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The Harvey Girls

The Harvey Girls
Harvey Girls poster.jpg
theatrical poster
Directed by George Sidney
Robert Alton (musical number)
Produced by Arthur Freed
Written by Kay Van Riper (additional dialogue)
Screenplay by Edmund Beloin
Nathaniel Curtis
Harry Crane
James O'Hanlon
Samson Raphaelson
Story by Eleanore Griffin
William Rankin
Based on The Harvey Girls
1942 novel
by Samuel Hopkins Adams
Starring Judy Garland
Music by Harry Warren (music)
Johnny Mercer (lyrics)
Lennie Hayton (score)
Cinematography George J. Folsey
Edited by Albert Akst
Production
company
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • January 18, 1946 (1946-01-18) (US)
Running time
102 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $2,931,000
Box office $5,175,000

The Harvey Girls is a 1946 MGM musical film based on the 1942 novel of the same name by Samuel Hopkins Adams, about Fred Harvey's famous 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 film speaking role on film.

The Harvey Girls won an Academy Award for Best Song for "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", written by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. The film was a production of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM.

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 (AT&SF) to the western town of Sandrock, Arizona. On the trip they meet Susan Bradley (Judy Garland), who travels to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a "lonely-hearts" ad. Unfortunately, when she arrives, the man turns out to be an "old coot" who does not at all meet her expectations – and he also wants not to get married as much as she wants not to marry him, so they agree to call it off. When she learns that someone else, the owner of the local saloon, Ned Trent (John Hodiak), wrote the letters as a joke, she confronts him and tells him off, in the process endearing herself to him.


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