- Musical western about a mail order bride who ditches her bashful suitor and joins a group of women intent on opening a remote whistle stop restaurant.Running Time: 102 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN Rating: NR Age: 012569534827 UPC: 012569534827 Manufacturer No: 65348
Musical western about a mail order bride who ditches her bashful suitor and joins a group of women intent on opening a remote whistle stop restaurant.Sometimes lively, sometimes pokey, this Technicolor MGM musical inspires mixed feelings in aficionados of the form–except on one point. No viewer will question why “On the Atchison, Topeka, & the Santa Fe” won the best song Oscar for 1946. This is a brilliant, inventive song given an epic staging. Director George Sidney pulls out all the stops for this wowser–even Marjorie Main sings, an eardrum-testing sound. The real-life Harvey Girls were waitresses imported to the far-flung Fred Harvey Hotels, civilizing oases along the railroad lines out west. The fictional Harvey Girls is set in Sandrock, where the traveling waitresses are joined by a sort of mail-order bride (Judy Garland) whose prospective husband is a bust–he’s a roughhewn rancher played by Chill Wills. Garland is in fine spunky form; unfortunately, her romance is with John Hodiak (as the owner of a dance hall), that uninspiring World War II-era lead. The film’s other great Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren song is the unexpectedly melancholy “It’s a Great Big World,” performed in a lovely trio by Garland, Virginia O’Brien, and the young Cyd Charisse. The tall, deadpan O’Brien also does a comic take on “The Wild, Wild West” while shoeing a horse. With kewpie-faced Angela Lansbury as a bespangled dance-hall gal and Ray Bolger high-stepping through a dance solo, there are enough good people on board to keep the wheels a-turning “all the way to Californ-eye-yay.” –Robert Horton
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June 5, 2008
#1
I really enjoyed the movie. The story background is the Fred Harvey restaurants and concessions at train stations. My father worked for Fred Harvey at the Chicago and Cleveland facilities.
Regarding the movie and Judy Garland – The movie is great and Judy was one of my favorite entertainers.
Lane Hansen
June 5, 2008
#2
I am a big fan of movie musicals and will even sit through some of the less well-made ones just to enjoy some good clean fun. But the musical numbers in this one were so below par (except for the oscar winner) that I couldn’t help counting the minutes until they were over. Most of them seemed to go on forever! I also have a very high threshold for silliness (preferring that to the bathroom humor so prevelant in today’s movies) but the bar room brawl between the “good girls” and the “bad girls” was a little over the top! I hated the “Gigi” ending when the “good girl” decides she can be a “bad girl” if that’s what the man she loves wants. Ick!
June 5, 2008
#3
Only “Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” survives…. Judy overplays and the only thing worth mentioning besides the titlesegment is Virginia O`Brien… To me – this film doesn`t exist in my collection of Judy Garland items…
June 5, 2008
#4
It was good to see the great Judy Garland in living color in “The Harvey Girls”, but the movie itself is kinda over rated,and while there is maybe 2 good musical numbers in it,there really is no story line and the movie kinda drags and is boring in some spots. There is not enough story plot and too much boring musical numbers,I found myself falling asleep at times,but I am a Judy Garland fan! To see a great Judy Garland movie with a good story line and better musical numbers check out her movie “Meet me in St.Louis”,you’ll be glad you did!
June 5, 2008
#5
I wouldn’t say that this was Judy Garland’s best film, but it was always one of my favorites. It’s about a girl that meets a man through one of those order-a-bride things. She’s enchanted by the man’s letters, so she packs up her stuff and moves out west to marry him. When she gets there though, she realizes that the man who really wrote the letters did it as a joke, so she becomes a Harvey Girl(a waitress at a high class inn) just to spite him. Of course the two fall in love. Don’t they always.