Joan Crawford, nearly 50 and sporting red hair, in a Technicolor MGM musical. Oh brother! Joan plays an acerbic Broadway diva who bosses everybody around and cuts them down with her acid tongue. She's thrown for a loop when she's forced to work with a blind piano player who gets under her skin. To her credit (and our amusement) Joan plays the part with the utmost seriousness. There isn't the slightest hint of self-deprecation here. Our diva doesn't seem to get that, intended or not, this is all one big garish joke. Joan gets lots of costume changes and there's an overdose of color throughout the film. What I was reminded of while watching was "The Barkleys of Broadway." In that film, Ginger Rogers was given the Technicolor treatment and also lots of wardrobe changes. The difference between the two films is that the costumes and color of "Barkleys" made an already beautiful Ginger even more ravishing. Whereas this film comes across like one big practical joke on Joan Crawford by MGM. They do nothing to make her look good. As for the acting and dancing, that's all on Joan. She stomps her way through the film, as graceful as a hippopotamus. Her diet during the making of this movie consisted entirely of scenery. She chews every inch of it. The singing is dubbed by India Adams and it's so obvious that it takes you out of the scenes to laugh at Joan's lip-syncing. Again, MGM did nothing to help hide any of Joan's weaknesses. If anything, they embraced and exaggerated them.Michael Wilding plays the blind piano player that Joan falls in love with. He comes across as mentally deficient at times with that irritating smirk on his face. His deliberately mannered way of speaking got on my nerves so much. His ludicrous performance is never worse than when he's doing emotional scenes. The scene where he gives a blonde beauty the brush-off because he's fixed on Joan is so overwrought you will be doubled over in laughter. Also, Wilding's character is the only blind man I've ever seen whose seeing-eye dog walks BEHIND him! The final scene between he and Joan has to be seen to be believed. Marjorie Rambeau plays Joan's mother and was actually pretty fun. Her reaction to Joan's being in love with a blind man is priceless. But she's only in a few brief scenes. She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for this film.It's a movie full of unintentionally funny moments. An early scene that will no doubt draw laughter from the audience sees Joan leaving rehearsal to be swamped by adoring teenage fans. I guess before rock & roll the kids all hung around back alleys waiting to get autographs from their favorite middle-aged Broadway stars! Another funny scene is where Joan throws a party and only invites men. It's a total sausage fest! The "Two Faced Woman" musical number is one of the worst MGM ever produced. It's the infamous number where Joan wears blackface, bright red lipstick, and a shiny blue sequin dress while writhing around on stage with male backup dancers. It was included in the MGM retrospective film "That's Entertainment III." It was only included to show a side-by-side comparison of Joan and Cyd Charisse separately performing the same song, seemingly to embarrass Joan. It's a terrible movie but also a camp classic. It's so bad you have to see it. Joan Crawford fans will love it.

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.

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.

Joan Crawford (as Jenny Stewart) is an iron-willed Broadway musical star; she knows how to stomp out a cigarette, and soak up the cocktail hour. In her "Torch Song" opening, Ms. Crawford chews out her dancing partner (actually director Charles Walters, who is paid to get around Crawford's right leg). Alone, at night, Crawford weeps - she is really a very lonely woman, unsatisfied by her younger boyfriends, and adoring teenage fans. When her beleaguered pianist is replaced by blind Michael Wilding (as Tye Graham), the domineering diva may find love, at last.As a Broadway musical star, Crawford is wasted. "Torch Song" is, however, fun to watch… as an example of the "trashy" Joan Crawford film. The wretched excess is highlighted by the legendary star's dubbed "Two-Faced Woman" production number; keep watching for the moment, shortly after the song, when "black-faced" Crawford pulls off her "wig", in ghastly fashion.Mr. Wilding (then Mr. Elizabeth Taylor) and Gig Young do their best, as Crawford co-stars. Marjorie Rambeau has a nice supporting role, as Crawford's mother; their pivotal "Gypsy Madonna" scene is very nicely played, with Crawford singing "Tenderly" (her real voice) in a "duet" with the woman who dubbed her material (India Adams), while mother Rambeau guzzles a beer. Down the hatch!*** Torch Song (10/1/53) Charles Walters ~ Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Marjorie Rambeau, Gig Young