The Harvey Girls

The Harvey Girls is a 1946 Technicolor American musical film produced by Arthur Freed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is based on the 1942 novel of the same name by Samuel Hopkins Adams, about Fred Harvey's Harvey House waitresses. Directed by George Sidney, the film stars Judy Garland and features John Hodiak, Ray Bolger, and Angela Lansbury, as well as Preston Foster, Virginia O'Brien, Kenny Baker, Marjorie Main and Chill Wills. Future star Cyd Charisse appears in her first speaking role on film. The Harvey Girls won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. Plot In the 1890s, a group of "Harvey Girls" – new waitresses for Fred Harvey's pioneering chain of Harvey House restaurants – travels on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway to the American Southwest town of Sandrock. On the trip they meet Susan Bradley, who is travelling to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a "lonely-hearts" ad. Unfortunately, when she arrives, her husband-to-be turns out to be an "old coot" who does not at all meet her expectations, and vice versa. They start to argue and list each other's personal faults, both claiming none was mentioned in each other's letters. With their mutual disinclination to continue with the marital union clear, they jointly decide to call off the wedding.