Call of the Week: Dawn from Charlottesville
On each episode of Call of the Week, we feature one of our favorite listener phone calls. This week, our call is from Dawn in Charlottesville, VA. She wanted to know whether the extreme Halloween mischief perpetrated by the characters in the 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis” had any bearing on reality.
Dawn’s call was recorded for our recent full-length episode, American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural.
What do you think? Was mischief a big part of your childhood Halloweens? Post your comments below!
2 Responses
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American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] Call of the Week: Dawn from Charlottesville asks about the history of Halloween mischief [...]
Quote -- October 26, 2010 @ 4:01 pm
I was looking more into the Halloween scene and found this interesting note from the director, Vincent Minnelli, about how they wanted to leave the halloween scene out because it was too long and Vincent said this was the reason for doing the movie.
excerpt:
Nonetheless, Minnelli was asked to recut “Meet Me in St. Louis” when it proved to be too long. A top Metro executive, instructed by Louis B. Mayer, wanted to excise the Halloween sequence, claiming that, “it’s the only scene that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot.” Minnelli was flabbergasted. That Halloween scene was the reason he wanted to do the picture in the first place. He had worked very hard on that scene, which came off beautifully.
When the new assemblage, without the Halloween scene, was run for Minnelli, he decided to keep quiet. After the screening, the lights in the projection room came back on and Freed said, “It’s not the same picture. Let’s put it back.” Relieved, Minnelli considered it a major victory, one achieved without even fighting for.
website:
Quotehttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QUxCoPQWWV4J:www.emanuellevy.com/comment/meet-me-in-st-louis-scary-and-charming-halloween-3/+meet+me+in+st.louis+halloween+scene&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us