The ABCs of Classic Hollywood Quotes

“Esther and Rose stare longingly at John Truitt as he stands in his front yard trying a new pipe, an object intended to suggest both his maturity and his masculinity. For Meet Me in St. Louis, this latter quality proved to be particularly urgent: Tom Drake, the actor playing Truitt, never seems convincing as Esther’s boyfriend. (Drake, in fact, was gay.) Hence the movie mobilizes several devices (the pipe, basketball) to “heterosexualize” his character. The pipe, however, remains unlit, and is then tossed aside, implying an impotence confirmed by John’s subsequent behavior: He does not kiss the eager Esther at her party, he nearly misses the trolley, he cancels their date for the Christmas ball. Even when he finally proposes, he leaves Esther in tears, urging her to choose between him and her family. Truitt’s aversion to flame appears most tellingly in the party’s turning-out-the-lights sequence (to which the also gay Minnelli devoted four days), where he not only puts out the Smiths’ lights but Esther’s, too, extinguishing her hopes with a flaccid handshake and hasty departure.”
― Robert B. Ray, The ABCs of Classic Hollywood

“In Meet Me in St. Louis, the obvious example of this pressure appears when Esther sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” one of the most heartbreaking of all Christmas songs, sung under the apparent necessity of choosing an alternative to the domestic values on which the film rests. “Someday soon, we all will be together,” Esther sings to Tootie, without being at all sure of it. But then, of course, magically, the need to choose simply disappears. Father awakens the family just after midnight on Christmas to proclaim that “New York doesn’t have the monopoly on opportunity. Why there are plenty of opportunities right here in St. Louis.” The film’s conclusion, with the family sightseeing at the World’s Fair, seems to confirm Father’s faith, assuring the audience that nothing has been sacrificed by staying home. With its explosion of technology, the fair has brought the future to St. Louis, making it New York’s equal.”
― Robert B. Ray, The ABCs of Classic Hollywood

“Lévi-Strauss demonstrated that myths are structured around concrete oppositions, which function symbolically to organize a culture’s thinking about a specific problem.”
― Robert B. Ray, The ABCs of Classic Hollywood