You know, it's funny because I just read that article that Will provided a link for in an earlier post about the history of the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and it just proves something that as a classic movie buff I have been fully aware of for many years: many stories of Hollywood history and folklore have gotten changed, embellished, altered, misrepresented or, yes, even fabricated (if albeit, unintentionally) over the years. Let me give two quintessential examples. The first is regarding the Academy Award statuette. It is in total dispute as to how the award ever got its nickname of "Oscar." Bette Davis for years and years claimed that it was her who coined the name in the mid-1930s. She said that one day she remarked to Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner that the Academy Award statuette looked very much like her Uncle Oscar and that the name just stuck. However, there are trade publications with articles that were using the name "Oscar" which were printed long before the time she claimed to have coined the nickname for the award. So it's just not true. The other example is that of actor Joseph Cotten. In his autobiography, he said that he did a B-picture very late in his career which he wasn't very proud of but that the silver lining was that it was the first picture of his to ever premiere at Radio City Music Hall. Well, the fact is that the particular picture that he was referring to never premiered at Radio City Music Hall, but several of his much earlier pictures did. So, it's clear that you sometimes can't even trust a direct source for accurate information!

I mention all this because apparently the story behind the history of the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas seems to join the ranks of those two prior examples of Hollywood stories that are in conflict or dispute. It seems that in her take on what happened, Liza Minnelli claims that it was her father who objected to the original draft of Hugh Martin's lyrics to the song. However, when Liza was a guest on TCM's Private Screenings with Robert Osborne last year, she claimed that she remembered as a kid being on the set of her parent's film The Pirate when it was being filmed (her mother starred and her father directed). But I really don't know how that could possibly be when in fact she wasn't even 2 years old at the time! The picture was filmed in early 1948 and it premiered in Hollywood on March 27, 1948. Liza was born on March 12, 1946; do you see the conflict? So naturally based on this, you have to call her recollection into question. Also in that article, Margaret O'Brien claims that Judy Garland mentioned her objections about the song to her; but why in heaven's name would Judy have that kind of discussion with a 7-year-old girl? I find that incredulous. Then in the article Hugh Martin claims that Judy mentioned her objections about the lyrics to him and that he reluctantly changed them. He also said that Tom Drake colorfully raised his objections to him as well, which is something that I personally have never read or heard before, but nevertheless, it could very well be true. There's really just no way to know for sure. These different accountings of the story reminds me of something the great character actor Jimmy Durante used to say, "Everybody wants to get into the act!"

The bottom line is that the version of the story that was circulated for years was the one that I mentioned in my previous post which involved Judy Garland, MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer and producer Arthur Freed (the latter two interestingly not even mentioned by anyone in the article).

Oh well, alas, welcome to the world of Hollywood; they don't call it Tinseltown for nothing.