SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Edgar Allan Pooh Normally, I'd go a mile out of my way to avoid including ANY kind of a spoiler in my summary. However, in the case of TORCH SONG, my thinking runs thusly: 1)This flick came out 61 years ago in 1953, so its contemporary audience is about 90% deceased, and probably 90% of the survivors no longer watch movies. 2)Anyone still game to view 61-year-old films for the first time is running a serious risk of a fatal heart attack if they're given no warning that 62 minutes, 55 seconds into this lackluster musical Ms. Crawford is suddenly going to traipse down the on-stage grand staircase belting out the lyrics of "Two-faced Woman" wearing full-body Blackface and a wig! It doesn't matter that the title's TORCH SONG--"their song" for the characters "Jenny" and "Tye" (Ms. Crawford and Michael Wilding, with whom Joan had NO chemistry!)--is a much better tune, "Tenderly." And it doesn't matter that this film constituted Ms. Crawford's triumphant post-MILDRED PIERCE return to MGM. What matters is that IF you view TORCH SONG, it will be impossible to "Un-see" Ms. Crawford in Blackface!

bkoganbing After a ten year absence in which Joan Crawford proved she was not by any means through as an actress when she won an Oscar for Mildred Pierce, she came back to MGM for what became her second musical role in Torch Song. She plays a Broadway star, a temperamental one at that which I think was modeled on Ethel Merman who's tired of everyone including her family of using her.It takes a blind musician played by Michael Wilding to set her straight about herself. But Wilding's got his reasons, he remembers her as a promising young singer whom he saw before he went off to war and lost his vision.Crawford also probably drew on her own experiences as a film star with the number of hangers-on folks like her inevitably develop. That would also include her husbands, thespians though they all were as well. And she had blood relatives as well who lived off her celebrity.Joan's vocals were dubbed by India Adams and having heard Joan actually sing, she sounds nothing like Ms. Adams. In the beginning she dances with Charles Walters and I wish Torch Song had included more of that. A lot of people forget that it was as a dancer that Joan Crawford got her start at MGM way back in silent films.One of the songs interpolated in the score was Tenderly, one of the great romantic ballads of the Fifties. Right about this time Rosemary Clooney was enjoying a big megahit from her recording for Columbia Records. No doubt that helped the box office of Torch Song.Marjorie Rambeau got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as Joan's mother. She lost to Donna Reed for From Here To Eternity. Harry Morgan as the director of the revue Joan is rehearsing for also scores well in this film.One of her numbers as Joan in a black wig looking very much like Lena Horne. I don't think that anything disrespectful was meant in this, in fact I think it was an homage to Lena Horne. MGM had signed Lena Horne a decade earlier and then didn't quite know what to do with her. Maybe they were making some amends. Torch Song is not one of Joan Crawford's better films, but her legion of fans will approve and she's good in the part. I just wish she'd danced some more.

mukava991 What makes this tepidly received 1953 romantic melodrama with music watchable in the 21st century is primarily Joan Crawford who, by this time, was at the zenith of her screen acting powers. In the 1950s she played a succession of formidable middle-aged dames who had maintained their good looks despite years of character-building hard knocks. But at the core of all of these creatures was a tender and easily broken heart and the plots of most of Joan's 1950s films explore the way this tender heart is exposed through love.Second in appeal is the color scheme. It was not unusual for 1950s Hollywood commercial fare to feature brilliant, even garish, colors in order to entice viewers away from the little boxes of black-and-white in their living rooms. Seen through the lens of more than half a century, these schemes look bizarre, even ridiculous, but create their own fascination. This is one of those super-saturated works that can hold the attention just to see which crazy color combination will appear in the next scene.

MARIO GAUCI Sometimes the release on DVD of a particular film in which, ostensibly, I have very little interest makes me watch it regardless when it happens to get shown on TV – and this is just one such example. Actually, it forms part of a Box Set which does contain at least two enticing titles: Frank Borzage’s STRANGE CARGO (1940) and George Cukor’s A WOMAN’S FACE (1941).Although hardly one of my personal favorites, Joan Crawford was one of Hollywood’s foremost leading ladies: starting out in the late Silent era, she epitomized the “woman’s pictures” in the 1930s and 1940, eventually winning an Oscar for Michael Curtiz’s superb noir-ish melodrama, MILDRED PIERCE (1945). By the time Crawford did TORCH SONG, she had been a freelancer for ten years and this marked a return to the studio which had discovered her, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.Stories of entertainment divas alienating their loved ones through their constant tantrums were already clichéd by this time, I suppose, but this is nevertheless a watchable and, given that there are a few musical numbers, surprisingly painless diversion which has, somewhat unaccountably, earned a reputation of late as a camp classic. This may be down mostly to the fact that Crawford (whose singing voice is dubbed) does one of her routines, “Two-Faced Woman”, in blackface; incidentally, this song was originally meant for Vincente Minnelli’s THE BAND WAGON (1953) as a duet of sorts between Cyd Charisse and Oscar Levant! This is not to say that watching Crawford (in her late forties and her first full-length feature in Technicolor) showing off her legs at every available opportunity does not give rise to some amusement.Crawford’s leading man here is Britain’s Michael Wilding as a blind pianist(!) and her no-nonsense mother is played by Marjorie Rambeau (who was, surprisingly enough, even nominated for an Oscar); the supporting cast is further filled out by rather thankless turns from Gig Young (as Crawford’s playboy companion) and Harry Morgan (as the theatrical impresario). Director/choreographer Charles Walters rounded out a good year for him with this movie – which had also included the Oscar-nominated LILI and Esther Williams’ most popular vehicle, DANGEROUS WHEN WET.