HotToastyRag Unless you absolutely love Judy Garland, you can save yourself 100 minutes and just watch the famous song "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" from The Harvey Girls. I like her, but I'm not in love with her; I haven't watched every one of her films I can get my hands on.If you do love her and decide to watch the full movie, you'll see lots of beautiful costumes by Irene and Helen Rose Valles as Judy travels by train to the Wild West to become a mail order bride. The female travelers on the train have a different goal once they arrive: they want to open a restaurant and boarding house for respectable girls. And by that, I mean they want to have lots of chorus numbers. Ray Bolger, Judy's gangly pal from The Wizard of Oz joins the cast, as does the pouting Angela Lansbury, crotchety Marjorie Main, and willowy Cyd Charisse. It's up to you if you want to sit through this mediocre musical, or if you want to get the gist by watching the three-minute song.

gkeith_1 Excellent movie. Lots of singing and dancing. Bolger superb in his leaping, traveling tap dance. Main always good. Loved her purple dance outfit. Judy the best. Led the whole group in the train song. Very energetic and nicely choreographed. I marveled at how Judy weaved/wove in and out of the other players during the train song, at close range. This looked quite tricky. Many large group dance numbers have members way further apart. Lots of dance scenes have the dancers in huge, long rows, but this group in Harvey Girls has all mingled together. Wills, Main and Judy were in Meet Me in Saint Louis. Judy and Bolger were in Wizard of Oz.Hodiak cute and sweet; Preston a perfect bad guy. Lansbury can play a vicious bad lady; rather soft hearted at the end. Lansbury I also saw in a musical show in the movie Till the Clouds Roll By (I think that's the one; she is on a swing on stage -- also mid nineteen forties).Charisse excellent. O'Brien her usual deadpan excellence. The singing piano player sweet on Charisse was very charming.Judy's wedding gown wonderful. Reminded me of her wedding gown in the later forties movie The Pirate. Was this the same costume? The Pirate was 1948/1949, only two to three years later.Another major star in this movie was the train, lol.One problem, however, but it is of the times. Girls was the word. Judy was a girl getting married to a man out west. She never thought of herself as a woman. As far as the girls of the restaurant, maybe they were never thought of as adult women, either.Women's biggest aspirations were to get married. Waitresses is another politically incorrect word today. Waitressing was a planned career in those days? A way to get off the farm? Two schoolteachers ditched the life for slugging steaks to the cowhands. What the???? How ridiculous.This was a post World War II confection. It was mostly happy and carefree. How many of the cowhand actors had fought in World War II? How many of the actresses had been Rosie the Riveter on their way up to movie life?Still, IMO this movie is still way better than the typical shoot-down-plane bang bang war movies of that time period. Enough of the fighting and killing. Hurray for this type of singing and dancing confection, and kudos to Judy for heading this stellar ensemble cast.10/10

dimplet In his commentary, director George Sidney says Judy Garland did the scene where she gets off the train in one take, with only two cuts. Take a look at it; it has very complicated choreography involving dozens of actors, with the camera panning around, requiring precise positioning to fit the framing correctly. Every movement of Judy's is perfect. Yet, Sidney says, she saw one run through of the scene before filming, and added some touches of her own in the one and only take. I've seen some beautiful long takes, such as in Harvey, but I've never seen anything like this. Be sure to watch the extras version of the song in stereo!And then there were the stultifying long takes in High Society, where the actors' feet were nailed to the floor while the camera just stared at them. Borrring directing by Charles Walters. Here, Sidney does many long takes during musical numbers, but the camera moves around, panning from one actress to another as they do their little choreography. The camera work on the dance number Round and Round is amazing and beautiful. But during dialog, he uses shorter, static shots. The film holds your interest. Garland had enormous talent as a singer and actress. Many early musicals were written for her, and before that in the 30s for Fred Astaire. It's hard to imagine the development of the Hollywood musical without Astaire and Garland, and later, Shirley Jones. Sidney talks about doing the original screen test of Judy, then Gumm. Sidney explains how the title song was written. He told Harry Warren they needed a train song. Warren said, what's that? So Sidney tapped out a rhythm of train tracks clicking, and Warren instantly came up with the basic melody and rhythm, which, amazingly, just happens to fit "Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" perfectly. Frankly the train arrival, with its colorful costumes and catchy tune, is the highlight of the movie. And then Chill Wills kissing Marjorie Main is pretty funny. Things turn a bit awkward from there, of course. Angela Lansbury looks pretty hot. John Hodiak is no Clark Gable, but I think he does a good job of being a hybrid bad guy turned good guy. This is basically a pleasant enough film, which is interesting in its place in the history of the development of the musical. In the 30s, most musicals were modified revues, or had a role for a musician or dancer such as Fred Astaire to make the musical numbers plausible. The Wizard of Oz in 1939 may have been the first to drop that pretense, and also starred Garland, of course. (The first true modern musical was Snow White in 1937, but it is animated.) George Sidney's Anchors Aweigh was another, and came out shortly before The Harvey Girls; he later directed several other early musicals, including another Western Annie Get Your Gun in 1950, and the remake of Showboat, a sort of prototype of the modern musical, in 1951. And then there were Kiss Me Kate, Viva Las Vegas and Bye Bye Birdie, so Sidney helped shape the modern musical, and this was one of his first works. The Broadway version of Oklahoma! opened in 1943, but The Harvey Girls was the first movie musical Western, as Oklahoma! didn't come to the screen until 1955. The Harvey Girls didn't begin life as a musical; it was originally written to be a Western starring Clark Gable, but it stalled, so the music wasn't as well integrated as some later musicals. But I think changing it to a musical was the right move, given the story was a bit light. Some reviewers here rant about the weak story line, but it is no where near as pathetic as Meet Me in St. Louis, which is a bare bones skeleton of a story. The modern musical combining strong story with music and dance that is not on stage was yet to come; this was an early stab, but, yes, the story is a bit weak, but not as bad as some say. What makes the movie especially interesting is that there really were Harvey Houses and Harvey Girls, and they were the grand-daddy prototype of all modern chain-franchise restaurants. They were created as a national chain with a uniform reputation so train travelers could have a place to eat and sleep they knew would be good, unlike some earlier establishments that took advantage of travelers to gouge them with poor quality. Some eateries would serve food too hot to eat, knowing the traveler would have to leave on the train's schedule, before it cooled down (it was then recycled). The Harvey Houses also brought a degree of civilization to the West; the conflict with the dance hall girls is not only credible, but was symbolic of the changes that were taking place. Listen to Sidney's fascinating commentary. He mentions that FDR died during the shooting, and they had to suspend shooting for several days. Then they had to stop shooting for a few weeks when John Hodiak caught the measles. He also talks a lot about the history of the Hollywood studio system, including what happened the time he asked MGM as a director how much his movie was costing. They never told him. Near the end he talks about whether he would remake The Harvey Girls:"You should never remake a successful picture. The only picture you should remake is an unsuccessful picture. Because so many times when you see people and good picture makers remake a successful picture and they say, 'I've got to change it a little bit,' it doesn't quite work. So it's better to leave it alone." He got that right!

Jem Odewahn I really enjoyed this one, perfect hot lazy Saturday afternoon entertainment for me. Judy Garland as always is a treat to watch. This time the songbook isn't too memorable (apart from that great ensemble number near the beginning), and John Hodiak is sort of creepy as her leading man (his teeth and moustache look weird--he has none of the earthy sexuality of "Lifeboat"), but nevertheless I thought it was pretty good. It had enough humour, spots of melodrama and light musical numbers to keep me interested throughout. Plus, the colour is gorgeous, looking fantastic there on my HD TV. A young Cyd Charisse plays one of the "Harvey Girls", and she doesn't really get much of a chance to display her dancing talents, but she's still lovely to watch. Hard to believe Angela Lansbury was so young when she made this movie (early 20's I believe). Why did they turn her into a madam before her time? George Sidney, reliable MGM hand, directs and it's some of the best work I've seen from him yet. Apart from the ballads, the musical numbers are very fluid.