Torch Song *** (1953, Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Gig Young) – Classic Movie Review 3379

The MGM studio welcomes back its Thirties great contract star Joan Crawford after a decade away with director Charles Walters’s sometimes feeble, frequently daft 1953 soap opera.

Nevertheless, it is quite enjoyable and can boast some witty lines and a good, well-performed, tailor-made role for Crawford as Jenny Stewart, a tough and bitchy Broadway musical star who loves a blind piano player (Michael Wilding). Wilding’s character Tye Graham turns out also to be blind to her bad side…

The slick, glitzy filming compensates for some of the risible clichés, stereotypes and general nonsenses of John Michael Hayes and Jan Lustig’s struggling screenplay based on I A R Wylie’s story Why Should I Cry?

Movie Queens – Joan Crawford by Graeme Jukes 2015

Crawford is fine but it is possible to feel very sorry indeed for British star Wilding that Hollywood gave him such rotten parts. Marjorie Rambeau, who was Oscar nominated as Best Supporting Actress, is outstanding as Mrs Stewart.

Director Walters dances with Crawford in the initial routine, You’re All the World to Me, from an earlier MGM film Wedding Bells (1951) with Fred Astaire.

MGM proudly if inaccurately advertised: ‘Tough baby – a wonderful love story with the star of Sudden Fear (1952) and for the first time you’ll see her in Technicolor’. However, Crawford had appeared in a Technicolor sequence in MGM’s The Ice Follies of 1939, released 14 years earlier.

It also features Gig Young as Cliff Willard, Harry Morgan, Dorothy Patrick, Benny Rubin, Paul Guilfoyle, Nancy Gates, Eugene Loring, James Todd, Peter Chong, Chris Warfield and Maidie Norman. Norman played Crawford’s maid again nine years later in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

Crawford was under contract to MGM from 1925 to 1943. She was given total freedom to develop her own make-up, hair and costumes. She inherited the role from Lana Turner. It was filmed in just 21 days.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3379

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