Halloween, also known as Hallowe’en or All Hallows Eve, comes from many different cultures’ traditions surrounding death and the afterlife, often combined with pagan rituals involving evil spirits and ghosts. The holiday’s indulgent and demonic elements have made many conservative societies closed to it; for example, Halloween is rarely depicted or even mentioned in old movies.
Frank Capra’s screwball comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace” takes place on Oct. 31, while “My Blue Heaven” and “On Moonlight Bay” have very wholesome decorations and festivities connected to the holiday. The exception to this rule is “Meet Me in St. Louis” from 1944. This Technicolor MGM musical is best remembered for introducing the secular Christmas classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which Judy Garland famously sang in the film. However, the film also includes a surprisingly dark Halloween sequence.
A Story of Many Holidays
The Smith family lives in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1903. The members include the lawyer father (Leon Ames), gracious mother (Mary Astor), refined oldest daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer), romantic high school-aged daughter Esther (Garland), violent middle daughter Agnes (Joan Carroll), melodramatic youngest daughter Tootie (Margaret O’Brien), and only son Lon (Henry H. Daniels Jr.), plus lovable Grandpa (Harry Davenport) and the brusque maid Katie (Marjorie Main). The film follows the family’s life from summer of 1903 through spring of 1904. While the plot focuses on the children’s adventures, particularly the older girls’ romances, the underlying theme is anticipation for the World’s Fair.There is a big age gap between the two pairs of sisters. While Rose and Esther are mature young women who scheme together about boys, beauty, and marriage, Agnes and Tootie are mischievous youngsters who plan lots of childish pranks together, which often border on vicious. The main theme in this story is Esther’s romance with “the boy next door,” John Truett (Tom Drake). Her infatuation with him seems unlikely to bloom at first, since she can’t tell if John is unresponsive to her flirtation because he is dense, shy, or uninterested.
Just as things are starting to develop between them, however, disastrous news arrives. Mr. Smith has received a job offer in New York, and he proudly announces his intention to move the family there. Much to his dismay, every family member is horrified as the realization of this step sinks in. This startling piece of news comes between the two scenes about major holidays, Halloween and Christmas. The Yuletide sequence is a heartwarming climax to the story, which my family always enjoys at Christmastime. However, the Halloween scene is disturbing for multiple reasons, especially considering when it was made.
Have Yourself a Scary Little Halloween
The Halloween scene begins with a chilling exterior shot of the Smith home, which looks like a haunted house on the dark autumn night. Once inside, the camera first focuses on a skull in a candlelit room, panning across the ghoulish decorations. In St. Louis at this time, Halloween was apparently just for children, since Agnes and Tootie are the only family members who are observing the holiday. They partake in enough festivities for everyone, though, and they are very serious about their ghastly revelry.They come into the kitchen to show off their costumes, including oversized male clothes, funny hats, a scary mask and a fake nose, and char marks on their faces. Agnes proudly announces, “Tootie’s a horrible ghost, and I’m a terrible drunken ghost.” Before sending them out, their grandfather hands them each a bag of flour, and their mother calmly tells them not to throw too much flour in people’s faces!
The youthful festivities center around a huge bonfire, which the children seem to be fueling with all the furniture from their houses! While the girls are wearing ragged male hobo clothes, the boys are wearing dresses with exaggerated padding to mimic matronly feminine figures but black mustaches painted on their faces. One particularly ruthless boy (Darryl Hickman) is the ringleader, so he assigns each child a person to “murder.” Thankfully, the make-believe murder is accomplished by nothing more dangerous than throwing flour in the unsuspecting victim’s face. Everyone wants to leave Tootie behind because she is much younger than the rest. However, she insists she is just as dastardly and takes on the much-feared Mr. Braukoff.
After Tootie succeeds in throwing flour at Mr. Braukoff, she is lauded as the bravest one of all; she proudly throws furniture on the fire, chanting “I’m the most horrible!” That isn’t the end of the girls’ troublemaking for the night, however. We later learn their next prank was to stuff a dress to make it look like a person and lay it across the trolley tracks. They were perfectly delighted that the trolley’s cable broke, having hoped for it to be derailed while the driver tried to avoid the dummy. The girls’ older sisters only learn of their fiendish deed because Tootie cut her lip while John Truett dragged them away to avoid them getting in serious trouble. Mrs. Smith doesn’t even tell their father about what they did.
A Frightening Exception
Throughout my childhood, I never watched this Halloween sequence. My parents would always skip the ghoulish antics, not because my sister and I were too young but because my mother has always been sensitive to the sinister elements of the holiday. As we got older, we expressed curiosity to see the scene, since it was the only part of an old movie that we skipped. Now that I know more about Hollywood history, the scene is even stranger to me. The year 1944 was right in the middle of Joseph I. Breen’s tenure as head of the Production Code Administration (PCA). From 1934 to 1954, he worked to ensure that all American movies were clean and subtle enough for audiences of all ages to enjoy together. Considering that a team of around eight men carefully collaborated on every American production, the PCA was amazingly successful. However, there were occasional slip-ups.The Halloween scene in “Meet Me in St. Louis” is more of a departure from Code compliance than a revealing costume or suggestive line which might have slipped through. The whole sequence is very bizarre and unsettling. The huge bonfire, the crossdressing, and the revelers’ references to killing people make the whole situation seem downright Satanic. The two Smith girls come close to actual human sacrifice with their trolly track stunt. The most disturbing thing about this whole event is that Esther is the only family member who takes their evildoing seriously. The other family members playfully joke about their antics beforehand and laugh off the trolley incident as childish mischief. Attempted murder is hardly a harmless joke!
What’s the story behind this scene? Was it the product of a macabre screenwriter’s imagination, or were Halloween celebrations in St. Louis really so ghoulish in the early 20th century? This movie was based on the novel of the same name by Sally Benson, who based its characters and events on her own childhood, but someone who has found a copy of the book will have to describe how this scene is presented. I can’t help but wonder if this scene was self-regulated by Joe Breen’s second-in-command at the PCA, Geoffrey Shurlock, who was raised in a Theosophical cult. Perhaps his own occultist roots made it seem unremarkable to him.
What do you think? Does this scene seem out of place in the context of this film and the Code Era of Hollywood in general to you?
