Beginning in the 1870s, a pioneering British immigrant and entrepreneur named Fred Harvey created fine-dining restaurants throughout the Western United States, all along the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad. While Harvey set a new standard in the Wild West’s fledgling hospitality business – which was not renowned for its cuisine – his achievements extended beyond the culinary realm. From 1883, Harvey hired women to be “Harvey Girls”. These waitresses introduced Westerners to high standards of customer service and showed that women could be independent.
Until this moment, there had been very few job opportunities for single women in the American West. Most wait-staff in the West were in fact African American men who did not get along well with their cowboy clientele, many of whom had fought on the confederate side of the Civil War. The Fred Harvey Company, in reaction to growing tensions between staff and customers, decided to bring out women from the East and Midwest to stay in dormitories and work in their restaurants on an initial 6-month contract. The Harvey Girls were an instant hit, and many women stayed on, requesting further employment and marrying locals. Ultimately, this workforce spanned almost 100 years and involved over 100,000 women.
In 1946, MGM released the motion picture “The Harvey Girls” starring Judy Garland, which until recently was the only film to immortalize them. Now, however, the Harvey Girls are the subject of a new documentary film called “The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound”. This documentary makes a strong case for their historical importance and includes rare interviews with the few remaining Harvey Girls and author and expert on Fred Harvey, Stephen Fried. The film also explores the life of Fred Harvey and his company which left its mark across the American West 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.
Through the Harvey Girls’ stories, the documentary visits and brings to life many of the Fred Harvey Company’s most prominent restaurants and buildings which were designed by their chief building designer, Mary Colter. Colter was way ahead of her time, not only in her chosen profession, but also in her unique aesthetic which fused Native American and Hispanic Southwestern traditions. Colter’s work is still in evidence at The Grand Canyon in Arizona, La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona and at Union Station in Los Angeles, California.
Katrina Parks (c) March 2014
“The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound” is being distributed for broadcast by American Public Television. DVDs are also available for museum and classroom use and home video presentation through contacting Katrina Parks, Producer / Director: katrinaparks@mac.com.
