Margaret O'Brien makes a child's fears and strange enthusiasms worth taking seriously. We value the concentration beneath the tears, especially in Meet Me in St. Louis, where her mischief keeps the family sweetness from becoming too comfortable.
Fi1m perspective
Margaret O'Brien gives Tootie's morbid imagination the concentration it deserves. In Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), this little girl has interests of her own, some rather less cosy than the household around her. We laughed at her seriousness about such grim things; O'Brien makes the child's curiosity feel perfectly natural. This is where we most enjoy her work: she is allowed to be mischievous as well as vulnerable, and being small does not oblige her to be agreeable.
Journey for Margaret (1942) established her as a child star, and the serious young girls that followed made emotional directness central to her work. In Jane Eyre (1943), she played Adèle Varens opposite Orson Welles, delivering both dialogue and song with a French accent. Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden (1949) and Beth March in Little Women (1949) belong to that concentrated period of child roles. Her facility for tears became a recognised speciality, but a list of distressed girls gives a poor idea of the humour she could bring to Tootie.
In Meet Me in St. Louis, director Vincente Minnelli gives that humour room alongside Judy Garland's uneasy singing. The romance is thin, but the affection for the household works, and O'Brien helps keep its sweetness from becoming cloying. She plays Tootie's concerns as important without making her sound like an adult. The emphasis on distress across so many of her roles can become restrictive, leaving less room for the oddness that makes Tootie good company. We would not mistake the ability to produce tears for the whole of her talent.
After the child-star years, leading adult film roles were difficult to secure, with that early image limiting the work available. Television provided continuing opportunities from the late 1950s, while later film parts were sporadic and mostly supporting. That change in employment tells us little about whether the earlier performances hold up; Meet Me in St. Louis remains persuasive evidence that they do. Start with Tootie; the romance can wait.
Biography
Margaret O'Brien is an American actress. Born Angela Maxine O'Brien in San Diego, California, she began her film career at the age of four and became one of the most prominent child stars of the 1940s, appearing in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer productions.
She played Irene Curie at age five in Madame Curie (1943). Her performance as 'Tootie' Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) earned her the Academy Juvenile Award in 1944. Other notable roles include Adèle Varens in Jane Eyre (1943), Beth in Little Women (1949), and later appearances in television series such as Murder, She Wrote and Perry Mason. She has also worked in theatre and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for film.
