Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas the neighborhood of Southside in Birmingham, Alabama, that his father Hugh Martin designed for his mother as a honeymoon cottage. Located at 1919 South 15th Avenue (just down the street from his birthplace at 1900 South 14th Avenue), the house became the home of Martin and his family in 1923. The song first appeared in a scene in "Meet Me in St. Louis", in which a family is distraught by the father's plans to move to New York City for a job promotion, leaving behind their beloved home in St. Louis, Missouri, just before the long-anticipated 1904 World's Fair begins.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas "October Road"), and Luther Vandross (in "This Is Christmas"). In 1963, Frank Sinatra's third recording of the song, backed by popular Hollywood arranger Gus Levene and his orchestra, was controversially used by director Carl Foreman in his anti-war film "The Victors" as the soundtrack backdrop (along with the carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing") to the execution by firing squad of a G.I. deserter in a bleak, snowy field on Christmas Eve – a scene inspired by the real-life execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945. "The New York Times" film reviewer, while recognising the power of the scene, complained