We watched Meet Me in St. Louis last night. It’s the movie that introduced Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and The Trolley Song, both sung by Judy Garland.
It’s a sweet and sentimental movie. The movie and the song came out in 1944 in the middle of World War II. It was a bit of nostalgia for a time 40 years earlier than the war era it was released in.
The lyrics of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas have changed a couple times. The song as Judy Garland performed it in the movie had the line “Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then we’ll just have to muddle through somehow.” It’s quite sad and I like it for that.
Apparently, when she sang it for soldiers fighting in the war, it moved them to tears. Ultimately, it is a song of hope.
Frank Sinatra thought that line was too sad for his 1957 album “A Jolly Christmas”, so he asked the songwriter to change it to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” Maybe he wanted to forget the painful memories of the war. I really don’t like that line. It has nothing to do with the previous lyrics.
The funny thing is, Judy Garland herself demanded the song be changed for the movie to make it less depressing. The original lines “It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past” became “Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight”.
Watch the scene from the original movie on YouTube here:
