Anyone who knows the movie will find most of the familiar incidents from it, though they were switched around and condensed somewhat for the screenplay but I felt like the book had a much more authentic, homey feel to it. In the book you get a much clearer sense that, in spite of living in a three-story house with a maid, the S Ah, this is charming. Rose and Esther are no glamorous movie stars, but a couple of boy-crazy teenagers. Nothing seems so glossy and expensive as it looked in the movie. On the other hand, this book is a good reminder that women now have a world of opportunity to choose from for their futures, and no longer must desperately attract men for that one-and-only important decision of their lives saying "Yes" to a suitable marriage partner.Īh, this is charming. And to anyone who would like to have a rather sobering perspective on the rise of anxiety and loss of common freedoms among the moderately well-to-do in the past hundred years. I recommend "Meet Me in Saint Louis" for anyone doing research on upper middle class family life in America at the beginning of the 20th century.
Smith, when asked where her children are, can calmly answer, "How should I know?" (Even in my own childhood my mother seldom knew where I was and had no cause for worry - I was out alone exploring construction site mazes of 2"x4"s and no one ever bothered me - it's a wonder I didn't become an architect.) Tootie rides all over town in the iceman's wagon. The value of the book to a 21st century reader is probably its accuracy regarding the safety and freedom of children in 1903 - a thing sadly lost now. Sally Benson is a very capable and enjoyable writer, but the teenage girls she portrays are vain and vapid to a point that may set a modern reader's teeth on edge and the wildness of six-year-old Tootie, rendered on the page, lacks the charm of the Oscar winning performance turned in by seven-year-old Margaret O'Brien. (They used their parents' names, not "Dad",etc. People did sing pop songs out loud then, and the principal family entertainment, in my grandmother's home (she was 16 in 1903) was gathering at the piano and singing, or doing vaudeville skits in costumes thrown together from Aggie and David's clothes. The book, on the other hand, is nothing extraordinary in the genre of happy-old-time-family books that aimed to assuage the anxieties of war time America.īut it does provide one of the most authentic film formats for people believably bursting into song. "Meet Me in Saint Louis" is one of the great old movie musicals, and probably provided the best performance ever given by Judy Garland. People did There are times when a film does a more enjoyable job with a book than the book does for itself. But it does provide one of the most authentic film formats for people believably bursting into song.
The book, on the other hand, is nothing extraordinary in the genre of happy-old-time-family books that aimed to assuage the anxieties of war time America. There are times when a film does a more enjoyable job with a book than the book does for itself.
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