The Harvey Girls

A likeable but aimless musical which doesn't know what to make of its plot (designed to cash in on the pioneer spirit of Oklahoma) about the Harvey House restaurants which followed the railroad into the West, bringing demure waitresses into the domain of rowdy saloon girls. The highly inappropriate Harry Warren/Johnny Mercer songs are mostly romantic numbers or specialties for the deadpan O'Brien, with even the bustling 'On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe' failing to rouse any real echoes of the Western. It is symptomatic that the film's best and most legitimate number, with Angela Lansbury leading a saloon girl chorus of 'Oh, You Kid', is thrown away in favour of a dialogue exchange between Garland and Hodiak which could well have waited.