Torch Song (1953)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Charles Walters

Writers:

John Michael Hayes (writer)
Jan Lustig (writer)

Release Date:

23 October 1953 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Music | Romance

Tagline:

Tough Baby - a wonderful love story with the star of "Sudden Fear" and for the FIRST TIME you'll see her in TECHNICOLOR!

Plot:

Jenny Stewart is a tough Broadway musical star who doesn't take criticism from anyone. Yet there is one individual...

Plot Keywords:

Unrequited Love | Chinese Man | Reference To Titian | Sister Sister Relationship | Autograph

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Joan Crawford	...	Jenny Stewart
Michael Wilding	...	Tye Graham
Gig Young	...	Cliff Willard
Marjorie Rambeau	...	Mrs. Stewart
Harry Morgan	...	Joe Denner (as Henry Morgan)
Dorothy Patrick	...	Martha
James Todd	...	Philip Norton
Eugene Loring	...	Gene, the Dance Director
Paul Guilfoyle	...	Monty Rolfe
Benny Rubin	...	Charles Maylor
Peter Chong	...	Peter
Maidie Norman	...	Anne
Nancy Gates	...	Celia Stewart
Chris Warfield	...	Chuck Peters
Rudy Render	...	Singer at Party

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.75 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:S | USA:Approved (PCA #16608) | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

MGM's ad campaign erroneously boasted that this was moviegoers' first chance to see Joan Crawford in Technicolor. Actually, Crawford had appeared in a Technicolor sequence in same studio's Ice Follies of 1939, some 14 years earlier.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the "Two-Faced Woman" song Joan Crawford's character starts out wearing a green dress. At the bottom of the stairs she turns and when the women start beating on the tables, Joan's dress becomes blue.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Jenny Stewart: Hold the record.

Movie Connections:

Featured in That's Entertainment! III (1994)

Soundtrack:

You're All the World to Me

Sweetness! Heatness!

That's a couplet from a production number in which Miss Joan Crawford declares, in Technicolor blackface, "I can't help being a two-faced woman." She overestimates herself: In this peerlessly ripe '50s melodrama she has one face, glaring, glaring. She's a harder-than-nails Broadway singer-dancer (dubbed, and clearly no Terpsichorean natural) who shouts down anyone opposed to her in the tiniest way, and then smokes countless cigarettes, glowers, and downs alcohol to betray her neuroses. She's inexplicably adored by her blind rehearsal accompanist (Michael Wilding, who got some terrible parts at MGM), who at least doesn't have to witness her terrifying eyebrows or orange hair, and who's in turn pursued by a nice blonde musician who's obviously a much better match for him. What's surprising and endlessly entertaining about this not-quite-musical is how willing, and even eager, La Crawford is to play up to her public's worst estimation of her. She'll play unsympathetic up to the armpits, as long as they sense that underneath is the heart of a real woman who merely needs to be dominated by a devoted male. None of the characters makes much sense--Marjorie Rambeau, Oscar-nominated as her mother, is either cold and grasping or warm and sympathetic depending on the moment in the plot--but the dialog has some sarcastic snap to it, and it's fun to watch Crawford go through her purification-through-humiliation paces. There's a brilliant Carol Burnett parody of this called "Torchy Song," but the original is even more giggle-inducing.