The Best Costumes of 1946

by Cláudio Alves

Before we head into the nitty-gritty of the Best Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1946 tomorrow, it's time to look at some pretty clothes and lose our minds in a hurricane of 'what ifs.' By the end of that decade, the Academy had implemented two Best Costume Design categories – black-and-white and color – but those awards were only introduced in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards. Before that, costume designers had no way of winning Oscars. If you're an awards obsessive who loves the art of costuming, it's easy to wonder what would have happened if the category were introduced at the beginning. What would have been nominated in 1946? Who would have won? Here are my tentative answers to these complicated questions…

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If you want to honor Judy...

by Cláudio Alves

Within the realm of Oscar races, there are few campaign strategies more annoying than the "honor the movie, honor the man" variety.  It's reserved for biopics, putting forward the idea that to shower a certain production in gold laurels is a way to retroactively reward a dead celebrity. This same logic was somewhat utilized to catapult Renée Zellweger towards her second Oscar win. Let's make one thing clear, Renée's win for Judy is a prize for her bold performance but in no way does this victory actually honor the Oscarless Judy Garland. You don't get to pretend you gave Judy an award Academy -- you lost that chance long ago!

Still, we appreciate that Renée mentioned Garland in her speech and that her movie might inspire people to watch more of the late star's great roles. After all, there's no better way to honor her memory than to explore her wonderful filmography...

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Soundtracking: Judy Garland Takes Over The Criterion Channel

by Chris Feil

Forget Disney+, this month we have Judy+. For those of you not already subscribers to the streaming platform, The Criterion Channel has (in addition to a slew of other old studio musicals) added seven classic Judy Garland musicals to the platform for the month of November. Spanning a decade of Garland’s film career, it’s a treat from more famous titles like Meet Me In St. Louis to other oddities such as The Pirate. To entice you to binge as I did, let's run down one of Judy's songs from each of the films available...

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Judy by the Numbers: "On The Atchison Topeka And The Santa Fe"

Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...

Though we last left Judy Garland in 1944 crooning from a trolley and cementing a (troubled) place in Hollywood history, this week we must catapult two years into the future to rejoin our musical heroine. The reason has to do with the odd nature of the Studio System in general and this series in specific. Judy Garland actually shot two movies between 1944 and 1945, but because one was delayed due to reshoots (therefore getting bumped to next week) and the other was a straight drama (therefore not fitting a series focused on musical numbers), we must travel through the end of WW2 and the beginning of Judy Garland's marriage to Vincente Minnelli. Thus, in 1946 we arrive in... the Old West? 
 
The Movie: The Harvey Girls (1946)
The Songwriters: Johnny Mercer (lyrics), Harry Warren (music)
The Players: Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, Ray Bolger, Cyd Charisse, & John Hodiak, directed by George Sidney 

The Story: In 1946, Judy Garland hopped off the trolley and onto a train for a Western-style musical entitled The Harvey Girls. I have to admit, while this is by no means Judy Garland's best musical, it remains a personal favorite for three reasons:

1) Judy Garland sings on a train. 
2) It's a musical western genre mashup that misses Oklahoma! by three years and and one saloon fight.
3) Angela Lansbury plays a chorus girl/prostitute named Em. In fact, the movie is a veritable Who's Who of MGM & the Freed Unit, since it also stars baby Cyd Charisse, the return of former Scarecrow Ray Bolger, deadpan alto Virginia O'Brien, and the delightful dulcet tones of Marjorie Main and Chill Wills!

More importantly for Judy, though, this movie shows the Freed Unit's ability to find a winning formula for its tiny Technicolor titan and stick to it. Like Meet Me in St. Louis before it (and many Freed films after it), The Harvey Girls was a musical that leaned heavily on nostalgia; a period piece mixing authentic songs - conveniently taken from the MGM catalogue - with new insta-classics provided by a rotating stable of songwriters. The plots of each of these movies revolves around Judy meeting, loathing, then learning to love a confounded-but-charismatic man; providing ample opportunity for musical numbers, slapstick, and a brightly-colored battle of the sexes. Though this decision may seem limiting, it also further defined Judy Garland at MGM: Judy's image would embrace the tension between modern stardom and nostalgic Americana, a potent symbol of post-war America.

Judy Fest: "The Harvey Girls"

Silly me. I had the greatest time at the Judy Garland festival at Lincoln Center this week and the movie I didn't write about Presenting Lily Mars was probably my favorite viewing experience. Rent it! Judy was just so funny in it, it was really charming and I liked her chemistry with Van Heflin (I confess I had to look him up since Shane had slipped my mind and I'd never seen his Best Supporting Actor Oscar performance for Johnny Eager (1941). Have any of you seen that one? Is it worth checking out?

But enough about Lily Mars... on to Judy in another incarnation. The Lincoln Center portion of the festival ends tomorrow though the celebration continues at the Paley Center for Television (since Judy did a lot of variety work on TV in the 50s). The last two films I caught were period musicals and here's the first of them.

The Harvey Girls (1946)
I always forget that Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury were contemporaries. They were just three years apart in age (Angela is younger) though in this western musical, Lansbury is clearly meant to be the older woman. Or at least the more experienced one, if you know what I'm saying. Angela is a hardened showgirl (i.e. prostitute) at a rowdy saloon (i.e. casino/brothel) and she's just about the only person in the frontier town who isn't thrilled when Judy Garland arrives "On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe".

In fact, that first big ensemble musical number hilarious stops halfway through just so everyone can gawk at Judy as she steps off the train, like she's the most famous beloved celebrity in the world. The showstopping entrance makes no narrative sense whatsoever -- Judy's "Susan Bradley" being a nobody who is about to start work at Harvey's restaurant -- but it makes perfect movie-movie sense because Judy Garland IS famous and beloved. And if there's a musical number already in progress when Garland arrives at the scene it's basically the Red Sea to her Moses.

The town is divided too, right down the middle, between the wild saloon and the proper restaurant. It's basically a battle for both the soul of the town and the town's most powerful man (John Hodiak) with Lansbury and Garland representing for either side. Guess who wins: The good girl or the bad one? The headliner or the newbie (this was only Lansbury's fourth picture)? I'll give you one guess.

The Harvey Girls hasn't aged as well as some of Garland's output. It's pretty creaky and I don't think it's only due to the print we saw that badly needed some restoration and color correction. Part of the problem is that the film grinds to a halt whenever the typically able Garland isn't front and center. Plus, the songs aren't as memorable as those from her other films. Though the young Cyd Charisse is all porcelain loveliness and Angela Lansbury's perma-scowl is amusing the plot points connecting their numbers and several other characters feel insufficiently developed to hold interest in The Harvey Girls as an ensemble piece. It's always "Can we please get back to Garland?" Still, you can't beat that rare opportunity to see Dorothy dance with her Scarecrow again (Ray Bolger). I think she had missed him most of all. B-