Ziegfeld Girl/Every Sunday/Meet Me in St. Louis

This title in the series of releases by the Great Movie Themes imprint of the Italian label Promo Sound AG features most of the songs used in three movies associated with Judy Garland, Ziegfeld Girl (1941), the short Every Sunday (1936), and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). While the releases may be legal to sell in Italy, they are gray-market products, not authorized discs. The tracks are simply taken off the actual soundtracks of the movies, resulting in muffled monophonic sound, not to mention film dialogue that sometimes drowns out the music. The packaging is minimal and slipshod; for example, Charles Winninger gets his name misspelled throughout. That said, there is some memorable material, including Tony Martin's reading of the pop standard "You Stepped Out of a Dream" and the amusing old vaudeville number "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean" in Ziegfeld Girl; the contrast between pop singer Garland and the operatic Deanna Durbin in Every Sunday; and the memorable score of Meet Me in St. Louis, with its evergreens including "The Boy Next Door," "The Trolley Song," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." With such a track listing, the album can be an enjoyable listen, as long as one does not buy it expecting a high-caliber soundtrack reissue like the ones Rhino does.