When Hollywood historian David Fantle and his friend and writing partner Tom Johnson walked into Vincente Minnelli’s house in 1980, it looked to them like “silent screen siren Norma Desmond’s decaying brick pile from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard,” Fantle recalled.
The Oscar-winning director told them that his not-yet-wife Judy Garland didn’t want to star for him in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); she was after “more sophisticated parts” and feared it would “set her career back 20 years.” The film, of course, would become a classic musical and one of Garland’s most beloved movies.
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Fantle, who spent a lifetime interviewing Golden Age celebrities to preserve their stories for posterity, died unexpectedly Tuesday at his home in Milwaukee following a cardiovascular emergency. He was 66.
In addition to his role as a Hollywood historian, the St. Paul, Minnesota native had a
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