Movie of the Week X

The Harvey Girls (1946)

And now for a musical western starring Judy Garland. Intrigued? It is a great, fun musical about a mail-order bride (sort of) who goes out west and becomes a Harvey Girl. The Harvey Girls were waitresses who worked at restaurants, Harvey Houses, opened by Mr. Harvey in the late 19th century along the western Atchison-Topeka-Sante Fe rail lines. (Harvey Houses were the first chain restaurants.) Mr. Harvey wanted to have family friendly establishments serving good food everywhere the trains stopped. The Harvey Houses and his Harvey Girls became "agents of civilization" conquering the lawless, un-family-friendly towns of the Wild West. To keep the Harvey Houses from becoming a different sort of "house," a senior Harvey Girl served as a sort of house mother, the women had strict curfews, a strict and unflattering uniform, a strict regulation hairstyle, and a strict prohibition against makeup. The Harvey Houses sound like a great premise for a movie, right? You have the wild west, trains, cowboys, "good" young single women and "bad" young single women...plus Judy Garland and some excellent songs from Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren.

Susan Bradley (Judy Garland) is a lovely young woman who was yearning for adventure and so answered a sort of lonely hearts ad. She received beautiful letters from a man in SandRock and eventually accepted his proposal of marriage, bought a wedding dress, packed her bags, and boarded the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante Fe. She happens to be seated in the same railroad car as a bunch of soon-to-be Harvey Girls. They ask her to join them in their lunch, and she tells her story...they all swoon. Susan herself is rather dreamy and excited about her new life, despite the fact that she has never met her fiance. Here she is singing on the back of the train. The song is lovely, but I am perhaps more delighted by the passing scenery. The same cactus and mountains and bushes pass by two or three times. It is clearly a painted backdrop on a loop. Love it.

The Harvey Girls are all very excited about their new lives, too. They arrive in SandRock and perform an exuberant and wonderful number about where they are from: "We were schoolmarms in Grand Rapids, Mich; but reading-writing-'rithmetic were not our dish...", "I finished high school in Providence, Rhode Island, and Providence, Rhode Island, is where I learned to dance!" and that sort of thing. Then Judy steps from the train and sings her homage to the railroad line and the fresh starts and adventure it provides. The song "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante-Fe" won Best Song that year. It is a fairly complicated production number with loads of singing and dancing cowboys and Harvey Girls and even some 'Injuns. (It is not politically correct; it is 1946 for goodness sake--so don't expect a positive depiction of Native Americans.) Anyway, everyone dances around and climbs on the train and stuff. The reason I mention this is because apparently Judy Garland watched her stand-in perform the complex choreography once, just once, and then she hopped right in and they filmed it. Just once. And it is perfect. She sure was talented.Unfortunately for Susan, her fiance turns out not to be the handsome, romantic man she was expecting from the letters. He is a rather decrepit cowboy and he didn't even write the letters--he asked the saloon owner, Ned Trent, to write them. Susan is, naturally, distraught and quite angry. What is she to do? Marry this gross old man? Go back home? Or join the Harvey Girls? Guess.

And now for the main mystery/western part of the movie. Not everyone is happy about the civilizing presence of the Harvey Girls and the Harvey House. A suave, Clark Gable-esque man who is also a judge (Preston Foster) is determined to close the restaurant and get rid of the women. He likes SandRock the way it is with an empty church, a bustling saloon and brothel, and lawless streets. First he just steals the restaurant's meat, which sends Susan into the saloon with borrowed six-shooters in an attempt to get the meat back.

Guess who is on the right of Garland in that picture? Yes, it is Angela Lansbury. She plays the head saloon entertainer/prostitute? who is in love with Ned Trent. She plays a bad girl very well. Especially in this dress, which is all gold sequins and feathers.

The judge's attempts to close the Harvey House quickly become more serious. Will he succeed in scaring off the Harvey Girls? I shan't say.

I shall say that before he does or does not close the restaurant the Harvey Girls throw a civilized party in which they teach the backwards men how to waltz. Susan wears her wedding gown. It is lovely, with sparkling white satin for the main part with puffy sleeves and pleated white chiffon on the bottom. Love their 1940's hair styles in the 19th century movie.

(The woman to the left of Susan is, I think, Alice from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I always love to catch the extras.) Speaking of other cast members, Susan becomes fast friends with two other Harvey Girls, played by Virginia O'Brien (left) and Cyd Charisse (right). They each have their own little sub-plots.

Virginia O'Brien plays Alma who is a hopeless romantic who unfortunately can't seem to find anyone who wants to be romantic with her. O'Brien was known as Miss Deadpan due to a gimmick she apparently stumbled on during an early singing gig. She became suddenly frozen due to stage fright, and sang her song with no facial expression and no movement. The audience must have loved it because she often repeated this in later performances. It is quite funny to watch her. She is a talented singer and comedienne and actress. In this film she has a great scene with Ray Bolger in a blacksmith shop. He is trying to be a blacksmith but he is scared of horses and can't stand the fire and the whole process of shoe-ing a horse. So Alma has to help him, all the while singing about how things aren't really so wild in the wild, wild west, and bemoaning the fact that she is tougher than the tough men she had been warned about.

That is Ray Bolger cowering in the middle of the picture. The same Ray Bolger who played the scarecrow seven years earlier in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Back to Cyd Charisse, the other Harvey Girl of importance. She is one of my favorites. An amazing dancer whom Fred Astaire called "beautiful dynamite." She is perhaps best known for being the girl in the green dress in Singin' in the Rain (1952).

But she was in loads of movies and danced with all the great male dancers. The Harvey Girls is her first movie with a speaking role. She is rather demure and innocent in this movie. In later films she is feisty and she usually dances a sort of femme fatale role.

But her thing in this film is that she loves to dance and brought her dancing slippers with her from back east. (She is the one who sings about hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, and learning how to dance there in the train's arrival at SandRock number.) Too cute and sweet, but what can you do. She has a tender love affair with the saloon's piano player, and dances a lovely solo in a basic long sleeved dress that has a shocking pink petticoat. So every time she twirls there is a swirl of hot pink. Fantastic costume.

The Harvey Girls is interesting because it combines some of the western genre with the musical. It is fun because it has a great cast, great songs, and it is a visually appealing film. Besides, it is pretty awesome to see Judy Garland in full skirts skipping down a western street, or storming into a saloon, or fighting with prostitutes. Yes, there is a Harvey Girls vs. saloon girls tussle. So if you are looking for an enjoyable musical with a bit more story than is typical, try The Harvey Girls.