Christmas Tales of Alabama
By Kelly Kazek and Karleigh Hambrick
()
About this ebook
Kelly Kazek
Kelly Kazek is an author, journalist, blogger and award-winning humor columnist. She has written two books of humorous essays and ten books on regional history. She lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and travels the South's back roads, seeking out quirky history for her blog at KellyKazek.com and It's a Southern Thing (SouthernThing.com).
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Christmas Tales of Alabama - Kelly Kazek
writing.
Christmas
THE CHRISTMAS SONG TOO SAD FOR JUDY GARLAND
By age thirty, Hugh Martin was accustomed to working with unpredictable movie stars. He’d just never butted heads with Judy Garland. One day in 1944 on the set of Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy, who was supposed to sing a Christmas song to seven-year-old cast mate Margaret O’Brien, complained to director Vincente Minelli—who would soon become Judy’s husband—If I sing that song to that sweet little Margaret O’Brien, they’ll think I’m a monster!
She was referring to the song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,
written by Martin, a Birmingham native who was already a successful Broadway composer and playwright when he went to Hollywood. Despite its title, the song was melancholy because it was sung during a scene in which Judy’s character, teenage Esther Smith, was trying to comfort her little sister, Tootie, who was sad about the prospect of moving from St. Louis to New York weeks before the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Judy, however, thought the song was too maudlin. Just five years after her huge success as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, the twenty-two-year-old actress didn’t want to be remembered as the girl who made little Tootie cry.
The original lyrics were:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last,
Next year we may all be living in the past.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, pop that champagne cork,
Next year we will all be living in New York.
No good times like the olden days, happy golden days of yore,
Faithful friends who were dear to us, will be near to us no more.
Although Hugh liked and respected Judy, he initially reacted with as much obstinance as the megastar Garland. The lyrics fit the scene, he argued. Before the battle reached a stalemate, actor Tom Drake, who played the boy next door,
John Truett, stepped in and reasoned with Hugh, telling his old friend that refusing to change the song could ruin his life.
He convinced Hugh he was being stubborn,
said Gordon Martin, Hugh’s brother. The lyrics were changed to a more upbeat:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
Our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
Our troubles will be miles away.
In his nineties, Hugh would laugh about the incident, calling his initial lyrics lugubrious.
Ironically, the original sad lyrics were written at a cozy location that was close to Hugh’s heart, the Birmingham cottage that had been designed by Hugh’s father, architect Hugh Martin Sr., as a honeymoon cottage for Hugh’s mother, Ellie.
The home, located on the south side of Birmingham, is where Hugh Jr., Gordon and their sister, Ellen, were reared. It was a happy home, filled with music and love, the one to which all the children in the neighborhood would come. It is now a historic site.
Mother was very much into Christmas,
Gordon said in an interview after his brother’s death. She would go out and buy a tree on Christmas Eve, and we would sing around the piano.
Mrs. Martin used her creativity to make the trees into works of art that awed the children. It was their mother’s love of music and theater that fueled young Hugh’s dream of being a songwriter. She was into all the new shows on Broadway, and she would go out and buy the sheet music and play it.
Hugh, also an accomplished pianist, was chosen to play the graduation piece for Phillips High School in Birmingham. He played Rhapsody in Blue
by George Gershwin.
Hugh Martin wrote Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
for Judy Garland to perform in the film Meet Me in St. Louis. Photograph courtesy of the Martin family.
By the time little Gordon turned ten, big brother Hugh had left home, first to attend Birmingham Southern College and then to move to New York to compose music and write songs and plays. Mrs. Martin, with her love of theater, would travel to New York as often as possible to see her son’s plays.
Mother loved New York,
Gordon said. She had to have her New York fix.
After performing in the play Hooray for What!, Hugh began an unusual partnership with Ralph Blane: both men wrote music and lyrics, and when assigned a song, they would each write a version on their own, then combine the best of them. Blane is credited on Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,
but Hugh has said in numerous interviews that he wrote the song alone and also did the requested rewrites.
Then, in 1941, MGM Studios bought the rights to the Martin-Blane play Best Foot Forward, and Hugh went to Hollywood.
Soon the duo was hired to write the music for Meet Me in St. Louis. In his memoir, Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door, Martin recalls how Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
came to be. He had begun a tune for another song but then abandoned it. Blane, who had heard the tune and liked it, asked why. Hugh said he couldn’t make the lyrics work, but Blane wouldn’t let his partner discard the song. He asked Hugh to try again because he had a funny feeling about that little tune.
Hugh agreed and turned to the back of the Meet Me in St. Louis script until he reached the Christmas scenes. Blane had described the song as madrigal,
which gave Hugh an idea. He worked for another hour and called in his partner to hear the new lyrics. Satisfied with the song, the duo took it to the film’s producers the next day.
Their reaction? They laughed, which cut Hugh to the quick.
Roger Edens said he loved the melody, but the lyrics were too depressing.
It’s OK for it to be bittersweet and nostalgic, but it shouldn’t be a dirge,
Roger said. Producers asked Martin and Blane to keep working on the lyrics. Then, after the song was played for Judy, Edens gave Hugh the news: she hated the sad lyrics.
In Boy Next Door, Hugh wrote that Tom Drake talked sense into him, saying, Hugh, this is potentially a very great and important song. I feel that in my guts. Now listen to me. Don’t be a stubborn idiot. Write a lyric for that beautiful melody that Judy will sing. You’ll thank me.
Martin saw the light and would later write, Tom got through to me over a cup of coffee where the big executives had failed. That was sixty-five years ago, but Tom, I do thank you from my heart!
The new version—at once bittersweet and hopeful—was the perfect tune for women waiting at home for their men to return from World War II. At the time, popular Christmas tunes typically took a backseat to standard carols, so it was The Trolley Song
that became the star of Meet Me in St. Louis.
The catchy lyrics of The Trolley Song
were hit upon accidentally. Martin and Blane were reportedly having some trouble coming up with lyrics for Garland to sing while on the trolley until Hugh saw a photo of a trolley in a book on the history of St. Louis. The caption read: Clang! Clang! Clang! went the jolly little trolley.
A song was born.
According to legend, Garland recorded The Trolley Song
in one take. In 1945, The Trolley Song
was nominated for an Oscar for best original song. Swinging on a Star
from Going My Way took the statue. After he had completed songs for Meet Me in St. Louis, Hugh Martin enlisted in the army. He was assigned to the European theater, where he was asked to use his talents and current popularity to entertain soldiers.
Gordon Martin, who would also serve in the army, had a furlough from training as filming was wrapping on Meet Me in St. Louis. Hugh invited his little brother to visit Hollywood.
I rode the train out,
Gordon recalls. "When I arrived in California, I saw orange trees and palm trees for the first time. I felt just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz." Hugh took Gordon to the MGM lot, where movie stars were strolling between scenes. The brothers stopped for a long chat with Mickey Rooney, who was at the height of his career, and then Gordon was invited to Judy Garland’s birthday party.
Until her death at age forty-nine, Hugh’s sister Ellen, a dancer, would sometimes have parts in his productions or serve as choreographer. Hugh and Ralph continued making hits for many more decades, but surprisingly, it was Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
that became one of Hugh’s biggest contributions to American culture.
It didn’t hurt that Meet Me in St Louis was MGM’s most profitable film in two decades—with the exception of Gone with the Wind—and that little Margaret O’Brien received a special juvenile Oscar for her role.