jvanderwalt5 I just saw this movie today for the first time on TcM and I must say it was as beautiful as I hoped it would be. I am a huge fan of Judy garland and watched a lot of her movies ex.The wizard of Oz,a star is born,summer stock.meet me in st Louis and for me and my gal loved all of them. Now back to the Harvey girls the song are cheery and you can sing along easily. It's your typical love triangle movie 2 girls are in love with the same man one popular and one clumsy the one girl new him for years and the other just met him. What would overrule popularity or Love find out by watching this stunning musical with a unforgettable Judy garland

writers_reign For reasons that need not detain us here my life is punctuated by movies that for one reason or another - I wasn't born yet, they never played in my neighborhood or I just plain missed them - I never got to see on their initial release. Wizard of Oz was one, Meet Me In St Louis was another as was The Harvey Girls. I remember catching up with a revival of Meet Me In St Louis in my teens. I was blown away and went back three times. I've just caught up with The Harvey Girls and my overall reaction is so what. True, there's a great production number and there's another number 'It's A Great Big World' that is light years better than Atchison, Topeka and finally there is Virginia O'Brien but once you've said that there is little left to praise. As a Judy completist I'm glad to have it on my shelves but that's about it.

ptb-8 If Technicolor MGM finesse is enough to stun you (and it easily can be enough) then THE HARVEY GIRLS is 3D color heaven. As a musical and as a movie, I found it weirdly flat. In Australia where these films were huge box office successes, MGM reissued many of their 40s and 50s musicals right up to the late 60s. The few that were not on the reissue list included THE HARVEY GIRLS. ... whether it was too American (!?) or whether it just did not have the pizazz or the fantasy we in Oz seem to love, I am not sure but I can feel my reasons why I became bored with it. On the plus side, I was constantly enchanted with gorgeous Garland aged 22, the breathtaking Technicolor photography and any close up of Angela Lansbury, clothed to the dazzling hilt. I can see how and why this film went through various changes during production and it feels like an overdressed version of another more ordinary western gussied into being a 1945 musical. OKLAHOMA's 1943 stage success is quite evident. Research shows that MGM saw a chance to emulate OKLAHOMA'ssuccessful stage result and contrived a western on the production conveyor belt into a pseudo OKLAHOMA - ish movie by wrangling THE HARVEY GIRLS into the form it is now. This explains why the film seems disjointed and pieced from different imagery and ideas. I found John Hodiak creepy with his odd teeth/mustache (that scary grin!) and no leading romantic man for Judy. I don't know what a Doagie is and I can't for the life of me see how the Joan Of Arc style bonfire number could have ever fitted into the finished film... which to me is startling in its exorcist/hell imagery with Judy looking like she is about to scream and melt. It is another weirdness in/out of a film full of off kilter ideas that seem to have been added as afterthoughts. Marjorie main has a great 'setting the table' number, and silly Ray Bolger again flips and wiggles out of place... looking like another weird addition among the rest. The big number at the start is fantastic, the set wonderful, the train line through the main street eye catching, and again the costume design and color photography superb. There is great use of the colour orange... whether as oleanders or with black and white stripes, but it is a keen colour featured throughout. It's all like a mosaic tile floor that is a movie.

movibuf1962 Even though the film starred Judy Garland, what I really enjoyed about The Harvey Girls is that it operates as an ensemble musical, giving features and spotlight numbers to just about everyone in the mammoth cast. This kind of thing is usually reserved for stage musicals only, but back in 1946 MGM's roster of talent was strong, if not yet infamous. Players like deadpan comic Virginia O'Brien and dancer Cyd Charisse were fairly new back then, but this film gives them individual spotlights: not only do they both sing with Garland in the nighttime ballad "It's A Great Big World," but O'Brien gets to sing "The Wild, Wild West" (while assisting blacksmith Ray Bolger in shoeing a horse) and Charisse gets to dance (briefly) opposite Kenny Baker singing "Wait And See." Marjorie Main leads the Harvey waitresses through "The Train Must Be Fed;" Angela Lansbury is featured in two saloon numbers, and Ray Bolger gets to do some of his rubber-legged clowning at the Harvey House party. And, of course, everyone on the planet is assembled for the big, eight minute production number "On The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe." There's literally something for everyone- even the oil-and-water romance between Garland and John Hodiak. And they shine as well, even if Hodiak wasn't the most well-known leading man. Check out this wonderfully scored, written, acted, and costumed tribute to old-fashioned Americana.