[2] Directed by George Sidney, the film stars Judy Garland and features John Hodiak, Ray Bolger, and Angela Lansbury, as well as Preston Foster, Virginia O'Brien, Kenny Baker, Marjorie Main and Chill Wills.

The Harvey Girls won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.

On the trip they meet Susan Bradley, who is travelling to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a "lonely-hearts" ad.

With the marriage safely cancelled, he reveals to Susan that his letters were actually ghost-written as a joke by Ned Trent, the local saloon owner.

Cast notes: The Harvey Girls was conceived by MGM as a dramatic western vehicle for Lana Turner, but Roger Edens, of the Arthur Freed unit, decided after seeing the musical Oklahoma!

Edens convinced her that the part in Yolanda was not large enough for her, and he promised that The Harvey Girls would be specifically created to showcase her talents.

[9] Virginia O'Brien, a comic actress known for her deadpan style of singing, was pregnant while The Harvey Girls was filmed.

MGM released the song to record companies even before shooting was finished on the film, and it became an instant hit dominating the airwaves through the summer and fall of 1945, with versions by Bing Crosby with Six Hits and a Miss, Judy Garland and The Merry Macs, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with the Sentimentalists, and, the most popular, Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers.

[4] In shooting the number for the film, Garland reportedly did the entire song up to the tempo change in one take, twice, after watching her stand-in do one run-through.

[12] Howard Barnes wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that the film was "A great big animated picture postcard.

Time wrote "A technicolored musical celebrating the coming of chastity, clean silverware, and crumbless tablecloths to the pioneer Southwest.

[1][14] "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.