It only took 80 years, but the stunning red velvet dress Judy Garland wore in Meet Me in St. Louis has been reunited with the coat that topped it. The two pieces of Hollywood history were installed at the Missouri History Museum yesterday as part of its 1904 World’s Fair exhibit—and will be on display through the holidays.
The exhibit opened in April and has already drawn more than 120,000 visitors. But public historian Adam Kloppe says the museum always intended for the costumes to show up late and leave early: Fabric that’s nearly a century old is delicate. “The longer they’re out and exposed to light, the more damage there might be,” he says. “We thought, This is a holiday movie, why not get this out at the holidays and give people an opportunity to see artifacts?”
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The red velvet dress, which is on loan from the collection of local philanthropist Mary Strauss, has been on display at the museum before. Garland wears it to the Christmas Eve ball in the film, and is still wearing it for perhaps the most iconic scene in the film: Her poignant performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Between those two scenes, she dons the white coat now on loan from Get Happy! The Judy Garland Exhibit, which owns numerous costumes worn by Garland, and snags a proposal from the boy next door. (You can see the two items together, and the song, here.)
Kloppe says the museum originally sought the coat as a backup, in case they couldn’t get the dress—only to realize the two in tandem offered something more unique. “Why not take these iconic movie props and put them together for, as far as we know, the first time since the film?” he asks.
Filmed in Hollywood, Meet Me in St. Louis was a smash hit in St. Louis (and beyond) at the time of its 1944 release, and notched four Academy Award nominations. But the otherwise positive review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had one complaint: Not enough World’s Fair. “Criticizing this picture would be a bit like criticizing a civic institution, but the one flaw that several people have mentioned has been the fact that there is so little of The Fair shown,” wrote Clarissa Start. “However, for satisfaction of purists, the picture ends just as the book did, with the Smiths’ first glimpse of the magically beautiful Skinker Swamp, and their marvel that this wonder could be ‘right here in St. Louis.’”
You can watch that scene here. Kloppe warns not to expect historical accuracy. “If you look at the sort matte painting behind them there, that isn’t actually a view that you would get at the World’s Fair,” he says.
Still, the scene matters to historians, because it demonstrates how the fair was remembered 40 years later. Vincente Minnelli’s film isn’t just nostalgic today, from the perspective of 80 years later; its nostalgia is baked into essence. As Kloppe notes, it was filmed during World War II, “a chaotic moment in American history and world history where people are really looking back to the past and trying to find a more nostalgic, safe vision of the past—and a hopeful vision of the past that they can retreat into a little bit.”
What’s remarkable looking back may well be that the Victorians of the World’s Fair era were as close to Judy Garland and the Technicolor modernity of the 1940s as we are close to the 1980s today. “This was well within living memory for a lot of people,” Kloppe notes, comparing the film to a show like Stranger Things today.
Of course, Stranger Things features a far less elegant wardrobe. It’s hard to imagine we’ll one day look at the T-shirts and hoodies from that show in a museum. But you never know. And for now, we have Meet Me in St. Louis—dress and coat.
Says Kloppe, “These are powerful and iconic artifacts that are tied to a significant emotional moment in a movie that a lot of people have a connection to. So I think it’s going to be so special for people to be able to see those two things together.”
