Plot
A group of "Harvey Girls", new waitresses for Fred Harvey's pioneering chain of Harvey House restaurants, travels on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to the western town of Sandrock. On the trip, they meet Susan Bradley (Judy Garland) who is traveling to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a "lonely hearts" ad. Unfortunately, when she gets there, the man turns out to be an "old coot" who doesn't match up at all to her expectations – but he also doesn't want to get married as much as she doesn't want to marry him, so they agree to call it off. When she learns that the letters were written as a joke by someone else, the owner of the local saloon, Ned Trent (John Hodiak), she confronts him and tells him off, in the process endearing herself to him.
Susan joins the Harvey Girls, and is soon their leader in fighting against the attempts by Trent's business partner, Judge Sam Purvis (Preston Foster), to scare them off and the animosity of the dance hall girls/prostitutes, led by Em (Angela Lansbury), who is in love with Trent and sees Susan as a rival. Trent comes to see the value of the Harvey House and other trappings of civilization, and tells Purvis to leave them alone, but Purvis continues with his campaign of intimidation, finally burning down the restaurant. Trent offers his saloon as a replacement, and Em and the dance hall girls leave town. Susan, thinking that Trent is leaving too, gets on the train, but Em, seeing that Susan loves Trent so much she's willing to give up everything for him, stops the train and points out Trent riding towards them on his horse. The film ends with their wedding in the desert, surrounded by the Harvey Girls.
Read more about this topic: The Harvey Girls
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)