<P> Garland debuted the standards "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door", and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", all of which became hits after the film was released . Arthur Freed, the producer of the film, also wrote and performed one of the songs . </P> <P> The backdrop for Meet Me in St. Louis is St. Louis, Missouri in the year leading up to the 1904 World's Fair . </P> <P> It is summer 1903 . The Smith family leads a comfortable upper - middle class life . Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) and his wife Anna (Mary Astor) have four daughters: Rose (Lucille Bremer), Esther (Judy Garland), Agnes (Joan Carroll), and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien); and a son, Lon Jr . (Henry H. Daniels, Jr .). Esther, the second eldest daughter, is in love with the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake), although he does not notice her at first . Rose is expecting a phone call in which she hopes to be proposed to by Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully). </P> <P> Esther finally gets to meet John properly when he is a guest at the Smiths' house party, although her chances of romancing him don't go to plan when, after all the guests are gone and he is helping her turn off the gas lamps throughout the house, he tells her she uses the same perfume as his grandmother and that she has "a mighty strong grip for a girl". </P>

Who played the father in meet me in st louis