The Harvey Girls

The Harvey Girls (1946) starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, John Hodiak, Angela Lansbury. Attempt at a "musical Western" mostly falls flat. Designed as a vehicle for Garland, it pretty much serves that purpose, but silly script and (mostly) lame musical numbers sabotage the film at every turn. Plot has Garland traveling by train from Ohio to a remote little fictional town called Sandrock out west (apparently in Arizona), where she has agreed to be somebody's mail-order bride. When the marriage plans fall through, she joins up with a bunch of young women who are traveling on the same train with the object of being waitresses in a Harvey House restaurant. The Harvey House restaurants were apparently a nonfictional fixture in the West, but the movie does little to explore that aspect of the plot. Low point is probably a "brawl" between the Harvey Girls and the ladies of a local saloon, which comes off as totally phony  (Judy is lovely, but she can't even fake a fight). The film has English subtitles for the hearing-impaired, but the songs aren't subtitled! Grade: C+