Did you know that Judy Garland (RIP) was in a movie about sex work?
Okay, so maybe all of The Harvey Girls (1946) isn’t about sex work. But head saloon girl Em (played by Angela Lansbury) is the direct competition, and whore in the Madonna/Whore binary set up by the film, to Judy Garland’s Madonna-esque hyper-virgin character Susan Bradley.
For those who don’t know, Harvey Girls were elite waitresses in Harvey Houses – the first chain restaurant in the United States of America. Harvey Houses were located along stops of the Atcheson-Topeka-Santa Fe Railroad from the 1870s to the mid-1950s. The railroad network of the United States, the Harvey Houses, and the women who worked in them were all parts of the settler-colonial scheme of Indigenous erasure in the West. The role of Harvey Girls specifically was to bring a pseudo-moral influence by way of a crop of young white women deemed as respectable, into a region which was decried for its famed lawlessness, debauchery, and sin (read: white men gone wild). Another scheme of settler-colonialism in the West during the 19th century was mail-order brides (in which single white women would answer ads looking for wives placed by white men in the predominantly male population of the West) – which is how Judy Garland’s character arrives out West. After answering a mail-order bride ad – sanitized by the film studio as a “lonely hearts ad service” -- and finding that her husband-to-be is not as described, Garland’s character becomes a Harvey Girl.
Harvey Girls were required to be clean, attractive, and personable to a high standard – they are a large part of what made the Harvey Houses famous. They were locked in their dormitories attached to the restaurants after curfew, and forbidden to marry while on contract. Harvey Girls worked primarily on the promise of tips from wealthy men riding the railroads. Garland’s character is the ultimate Harvey Girl – her uniform is spotless, complete with an impeccable feminizing white bow on the top of her hair. Her skirts are voluminous, and she gives constant BVE (Big Virgin Energy). Garland and her fellow Harvey Girls do have neighbors across the street, however: the saloon girls, who are unhappy at their arrival. Garland and her coworkers do their best to convey their own distaste at the occupations and perceived amoral character of the women who work in the saloon. Enter Em.
If you know anything about the ‘Wild West,’ then you know that ‘saloon’ in this context is code for a brothel. The hand painted sign outside of the saloon advertises “beautiful dancing girls,” in a way that wouldn’t be out of place at any peepshow or strip club. Brothel culture in the American West was rampant. Working women serviced the single men who came as ranchers, cowherds, land thieves, (what textbooks in the United States affectionately call ‘pioneers’), oilmen, and all the other forms of male-only employment in a region considered too rough for nice women to live. I assume that a film produced under MGM studios in 1946 within an industry known for its strict morality clauses on actors and film content went with ‘saloon girls,’ rather than ‘brothel workers’ for reasons of propriety.
The low ratio of white women to white men out West meant that sex workers had the market cornered. The arrival of The Harvey Girls, who despite being virginal, are portrayed as very wifeable – and the saloon girls as not – ticks off Em, the head saloon girl, who sees The Harvey Girls as unwelcome pests. Yet Em is no one dimensional character: until Garland arrives, Em holds the place as the most desirable, and the toughest, woman in town. One of Em’s famous lines, delivered scathingly to Judy Garland is, “Our profession is entertainment and we don’t like competition,” after Garland’s character Sarah makes a thinly veiled remark about Em and the other women’s profession. The tension between Em and Sarah–which is of course, undercut by being in competition for the same man–culminates in an iconic all-out brawl scene between The Harvey Girls and the ‘saloon girls’ at the saloon. Em is shown as deeply jealous of the respectful attention and admiration Sarah receives from all the men in town – including Nick, the saloon owner and Em’s boyfriend. By the end of the film, Sarah has predictably fallen in love with Nick, influenced him with her shining purity to mend his ways, and Em releases Nick from any obligation to her, leaving him free to marry Sarah.
The setup in the film is clear: Sarah Bradley, the mail-order bride and waitress, is Madonna. I imagine that this was another frustrating role for Judy Garland despite the beauty of this film, because Garland was known to take issue with MGM Studios insistence on type-casting her in repetitive ‘girl next door’ characters. Em is the Whore (albeit one who has many lines, and can sing and perform her ass off – this is a musical after all) who doesn’t get the guy or the happy ending because, well, she’s a Whore. My interest in The Harvey Girls film and the real-life program of The Harvey Girls is the way in which it juxtaposes notions of approved sexual labor for women: being a mail-order bride, or a waitress who must be “…the most attractive, the most attentive, the most gracious…” in a workforce where the guests are outright named as being most interested in the girls’ appearance (see the ad from above).
A mail-order bride in the era of the Wild West traded marriage and access to one’s body, along with cooking and cleaning services, to someone they’d never met before in return for a bit of safety and security. I would call that a form of sex work. To me, the wording in the ad for employment as a Harvey Girl could easily be that for a brothel looking for new workers: emphasis on attentiveness, service, attitude, and appearance. The film has an entire musical number dedicated to the emphasis of “perfection” in the appearance and conduct of Harvey Girls (even regulating what kind of underwear they are allowed to wear) making them a stark contrast to the free-wheeling saloon girls in heels, fishnets, and corsets.
Interestingly enough, the line between Harvey Girls and sex work was thin enough that Mildred Clark Cusey –also known as Madam Millie and Silver City Millie – started engaging in sex work when her tips as a Harvey Girl weren’t sufficient. She went on to dictate her memoir Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan (2002) to a writer named Max Evans before her death in 1993, about her life as a Harvey Girl-turned-prostitute in the brothel culture of the American West and her eventual ascension to the role of famous chain-brothel owner-cum-madam. The Harvey Girls is a good watch for fans of Classic Hollywood, Judy Garland, musicals, and illustrations of the Madonna/Whore archetype. For those unfamiliar with the role of sex workers in the Wild West, this is a chance to learn a little bit of whorestory while enjoying some extravagantly choreographed musical numbers.
Bio: empress mirage, also known online as thepasteldomina, is a writer of smut and cultural commentary. a former fssw, bondage model, and str!pper, she now creates online content as a findomme and living goddess. dip a toe into the cool waters of mirage at: https://direct.me/thepasteldomina and find her on all the platforms as: thepasteldomina
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