In "The Boy Next Door" Judy Garland sings that the Smith family lives at 5135 Kensington Avenue, which was also the title of Sally Benson's original stories. Kensington Avenue is still a residential street, though the lot at 5135 is now vacant.
Producer-lyricist Arthur Freed dubbed the singing for Leon Ames singing the song "You and I" that was written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed.
The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition has been claimed by some to be the birthplace of the ice cream cone.
The book on which the film is based originally ran as a weekly feature in the New Yorker Magazine in 1942. For the film many of the actions attributed to Tootie were actually done in real life by Sally Benson's sister Agnes. Also in reality, Benson's father moved the family to NYC and they never did come back for the World's Fair.
The Broadway stage version of "Meet Me In St. Louis" opened at the George Gershwin Theater on November 2, 1989, ran for 252 performances and for nominated for the 1990 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Book and Score.
The Halloween sequence on the street outside of the Smith home was primarily filmed from low angles, so that the movie audience would experience the Halloween night as though they were seeing it through the eyes of a child. When Tootie (Margaret O'Brien) embarks on her adventure to the Braukoff home, the houses appear to be large and looming.
The movie was based on the real-life experiences of novelist Sally Benson. The character of Tootie was based on her own childhood; she was called Tootie as a little girl.
The street on which the Smith home stood was built specifically for "Meet Me in St. Louis." Located on MGM's vast Backlot #3 that was at Jefferson and Overland Boulevards in Culver City,it was known at the studio as "St. Louis Street" and all of the houses that were on it were used in various film and television shows throughout the next 27 years, until Lot 3 was demolished to make way for an apartment and condominium project. Even in 1970, the last year of Lot 3's existence, the Smith home still looked like it did in 1944, minus the set dressings, of course.
The success of the film had encouraged MGM to create further movies involving the Smith family and was to be based on further tales of
Sally Benson's family. MGM wanted to make sort of a deluxe color group of serials in the spirit of the popular "Andy Hardy" series. A proposed sequel titled "Meet Me in Manhattan" was in the works in which the Smith family actually moved to New York. (This happened in real life to
Sally Benson's family.) However, the project never got out of planning stages and the film was never made.
This film was a box-office smash, grossing more money than any prior MGM release in 20 years - with the exception of David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind.