Once intended as a vehicle for Lana Turner, this Technicolored musical comedy became one of Judy Garland's greatest personal triumphs. She plays a mail-order bride who joins the waitresses sent out west by restaurateur Fred Harvey to serve the passengers on the new cross-country railroads. The first half is undeniably spectacular, and great fun, climaxing with a wonderful Oscar-winning set piece as Garland and the company perform Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, magnificently choreographed in railroad rhythm by Robert Alton and directed with hardly a visible edit by George Sidney. When the story gets going, however, the plot is as cardboard as the scenery, and John Hodiak is a totally inadequate and lacklustre leading man. There's good work from Angela Lansbury and Ray Bolger, though, but the film belongs to Garland, and she is simply wonderful.

On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.