The Harvey Girls

This glorified Technicolor commercial for the Fred Harvey restaurants stars Judy Garland as a 19th-century mail-order bride. Upon arriving in New Mexico, Garland discovers that her husband-to-be is the town drunk. She cuts her losses and takes a job at the local Harvey restaurant, an establishment ...more

Judy Garland was already starting her "problem period" by 1946, but one would never know it from looking at The Harvey Girls -- and that's all to the film's benefit, for she has to carry a great deal of it herself. The screenplay is partly at fault; it's serviceable, but no more, even though the basic idea and setting are unusual enough to have inspired much better. The bigger problem for Garland is that she has in John Hodiak one of the dullest and least appealing leading men of her career and ...more