The Harvey Girls (1946). Photofest.
(George Sidney, US 1946, 102 min., 35mm)
Judy Garland is in top form in this western musical, with songs by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. Traveling on a westbound train to Sand Rock, New Mexico, Susan Bradley (Garland) is intending to marry the man she has been corresponding with but has never met. When the man is not what she expected, she joins the other women on the train setting up a Harvey’s restaurant in the frontier town. The saloon across the street and its questionable denizens don’t want the competition and so they do what they can to shut the new restaurant down. Susan’s loyalties are tested when she discovers that the author of the letters she had been receiving was actually the owner of the saloon, resulting in an all-out western bar brawl. The film’s most famous number, “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” not only earned the Academy Award for Best Original Song, it was also a hit for many artists in 1945, including Garland, Tommy Dorsey, Bing Crosby, and Mercer himself.