Have you ever been so enthused by something you gave it as a gift not once, but inadvertently twice to the same person? Back when we all watched VHS tapes, over the span of a few years I did this with copies of Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.” You know, Judy Garland singing “clang clang clang went the trolley”? That one.
In it, the Smiths are about to be uprooted to New York shortly before the holidays, hence the original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which include the warning “it may be your last.”
It’s one of the great MGM musicals. Original to the screen, too, as based on a series of early-1940s stories in The New Yorker.
Amid the family turmoil, there’s a memorable interlude in which the conflicted parents share in a gentle duet, “You and I,” with Mary Astor as Anna Smith at the piano. Interestingly, the recorded voice of Alonzo Smith isn’t the actor Leon Ames’s, but actually that of the producer, the legendary Arthur Freed. “Time goes by / But we’ll be together / You and I” he croons as one by one the worried children gather round to listen.
Speaking of interludes, and speaking of Judy Garland, both cannot be topped in another of my prized VHS possessions hosting mold spores somewhere in the basement, “A Star Is Born,” the second of the four versions, from 1954. James Mason comes upon Garland after hours in a darkened nightclub and watches her from the shadows. The place is empty, chairs are stacked on tables. The tired musicians aren’t ready to go home, however. “Take it from the top,” the pianist urges.
The tune is Harold Arlen’s “The Man That Got Away,” which Garland proceeds to tear into with such force her 5-foot frame seems on the verge of coming apart.
It’s eminently YouTubeable. And though I hate to invoke the world’s most popular website here, naturally that’s where I stumbled across this reminder of what I once loved.
But how do you make a gift out of what’s streamed?