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The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound
Starting in the 1880's, over 100,000 brave young women known as Harvey Girls, made an unusual decision to leave home and travel west to work as waitresses along the transcontinental railroad, opening the doors of both the West and the workplace to women.
In 1946, MGM turned the Harvey Girls into legends when they released the motion picture The Harvey Girls starring Judy Garland. Until now, this fictional Hollywood movie has been the only film to immortalize the Harvey Girls. Now this important part of America’s history is covered in much greater depth, including rare interviews with the few remaining Harvey Girls and author and expert on Fred Harvey, Stephen Fried.
In addition, the film explores the life of Fred Harvey and his company which left its mark by not only providing work opportunities for women, but by being among the first companies to promote cultural diversity in the workplace by hiring Hispanic and Native American women to be waitresses along with their Anglo peers. The Harvey Girls, whose workforce continued to flourish until the 1960s, were true pioneers.
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