It’s been 80 years since Birmingham, Ala., native Hugh Martin wrote “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time. But if not for Judy Garland, the classic may have been a holiday dud.

Martin, then 30 years old, had a successful career composing music for stage and film. He was accustomed to actors’ quirks and demands but he wasn’t prepared for 22-year-old Judy Garland on the set of 1944’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

Not long after Hugh died in March of 2011 at age 96, I interviewed his younger brother Gordon Martin about the song.

Gordon recalled that Hugh said Judy Garland hated his original lyrics and asked for a re-write. Garland, who was supposed to sing the song to 7-year-old castmate Margaret O’Brien, complained to director Vincente Minelli – who would later become Judy’s husband – “If I sing that song to that sweet little Margaret O’Brien, they’ll think I’m a monster.”

That’s because the lyrics were unbearably sad. In the film, the Smith family plans to move from St. Louis to New York and leave behind their home, friends and significant others. Garland was to sing the song to her little sister, played by O’Brien, as they both cried.

Martin wrote in his autobiography, “Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door,” that he fought for those lyrics, arguing the song was supposed to be sad.

The original lyrics included the lines:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

It may be your last

Next year we may all be living in the past

And:

No good times like the olden days,

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who were near to us,

Will be near to us no more

Garland and Martin were in a standoff. That’s when Tom Drake stepped in, Gordon Martin explained. Drake, who playing Garland’s love interest John Truett in the film, told Hugh to consider the future. According to Hugh’s memoir, Drake said: “Hugh, this is potentially a very great and important song. I feel it in my guts. Now listen to me. Don’t be a stubborn idiot. Write a lyric for that beautiful melody that Judy will sing. You’ll thank me.”

“He convinced Hugh he was being stubborn,” said Gordon Martin.

Hugh changed the lyrics to the ones we know today:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light,

From now on our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Make the Yule-tide gay

From now on,

Our troubles will be miles away…

The Martin brothers said the initial sad lyrics were written at the Birmingham cottage that had been designed by Martin’s father, architect Hugh Martin Sr., as a honeymoon cottage for Hugh’s mother, Ellie.

The home, located 1900 14th Avenue South in Five Points South, is where Hugh Jr., Gordon and their sister Ellen were raised. Gordon recalled it as a happy home, filled with music and love, the one to which all the children in the neighborhood would come. It is listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

It was their mother’s love of music and theater that fueled Hugh’s dream of becoming a songwriter.

“She was into all the new shows on Broadway and she would go out and buy the sheet music and play it,” Gordon said.

Hugh, also an accomplished pianist, was chosen to play the graduation piece for Phillips High School in Birmingham, Gordon said. He played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

After college at Birmingham Southern, Hugh would eventually enter a creative partnership with Ralph Blane and the two would write songs together. Blane is credited as co-writer of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but Hugh has said in numerous interviews and in his memoir that he wrote the song himself.

In fact, he’d written the tune for another song but abandoned it when the lyrics didn’t work. Blane, however, encouraged Hugh to try again because he had a “funny feeling about that little tune.” Eighty years later, it’s hard to imagine Christmas without the classic tune.