Joan Crawford tough as nails star in camp fest "Torch Song"

Part I

We always called it "Torched Song."

Crawford had great legs.

Joan's voice...

Joan's voice didn't sustain much past a line or two at this point... And Joan's legs could crack coconuts!

Well, it certainly was an improvement over...

Joan's all '50s swanky... especially in her canary yellow onesie!

"Torch Song" is an inexplicable hot mess...I've seen it four or five times!

Who told her that the swell of hair on top of her forehead was attractive? It looks like razor wire.

I have Torch Song on DVD and watch it at least quarterly. Favorite line: "Your idea of art's the fruit in the slot machine."

I'm going to watch it tonight after making Greg's macaroni salad!

....

When do we get this one as a restored Blu-ray with a new 4K scan from the original camera negative, Warner Archive?

R10, so you’re trying to get fatter?

Eternal hair and eyebrow issues but made very entertaining films throughout her life

I always feel that the parallels between Joan and Tom Cruise in terms of career, drive, ambition, and ability are pretty uncanny. Watching both of them act is exhausting because you can just feel the effort they are putting into it. Sometimes this works because it fits the character, but sometimes it just makes me tired.

Who danced it better?

"You're paid to dance around that leg!"

Tom Cruise is indeed cut from the same cloth as Crawford. Tom had the same sorry upbringing and his drive was the same, to get away from the dire origins. Along the way, that energy turned to desperation, especially when the career began to falter.

[quote]Favorite line: "Your idea of art's the fruit in the slot machine."

Favorite line: "Lobster Newburg....and COFFEE!"

And Tom is similarly obsessed with presenting as -- and playing -- younger than his age.

Some wag wrote that India Adams did Miss Crawford's singing "in a voice so husky that it could pull a sled."

Is it true Michael wilding slept with men?

A passage to India...

Good man, R10!

Please report back.

Uhhh.... r23/Greg...did you notice r10's signature?

I did, R24–but only after I posted R23.

I’m sorry I said “good man.”

These are the times we live in.

[quote]These are the times we live in.

No, you just weren't being observant.

R10 reporting back. Greg, your macaroni salad recipe was perfection! Also easy on the wallet. Thank you for sharing!

Back to Torch Song!

I cannot believe anyone would voluntarily want to fuck Joan Crawford.

She had a delicious figure and a bawdy sensibility. I imagine behind closed doors she was a treat!

She just looks like a hard boy h. She doesn’t look like she enjoys men. Was she just a top with men?

No! I meant hard bitch!

Who decided Joan looked good with that hair and those harsh brows? Seriously great legs oddly juxtaposed by matronly helmet hair and harsh brown and lips.

It's lonely at the top!

I prefer Helen planting her own tree.

Apparently Joan loved the Mildred Fierce sketch, but she thought this one made fun of her.

What was the inspiration for the mostly terrible, short sexless hairstyles of the 1950s

She DID have nice legs. But I believe she looked better in her other 1950s films. Of course, this is the only one with blackface involved.

Fuck you, r36.

R28, it's my understanding that Joan would do anything in the bedroom. And I mean AN-Y-Th-I-NG...

Snip snip, R38

Joan started out in silent films, and built her career the hard way. At her peak, she was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood.

Those weird later lips and the whole hard look...I can hardly believe she was kinda sultry.

It’s the heavy brows.

Something about “Torch Song” just makes it grow on me. All the elements are tawdry, but put together, they make something memorable. Too bad there was never a soundtrack release that I know of. (Maybe a 10 in. lp.)

And, it got a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for Marjorie Rambeau, who’s very touching as Crawford’s mother.

And I love the song, “Tenderly.”

And my favorite line: when the taxi driver asks Joan where she wants him to drop off the not so subtly gay Gig Young, she quips, “Any dark bar!”

And who did they think they were fooling , when Joan hosts an impromptu “party,” attended by only men! All in jackets and ties, but obviously caught up in each other. A rare glimpse of 50’s gay men on the DL.

See? “Torch Song”grows on you.

"Torch Song" is not a poorly produced film at all, it's just that it is a nice production of a very bad movie.

It's too bad the film isn't as good as its posters which are excellent!

[quote]Too bad there was never a soundtrack release that I know of. (Maybe a 10 in. lp.)

It was MGM, r44, of course there was...

Love when Joan makes her poor maid run lines with her, and at one point criticizes the maid's failure to recognize that "That's a broken speech."

That mask from "Strait Jacket" looks like it was first used in "Torch Song!"

[quote] [R10] reporting back. Greg, your macaroni salad recipe was perfection! Also easy on the wallet. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you, FatCubeFrau, I’m happy you liked it!

R1 that Carol Brunette clip truly is hilarious. Thanks for posting.

The eyebrow makeup back then was so weird. They used to paint Peter O Toole’s eyebrows the same way.

[R46]: I suspected something like that. Not a soundtrack recording, no underscore, and missing the notorious “Two Faced Woman.”

But probably all we can ever expect.

It is fun to note "Torch Song" director Chuck Walters also plays Joan's unlucky dance partner in the dance rehearsal scene.

What a sport!

She was so much prettier in her early years before the aging makeup and hair.

Joan was luminous in the '30s...

Joan was indeed striking in the '30s and through the mid-40s...

I have an original 1953 Torch Song movie poster as seen in r10 in my TV room (I’m looking at it right now). I looked through 100s of posters when decorating, and kept going back that one. I’d love to have a Bette Davis and a Barbara Stanwyck poster to complement it. Maybe one day.

"I cannot believe anyone would voluntarily want to fuck Joan Crawford."

You think straight men are picky or something? No, Crawford was a good-looking woman who kept her figure through middle age, and was an easy and experienced lay. And she'd move the pots to get any dirt that might be hiding in the house and claimed to be an excellent, what more could a straight man want?

Who knows, she may even have been attractive in real life during the 1950s and 60s, when she her screen persona became that of a campy dragon. If she'd ever taken off the Kabuki makeup and relaxed, she might have looked way, way better than the average woman of her age. I mean, this isn't a physically ugly woman, just a scary one.

"What was the inspiration for the mostly terrible, short sexless hairstyles of the 1950s"

Feminists have said that the 1950s zeitgeist for women was all about forcing women back into the kitchen, after they'd spent the 1940s holding good jobs and being independent, while all the younger men were conscripted or dead. 1940s women's fashion was slim-lined because of fabric shortages and mannish because of the aforementioned independence, while hairstyle were long and extravagantly waved, as hairstyles were about the only thing free of wartime restrictions and rationing.

So we all know about the post-war return of feminine "New Look" styles, but as clothes became more feminine, hair became less so, short and practical, suitable for a housewife who had to get on with mopping floors and wiping baby butts, and who didn't want her husband think she was trying to look attractive to other men. Because the ideal 1950s woman was a wife and not a lover, and definitely not some ball-buster who is taking a job away from some man because she thinks she's Rosie the Riveter. Matronly looks were popularized, because TPTB wanted women to stop being independent and become matrons.

On TCM now.

r59 Oh, give me a fucking break. Women have long hair "It's the patriarchy's fault" Women cut their hair short "It's the patriarchy's fault!".

Crawford had numerous affairs around this time, including the head of production at Universal--a crappy studio at that time, but a studio, nonetheless, and that got her "Female on the Beach".

She knew how to get the men AND the roles, r62.

Joan without makeup in 1959. She looked much better without it.

In the early 50s the pixie haircut became fashionable in Europe brought over by people like Leslie Caron and Audrey Hepburn.

Morons like R59 are breathlessly stupid with the social perceptions of a slug.

r65 yep, Roman Holiday came out a month before Torch Song, famously showing Audrey Hepburn trading her long hair for a pixie cut. Gina Lollobrigida probably popularized short hair too. I recall an episode of I Love Lucy where she buys a black short wig to get the Italian look.

r65 you need some anger management. Jesus.

Wilding’s wife Liz Taylor said at the time, “Michael plays a blind man, which is lucky. It means he doesn’t have to look at Joan Crawford’s face.”

Liz always hated Joan.

Liz had short hair in Father of the Bride in 1950 predating all the others. Perhaps she is the progenitor of the pixie cut.

Yes it was the gamine look.

This threads is awesome BTW. I missed Torch Song tonight. Will try to stream it somewhere during the holidays.

It is fun to note "Torch Song" director Chuck Walters also plays Joan's unlucky dance partner

And he has a TINY waist.

I have to laugh how they show that Jenny's fans are teenagers.

The music for the dance number we see Joan and Charles Walters rehearse is recycled from the Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling number in Royal Wedding.

Here's Joan and Chuck Walters.

R64: She looks tired and haggard. By then she would have been around 60.

Was JC really acting in this, or was she just playing a version of herself?

It has been said Faye Dunaway studied this movie to get the essence of JC for Mommie Dearest.

Are there artefacts on the photo at R64 or does Joan appear to have quite damaged or blemished skin?

Can't wait for the remake with Cynthia Erivo.

Why r69?

The short hairstyles of the 1950s were a reaction agasint the long hairstyles of the 1940s.

Just as the "natural" hairstyles of the 1970s were a reaction against the overly stylized boufants of the 1960s.

And the grungy look of the 1990s was a reaction against the opulence of the 1980s.

Fashion is built on novelty.

Or it was until sometime the turn of the century, when the world collectively decided "slob" was the basic setting.

Interesting that MGM cast Joan and not someone inhouse. Can you see Ann Miller playing the part?

I'm addicted to watching the dance in R76. But I have some observations.

Why is he wearing a top hat?

She tells him to smile or we'll get another boy, but he does smile.

And wearing those heels must be a killer for her.

Joanie is an experienced hoofer pre-talkie days. Those heels were child's play for that old flapper girl.

[quote]Interesting that MGM cast Joan and not someone inhouse. Can you see Ann Miller playing the part?

Or June Allyson!

Those actresses would have turned down the script!

I think June had left MGM by this time.

Never seen this 1 but I am a late in life JC fan.

R12 In 2032.

June left MGM after flopping, right around the time this was made. She would have been terrible. They needed someone who could be bitchy.

June could be bitchy.

Bruisingly so.

Charles Walters was gay!

Wasn't this Joan's big comeback to her original home studio MGM? And didn't Esther Williams tell some lurid story of Joan and their adjacent dressing rooms on the lot?

I must find my copy of Esther's bio Million Dollar Mermaid.

I believe JC moved into her dressing room for the duration of filming.

Both Esther Williams and Liz Taylor found this to be pathetic, and creepy.

Joan was so dedicated to her craft that she camped out in her dressing room when she was filming.

And didn't Esther Williams tell some lurid story of Joan and their adjacent dressing rooms on the lot?

Esther spoke about the sex noises she heard being next door to Lana Turner's dressing room.

In others’ eyes it just indicated she had absolutely nothing going on in her life.

^^ Re:

[quote]Joan was so dedicated to her craft that she camped out in her dressing room when she was filming.

I don't know why this is called a B movie. It's 90 minutes long. B movies are usually much shorter than that.

Duration has nothing to do with A or B. B is usually assigned to movies with a very low budget that were intended as "programmers".

I don’t believe B pictures had to have “[bold]very[/bold] low budgets,” they were just lower than A pictures.

Some of them did have very low budgets, of course. But not all?

The music of You're All the World to Me in Royal Wedding was a very old Burton Lane song using different lyrics in the 30s. Lane got a lot of mileage out of it. 'My Minstrel Man' sung by Harold Nicholas in Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions in 1934.

Joan came on strong to the handsome Charles Walters. Walters being gay as a goose found it a very awkward situation. I'm sure Joan knew as everyone on the MGM lot knew. But when our take no prisoners Joan wanted a man gay was just another challenge to surmount.

MGM B-pictures were more expensive than some A-pictures at other studios. She made Johnny Guitar at Republic---an A-for them but probably much cheaper than this.

Didn't MGM B-pictures include the first Thin Man movie (if not the follow-ups), the Andy Hardy and Tarzan films, the Dr. Kildare and Maisie series? They were highly lucrative for the studio.

B-movies were getting phased-out during the early 50s.

That was because double features were getting phased out in the 1950s and IIRC mostly gone by the early 1960s.

Lots of equally stupid replies here. Probably one person or several people all related to each other by way of incest

Define B-picture for us, r108.

I don’t have to because it’s already been defined you shit stain. Now get lost!!

The book on Charles Walters by Brent Phillips explains Charles wore a top hat in the opening number to hide his balding head.

Metro wouldn't spring for a wig, r111??

I’m a Jenny Stewart enthusiast

The film's first title was Why Should I Cry? It was planned as a vehicle for Lana Turner but MGM executor Benny Thau sent the script to Crawford strictly undercover. When Joan got to page 45, she rang Benny and asked When do we start?

Everyone loves Jenny Stewart and her wrap-on skirt. Jane Wyman hairstyle too!!

It must have been HUGELY gratifying for Joan to be invited back to MGM, especially after her Oscar and all of her Warners' successes.

Joan asked for Charles Walters to direct as she had been delighted by his Lili. When he rang Charles the director thought it was a prank call and said Oh sure honey, and I'm Cary Grant. Joan firmly corrected him. She asked if she could bring over dinner and a bottle of vodka and come read him the script. He said he had a bottle of vodka and was actually having dinner when she called. But if she really wanted to visit she could. She arrived with a magnum of champagne but when she began to read the script to him he said it was a little dumb. Jenny was supposed to be a tap dancer but he felt Joan at her age should not be prancing around in tap shoes. But she was determined.

...when SHE rang Charles...

R102 Name some.

Name some that did? Or some that didn't, r119?

She was always a rough and tough looking bitch, but goddamn... That photo.

‘’Tropical Make-up’’

I just ordered some from Amazon Prime

Joan went to Esther Williams, with whom Charles Walters had made two films and admitted she had a mad crush on the man. Please, Esther, let me have your director, she asked. Esther commented that it sounded like she wanted to make love with him more than make the move, but that was Chuck's problem! Chuck was tired and MGM had promised him a vacation nut he was persuaded to take on the project.

On the first day of production MGM had a large banner draped over the studio's front gate which read Welcome back, Joan!

...a vacation BUT...

...make the MOVIE...

“When the talk’s about me I’ll buy a ticket.”

I read somewhere that Liz Taylor visited the set of Torch Song to see Michael Wilding, and she made the mistake of walking by Joan without acknowledging her. Joan told the director “you tell that little bitch never to walk in here again without acknowledging me”. I can’t recall where I read this, but it was delicious.

As the dressing room of two of MGM's top stars was vacant since the ladies in-between films, Joan combined the rooms either side of hers to have one palatial suite.

Joan and Liz on the Torch Song set.

R79, those are freckles. Do people even have those any more or do they just get them lasered off?

I love in that vid when Joan is recording her voice and then…”DAMMIT!”…Mommie Dearest breaks in and demands that they keep going till she gets it!! 😛

Too bad Joan couldn’t have really BEEN Helen Lawson, for real.

[quote]Joan and Liz on the Torch Song set.

Title of photo: Three Bitches

R131 she was JENNY STEWART!!

Joan's arms are also clearly filled with freckles, too in r64's photo.

Yikes!!

Joan never went back to her Brentwood home at night. This way after the day of shooting she could watch the rushes, and talk over the next day's scenes with Chuck and the cast in her dressing room while they ate peanut butter and cracks and have a drink.

That clip of Joan ‘’singing’’ and syncing-up India’s voice was hilarious. JUST THINKING ABOUT IT MAKES ME BUST UP-BITCH WAS CRAZY!!!

‘’If you will only follow me’’.

...they ate peanut butter and cracks

CRACKERS

Cracks-that’s funny.

There's no reason for "Torch Song" to be as awful as it is, and yet it manages!

Columnist Walter Winchell pushed the fiction that the relationship between Joan and Chuck was more than professional. He said Chuck was her latest grin-maker. As production geared up she enjoyed after hours meetings at Chuck's house. On one occasion Joan went to see him to seek his advice on what jewels she should wear in the film. When he came to her house at Brentwood Chuck found Joan coiffed and fully made up but still in a housecoat. After drinks were served she opened the coat to reveal her naked self. Biographer Bob Thomas said Joan added the statement, This is what you are getting, to the reveal. Chuck said he didn't know where to look. However he felt there was nothing sexual in the act.

Joan Crawford was often rather pathetic, really.

I mean - when a boozy bull dyke is so desperate she takes to sexually harassing gay men…

Joan presented Chuck with a potted rubber tree, and hanging from its leaves was a cashmere sweater, a stopwatch, vitamins and a dozen lamb chops wrapped in cellophane. Joan felt he needed these items for endurance and for nourishment to fill out his rail-thin frame.

When you are married to Doug Fairbanks JR and Franchot Tone and have an affair with Clark Gable maybe more of a bi than a bulldyke who I would assume is only interested in women.

I think she came on strong to Anita Page in Our Dancing Daughters. Anita did not like talking about Joan though they made three hits together. But when she did it was with unpleasant memories in video interviews. I saw ODD with Page in the audience(I had no idea she was still alive.) She spoke after the film and did not mention Joan once.

What was the deal with Fairbanks Jr? Definitely a proto-nepo baby. A steady if unremarkable career. Allegedly Noel Coward wrote “Mad About the Boy” about Junior after he rejected Coward’s sexual advances. But that was never confirmed. He did seem a bit twee, but he remarried after his divorce from Joan and had several children.

Chuck had cast boyishly handsome Marc Wilder as the dancing rehearsal boy Ralph Ellis but Joan had another idea. She said she was so comfortable with Chuck and wanted him to play the part. Chuck reluctantly agreed to make her feel better and aware that she had not danced on screen in decades. Joan's days of Charleston notoriety were long past. Chuck made it up to Wilder the next year by casting him as Debbie Reynolds's dancing partner in The Tender Trap.

Chuck Walters needs his own thread!

Marc Wilder is one of the dancers in this number from the I Don't Care Girl.

R147 - yes! He was a good director, I like his movies a lot

Christina Crawford visited the set and observed that her mother really relied upon Charles to make her look good. She had great legs but a middle-aged body.

Wasn't it Joan who famously said "The legs are the last to go" ??

Btw, she was right.

Esther Williams said she saw Joan go full-on Norma Desmond in an empty theater set, crying out to the non-existent audience: "Why have you left me? Why don't you come to my movies? What did I do? What did I say? Don't turn your back on me!"

If true, JC took that shit far too personally. Her rival Bette Davis, a more serious performer experienced a decline in her career too.

People are fickle with short-attention spans, tastes change, not to be taken personally.

But unlike Davis, Crawford loved her fans and was loyal and devoted to maintaining their admiration. So, Joan couldn't fathom why they'd abandoned her. Bette didn't give a shit; it was all about the work for her.

Joan insisted that her long time friend Billy Haines come to watch rehearsals for her dance with Charles. She wanted his honest opinion. Billy seemed to her to be biting his lips to keep from laughing and then told Joan Only God or a good looking man could get your legs up that high.

Esther Williams' bio is full of obviously made up stories, timeline issues and things that as told by her make no sense. Esther was a world-class prevaricator and long-time booze hound, things blend together in such a person's memory. Oh, and Esther was a really lousy mother to her kids too.

[quote]What was the deal with Fairbanks Jr? Definitely a proto-nepo baby. A steady if unremarkable career. Allegedly Noel Coward wrote “Mad About the Boy” about Junior after he rejected Coward’s sexual advances.

Dougie was *mine*, r145.

On the first day of shooting Joan was paralyzed with fear in her dressing room. She told Charles, would you mind if I had a little vodka? He replied anything to relax you is fine. She asked if he would have one with her. They came out of her dressing room a hair high but relaxed from three little vodkas.

r156 And her swimming pool smelled like garbage.

R156 nailed it.

Esther outed Jeff Chandler as a cross dresser too. It seemed kind of mean spirited of her.

Wasn’t he dead by then? Any dic pics?

Jeff was dead. Coward Esther wouldn't have dared otherwise.

I totally buy that Chandler was a crossdresser especially in view of what we know today of so many men who are the same while having an otherwise completely normal hetero life. Same with Dan Dailey.

Was Dan Dailey straight and a cross-dresser? I thought he was just gay

Further to R158. When Joan told the story she said Charles led her out onto the set by the hand. She said his was a touch so delicate Joan had never experienced in anyone else.

r164, can you please explain what you mean by saying based on "what we know today of so many men" you're convinced Jeff Chandler and Dan Dailey were crossdressers? Wouldn't you have to know a little bit more about Chandler and Dailey to say that?

R167, the Jeff Chandler story is better sourced than most Hollywood gossip. Esther Williams really did have a serious relationship with Chandler and she didn't have a motive to invent anything about him. She'd had a fun career and was financially successful. According to her, Chandler had confided in her only after he'd asked her to marry him. She was too shocked to handle it, but admitted that his wardrobe of dresses was beautiful. Chandler's friends were incredulous when they heard the story, but they would be. It was a secret.

R167 What I mean is that it shouldn't surprise us that very masculine men have a secret fetish for crossdressing. Back in the day crossdressing was considered degeneracy and people wouldn't have believed that a macho guy could get off by wearing lingerie and pretending to be a woman, but now that the whole spectrum of transvestism is more out, it doesn't seem impossible. So I can believe that Jeff liked to put on a brassiere. It's stupid to think that it's impossible.

I thought Dan Dailey was a crossdresser, never heard he was gay,

I just Googled it and look:

"Dailey was revealed to be a cross-dressing bisexual and Ray as having been arrested on moral charges involving solicitation just as his successful singing career was taking off. For Dailey, the revelation came in 1957 when Confidential ran a story that he was a not-so-closeted drag queen."

[quote]Further to [R158]. When Joan told the story she said Charles led her out onto the set by the hand. She said his was a touch so delicate Joan had never experienced in anyone else.

Joan reveled in cheap sentiment.

I hate cheap sentiment.

Make it snappy!

After the first day's shooting Joan wrote each member of the cast and crew personal thank you cards.

Joan Crawford sounds like the neediest person in the world during this era.

[quote]I thought Dan Dailey was a crossdresser

Is that so wrong?

buzz

Andre Previn in his book No Minor Chords about his years in the movie industry also said that Dan Dailey was a cross dresser.

Charles Walters added some things to the script things he took from Joan's own life. He saw that she had three layers of curtains in her bedroom. And for the party scene he imagined Joan would give the kind where there were only men in attendance.

60s fashions did nothing good for JC.

[quote]Liz always hated Joan.

To be fair, the first time Liz visited the set of Torch Song, Joan got pissed that Taylor was getting so much attention from she told Wilding to put her on a leash and "handle her". That would have infuriated anyone.

from the crew