I'm saying is this movie is widespread racist propaganda.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I was thinking about the historical context of the World's Fairs in this because are you familiar with what the with the first one at all?

Is in in New York.

No, London.

My thinking of OK, I always associate the world's higher with Walt Disney.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's way later so I don't know why I thought that.

The first World's Fair, as it would come to be known.

To be clear, World's Fair is like a slang term for them.

They're never actually almost never actually called.

Like the this was the Louisiana Anniversary exhibition or some shit like that.

Yeah, I was actually, I was confused in the final scene when Tootie says to the like cab driver where she wants to go and it's like the Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase exhibit.

And I was like, wait, is this?

Is this the World's fair?

Is this something else?

The original 1 was called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations and it was held in 1851 in London in Hyde Park and for it they built a massive steel and glass temporary structure known as the Crystal Palace.

Ohh like the football club?

And yeah, like you said, like, it's not just this world's fair, but indeed, like the whole concept of the world's fairs, which were held in, you know, Britain and Paris and America.

They were, like, meant to be displays of look at the fruits of empire, not just the literal riches, but look at the feats we are able to achieve because of the great, vast industry we have spread across the world.

And that's why, in just a few years after this film is set, an anarchist called Leon Chalga Josh would assassinate the President of the United States.

William McKinley asked a world's fair at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo.

Angry man said I will do what a poor man can.

Yes, and there's.

Nowhere more fitting than in the Temple of Music by the Tower of Light, between the Fountain of Abundance and the Core of lilies and the Great Pan American Exposition in Buffalo.

In Buffalo.

Oh my God.

William McKinley was a huge supporter of of the Saint Louis World World's Fair.

I didn't know that that.

The fundraising mission was aided by the active support of President William McKinley.

Be Like gave like $5 million of congressional money to the Saint Louis World's Fair.

That makes sense.

Obviously, for anybody who's unclear, we're not talking about this to actually diminish the film in any way for portraying people as being excited about the World's Fair.

To be fair, the World's Fair sounds dope.

Yeah, I mean like.

Think about the telephone scene at the start of this movie and then imagine seeing a wireless telephone.

Yeah, imagine.

Imagine seeing basically a city built in a few months.

Like just raised from a swamp.

A whole city like you, what?

You say what you will about the robber barons and colonial autocrats and whatever of this era.

But as I've said many times before, at least they would put on a show.

At least they would build like, you know, like build a fucking concert hall to try and buy off the public.

But.

Now they're like, fuck the public, Yeah, you don't need to do nothing for them.

I've got Grock to tell me I'm.

But yeah, the, the, the world's fairs were, uh, a symbol of like imperial ascendance.

And bringing a world's fair to America was a sign that America had made it among the club of nations.

And world's fairs technically did last into like the modern era.

But The thing is, after the world wars, the entire international political system changed and the idea of a bunch of countries getting together just to put on a big festival together in a city became become basically like you could imagine the the like the G7 putting on a fucking fair together to celebrate the achievements of modernity like that.

You know, like not in a million fucking.

Years.

Who does do shit like that?

Saudi Arabia.

That's true.

They're the last World's Fair guys pay pay money to build beast land or.

Whatever.

Yeah, cause they're, they're trying to to, to launder their money and their reputation into the big.

The function I'm watching a movie that's exactly like Meet Me in Saint Louis, but it's set in Saudi Arabia, and the dad wants to leave Saudi Arabia and the family's all really sad because they're gonna meet, meet.

They're gonna miss the the Mr.

Bean's theme park.

I don't know anyone in the liberal democracy you want to move to.

Next, stop democracy.

Please don't go, I won't do.

That anymore, I promise.

Team.

Kiera.

Dane Kiera, are you glad that you watch me, me and say Louis?

I'm really glad I watched Meet Me in Saint Louis.

I was always going to watch it at some point, but it was probably not a priority of mine.

Even in terms of musicals.

I'm glad that you bumped it up the priority list because it's so good.

It's a freed unit classic.

It's just a great MGM musical full of life and colour and with great performances and Judy Garland and.

It's so funny.

It's so funny.

I miss when that didn't feel like an extraordinary thing to say about a film.

Like, it's not that they don't make funny films anymore, but you know what?

They don't make very many anymore.

Funny comedies, actually.

Yeah, What's going on with that?

Well, they don't really make comedies, to be fair.

But I loved it.

If you see it on the TV over the coming Christmas period, I will definitely be leaving that shit on.

With it being on TV, which I'm sure it will be, it's it's a nice film to kind of dip in and out of.

You don't need to like really commit, which obviously you should sit down and watch me and say let me front to back, but particularly you've already seen it.

If you have like other commitments, it's not like, ohh, I can't watch this because we're having dinner in half an hour.

It's like I can watch this and then have dinner in half an hour and be granted.

We're going to return in the new year with the long-awaited by us mainly second series of love at worst Sight, our mini series where we do this premise of the show still but is specifically about films that are considered among the worst of all time that we.

Love.

That's right, Dean.

Last time we did, um, God, uh, incredibly.

What are they called?

Ohh my.

God, really strange creatures who stopped loving and became mixed up zombies.

Thank you.

And and I did this member and Ishtar and.

The happening.

The happening.

We're not gonna reveal all the titles for this one just yet, but we will say the first one, very long-awaited, something we've talked about since very early on when we started the podcast we're doing Freddie Got Fingered.

That were to get out.

My job, all of this.

And we wouldn't want that now would we?

Would we?

Would we?

Oh my We can't control that really, to be honest.

We literally can.

No one else can.

That's true, but we don't have absolute control.

Well, yeah, I could get hit by a bus.

Yeah, or we could just.

Be maybe getting hit by a bus would for me up to do more podcast.

Thing the recording is has never been the issue.

Until next time, I'm Kira Maloney.

I'm Dean Buckley.

The song was Carol of the Bells by Live Action Fez.

And this was the Sunday Presents.

And happy birthday.

Harry Shearer.

You're not getting it.

It's.

Not clocking to you?

It's not talking to you.

Then I'm standing on business.

Is it?