Editing Meet Me in St. Louis (section)

==Reception==
[[File:Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) - trailer.webm|thumb|thumbtime=16|The trailer]]
Upon its 1944 release, ''Meet Me in St. Louis'' was a gigantic critical and commercial success. During its initial theatrical release, it earned a then-massive $5,016,000 in the US and Canada and $1,550,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $2,359,000.<ref name="Mannix"/>

In a contemporary review for ''[[The New York Times]]'', critic [[Bosley Crowther]] called the film "warm and beguiling" and wrote: "Let those who would savor their enjoyment of innocent family merriment with the fragrance of dried-rose petals and who would revel in girlish rhapsodies make a bee-line right down to the [[Astor Theatre (New York City)|Astor]]. For there's honey to be had inside. ... In the words of one of the gentlemen, it is a ginger-peachy show."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Crowther |first=Bosley |date=1944-11-29 |title=The Screen: 'Meet Me in St. Louis,' a Period Film That Has Charm, With Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien, Opens at the Astor |page=20 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>

''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' called ''Meet Me in St. Louis'' "one of the year's prettiest pictures" and noted: "[[Technicolor]] has seldom been more affectionately used than in its registrations of the sober mahoganies and tender muslins and benign gaslights of the period. Now & then, too, the film gets well beyond the charm of mere tableau for short flights in the empyrean of genuine domestic poetry. These triumphs are creditable mainly to the intensity and grace of Margaret O'Brien and to the ability of director Minnelli & Co. to get the best out of her."<ref>{{cite magazine| title= The New Pictures | date= November 27, 1944| magazine= TIME | url= http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,796926,00.html | archive-url= https://archive.today/20120912162532/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,796926,00.html | url-status= dead | archive-date= September 12, 2012 | access-date=2011-08-02}}</ref> O'Brien drew further praise from ''Time:'' "[Her] song and her [[cakewalk]] done in a nightgown at a grown-up party, are entrancing acts. Her self-terrified [[Halloween]] adventures richly set against firelight, dark streets, and the rusty confabulations of fallen leaves, bring this section of the film very near the first-rate."

Writing in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', [[Wolcott Gibbs]] praised the film as "extremely attractive" and called the dialogue "funny in a sense rather rare in the movies," although he felt that the film was too long.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Gibbs |first=Wolcott |author-link=Wolcott Gibbs |date=December 9, 1944 |title=The Current Cinema |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |location=New York |publisher=F-R Publishing Corp. |page= 50 }}</ref>

In 2005, [[Richard Schickel]] included the film in Time.com's list of the 100 best films, saying: "It had wonderful songs [and] a sweetly unneurotic performance by Judy Garland....Despite its nostalgic charm, Minnelli infused the piece with a dreamy, occasionally surreal, darkness and it remains, for some of us, the greatest of American movie musicals."<ref>{{cite magazine| title= Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) | date= February 12, 2005| url= http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953094_1953145_1953756,00.html | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100312061618/http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953094_1953145_1953756,00.html | url-status= dead | archive-date= March 12, 2010 | magazine= TIME | first=Richard |last= Schickel| author-link= Richard Schickel | access-date=2011-08-02}}</ref> Film historian [[Karina Longworth]] also noted its fantastical and surreal elements, calling it "a [[Gothic film|gothic]] [[art film]] in disguise as a standard Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical".<ref name="Longworth 2015">{{Cite podcast|url=http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/10/26/mgm-stories-part-seven-mgms-children-mickey-rooney-and-judy-garland|title= MGM STORIES PART SEVEN: MGM'S CHILDREN - MICKEY ROONEY AND JUDY GARLAND|website=You Must Remember This|last=Longworth|first=Karina|date=October 26, 2015|access-date=September 16, 2023}}</ref>

Producer Arthur Freed remarked: "''Meet Me in St. Louis'' is my personal favorite. I got along wonderfully with Judy, but the only time we were ever on the outs was when we did this film. She didn't want to do the picture. Even her mother came to me about it. We bumped into some trouble with some opinions – [[Eddie Mannix]], the studio manager, thought the Halloween sequence was wrong, but it was left in. There was a song that [[Rodgers and Hammerstein]] had written, called ''Boys and Girls Like You and Me'', that Judy did wonderfully, but it slowed up the picture and it was cut out. After the preview of the completed film, Judy came over to me and said, 'Arthur, remind me not to tell you what kind of pictures to make.' [It] was the biggest grosser Metro had up to that time, except for ''Gone With the Wind''."<ref>Films of Judy Garland, Joe Morella & Edward Epstein Cadillac Publishing, 1969</ref>

The film holds a 99% "Fresh" rating on the [[Review aggregator|review aggregation website]] [[Rotten Tomatoes]] based on 81 reviews with an average score of 8.70/10. The site's critics' consensus for the film reads: "A disarmingly sweet musical led by outstanding performances from Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien, ''Meet Me in St. Louis'' offers a holiday treat for all ages."<ref name="tomatoes">{{cite web |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meet_me_in_st_louis/ |title=Meet Me in St. Louis |website=[[Rotten Tomatoes]] |access-date=2025-02-11 }}</ref>