AWARDS AND HONORS

Meet Me in St. Louis was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (for "The Trolley Song"), Best Musical Score and Best Writing, Screenplay.

Young Margaret O'Brien won a special Academy Award as the Most Outstanding Child Actress of 1944 for her performance as Tootie in Meet Me in St. Louis.

In 1989 Meet Me in St. Louis won an ASCAP Award for the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which they named the Most Performed Feature Film Standard.

In 1994 the National Film Preservation Board added Meet Me in St. Louis to the National Film Registry.

The National Board of Review named Meet Me in St. Louis one of the top ten films of 1944.

In 1945 the Library of Congress selected Meet Me in St. Louis as one of 7 films to be the first inclusions in the library's film collection.

In 2005 the American Film Institute ranked Meet Me in St. Louis the 10th Greatest Movie Musical of All Time.

In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St. Louis as the 26th Greatest Movie Song of All Time.

In 2005 Time Magazine named Meet Me in St. Louis as one of the Top 100 All-Time Movies.

In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from Meet Me in St. Louis as number 76 on its list of the Greatest Movie Songs of All Time.

THE CRITIC'S CORNER – MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

"All of these bits of family humor-and several more in the same vein-are done in a manner calculated to warm and enthuse the heart. The Smiths and their home, in Technicolor, are eyefuls of scenic delight, and the bursting vitality of their living inspires you like vitamin A. Miss Garland is full of gay exuberance as the second sister of the lot and sings...with a rich voice that grows riper and more expressive in each new film...Little Margaret O'Brien makes a wholly delightful imp of Satan as Tootie, and Lucille Bremer is lovely and old-fashioned as Rose, the nubile sis. Marjorie Main as Katie, the maid; Harry Davenport as Grandpa and Tom Drake as the boy next door are only three of the several excellent members of the cast. Vincente Minnelli, in his direction, has got all the period charm out of ladies dressed in flowing creations, gentlemen in straw 'boaters' and ice-cream pants, rooms lush with golden-oak wains-coating, ormolu decorations and red-plush chairs...In the words of one of the gentlemen, it is a ginger-peachy show."
– The New York Times

"Meet Me in St. Louis is a musical that even the deaf should enjoy...one of the year's prettiest pictures...Meet Me in St. Louis has a good deal more substance and character than most musicals...The solidest single achievement of the movie, in fact, is to give the Smiths something to be sorry about: the real love story is between a happy family and a way of living. 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 and 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 and Co. to get the best out of her. Her song (Drunk Last Night) and her cakewalk, done in a nightgown at a grown-up party, are entrancing little 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."
- Time Magazine

"Captivating musical based on Sally Benson's slice of Americana."
– Leonard Maltin, Movie and Video Guide

"Garland achieves true stature with her deeply understanding performance, while her sisterly running-mate, Lucille Bremer, likewise makes excellent impact with a well-balanced performance."
- Variety

"Most of its rather pretty new and old tunes are sung in an up-to-date chromium-and-glucose style which bitterly imposes on one's ability to believe that the year is 1903; and most of its sets and costumes and colors and characters are too perfectly waxen to belong to that or any other year. Indeed, this habit of sumptuous idealization seriously reduces the value even of the few scenes on which I chiefly base my liking for the picture; but at the same time, and for that matter nearly all the time, it gives you, for once, something most unusually pretty to watch. I can't remember ever having seen studio-sealed Technicolor better used...."
- James Agee, The Nation

"Wonderful M-G-M musical....Film is a warm, unsentimental tribute to family, home, and tree-lined America. Garland and O'Brien give lovely performances."
- Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic

"A family group framed in velvet and tinsel...it has everything a romantic musical should have."
- Dilys Powell [1955]

"Patchy but generally highly agreeable musical nostalgia with an effective sense of the passing years and seasons."
- Halliwell's Film Guide

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume