Letters : Mississippi Madness

As a former Easterner, as well as an old-time movie buff, I do want to say how taken I was with Sam Hall Kaplan’s “Los Angeles: The City as a Movie Studio” (March 7).

However, and in proof that the filmic memory sometimes outdistances the fact, Kaplan’s remarks as to MGM, “There behind the gates was created the Rome of ‘Ben Hur,’ the Mississippi of ‘Meet Me in St. Louis,’ the Pacific on which the crew of the Bounty mutinied, David Copperfield’s London, Gene Kelly’s Paris and, perhaps the most memorable, the Land of Oz,” are inaccurate. The Mississippi never appears in “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

It is true that this wonderful film directed by Vincente Minnelli in 1944 and based on Sally Benson’s autobiographical short stories that appeared in the New Yorker was shot at MGM, but, there is no Mississippi. My guess is that what Kaplan is referring to is the Mississippi set, complete with full-blown paddle-wheeler, that did exist on the back lot and was used memorably in George Sidney’s 1951 lovely production of Edna Ferber’s “Show Boat.”

ROBERT B. RADNITZ

Culver City