A Western fantasia, The Harvey Girls stars Judy Garland as an Ohio woman who heads West and ends up joining the title troupe—waitresses who work at a franchise of restaurants that are expanding into the American frontier. (There actually were Harvey House establishments, and the film is dedicated to the women who worked at them.) Susan Bradley (Garland) lands in Sandrock, Ariz., were the owner of a saloon/gambling house/brothel (John Hodiak) and his showgirls (including a sneering Angela Lansbury) are none too pleased to have respectable competition set up across the street. That sets the stage for a hoarily moralistic showdown pitting “good girls” against “bad,” complicated only by the fact that Hodiak and Garland’s characters fall for each other. The Harvey Girls’ costume design (Helen Rose arranged the women’s attire) does most of the moralizing, considering the waitresses are buried under so much black-and-white fabric that they look like nuns. The showgirls, meanwhile, reveal just as little skin, preferring to let the eye-popping colors of their ostentatiously adorned dresses attract all the attention. (They look like pink elephants on parade.) There is a literal brawl between these two factions at one point; at another, Garland barges into the saloon firing a pair of pistols she’s stolen. It’s all wild, but too intentionally amped up to be any fun. (The Harvey House dinner bell is a gong, which director George Sidney zooms in on, establishing the movie’s fundamental aesthetic.) As such, Garland is mostly called upon to be big and brassy. “It’s a Great Big World” showcases the richness of her voice, but most of the numbers barrel across the screen, especially the bombastic showstopper “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.” The latter won a Best Original Song Oscar for Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer; it’s shoved down your throat so hard you’ll be singing it to yourself before you’ve even had a chance to consider if you like it.
