Here I am featuring another movie based on a book generated from newspaper published short stories for our first A Fork & A Flick Friday of this year. I’m going to a classic film to start off the New Year and one that also allows us to travel through the seasons that are yet to come. Often considered a Christmas classic for the now-classic Christmas song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which was debuted in this film, Meet Me in St. Louis is a beautiful Technicolor musical directed by Vincente Minnelli. This movie is based on a series of short stories written by Sally Benson and published in the New Yorker in 1941-1942. They were called “5135 Kensington Avenue” and were based on Benson’s childhood in St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1900s. She originally published eight stories, but when they proved popular she wrote four more and published all twelve in a book called Meet Me in St. Louis in 1942. MGM bought the rights and turned it into an unforgettable film complete with song and dance.
Meet Me in St. Louis is a loving and heartfelt portrayal of middle-class America at the turn of the 20th century and a tribute to the innocence of our country as it was way back when. The film allows us to reminisce with nostalgia as we watch an American family in suburban, Midwestern St. Louis of 1903, who live in a stylish Edwardian home at 5135 Kensington Avenue. The city, and the well-to-do Smith family is on the verge of hosting and celebrating the arrival of the spectacular 1904 World’s Fair. Although Christmas makes a spectacular appearance as Judy Garland in a Crimson Velvet Gown beautifully sings to Margret O’Brien on Christmas Eve, the film focuses on a year in the life of the Smith Family and takes us through the seasons up to the World’s Fair.
This gem of cinematic, picture-postcard Americana and youthful romance, is richly filmed with inspiration from the art world. The film opens on a very Victorian like filigreed illustration of an ornate, turreted, Edwardian home. The illustration morphs into a sepia-photograph, which in turn morphs into a brilliantly Technicolored moving image.
Once the house goes from postcard to moving picture, we jump to the kitchen where Mrs. Smith (Mary Astor) and Katie (Marjorie Main), the housekeeper, are making ketchup in a gorgeous copper pot. It doesn’t get anymore nostalgic then that! I’m amazed that they use to make ketchup at home back then, and must attempt that someday.
What baffles me even more is that turn of the century families had homemade ketchup, but they didn’t churn their own ice cream. When we move to the next season, in the Fall the post card scene opens to Halloween night and eldest daughter Rose returns from the store with ice cream, because the Smiths celebrate Halloween with a beautiful cake and ice cream once their children return home.
I cannot compete with the elaborate daily meals served on crystal and china by the Smith family maid in this film. However, I’m inspired to make old fashioned chocolate sauce to top classic scoops of simple vanilla ice cream.
Ingredients
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
Vanilla Ice Cream (optional)
Method
- Heat the cream and butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
- Add the chocolate, stirring, until it's melted and smooth.
- Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
- Serve on top of vanilla ice cream (optional).
