Torch Song is a 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

 feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

 starring Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....

 and Michael Wilding

Michael Wilding (actor)

-Early life:Born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England, Wilding was a successful commercial artist when he joined the art department of a London film studio in 1933. He soon embarked on an acting career.-Career:...

 in a story about a Broadway star and her rehearsal pianist. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by John Michael Hayes

John Michael Hayes

John Michael Hayes was an American screenwriter, who scripted several of Alfred Hitchcock's films in the 1950s, and subject of the book "" by Steven DeRosa.-Early life:...

 and Jan Lustig was based upon the story "Why Should I Cry?" by I.A.R. Wylie. The film was directed by Charles Walters

Charles Walters

Charles Walters was a Hollywood director and choreographer most noted for his work in MGM musicals and comedies in from the 1940s to the 1960s....

 and produced by Sidney Franklin

Sidney Franklin (director)

Sidney Franklin was an American film director and producer. His brother Chester Franklin also became a director during the silent film era best known for helming the early Technicolor film Toll of the Sea....

, Henry Berman, and Charles Schnee

Charles Schnee

Charles Schnee gave up law to become a screenwriter in the mid-1940s, crafting scripts for the classic Westerns Red River and The Furies , the social melodrama They Live By Night , and the cynical Hollywood saga The Bad and the Beautiful , for which he won an Academy...

.

The cast includes Harry Morgan

Harry Morgan

Harry Morgan is an American actor. Morgan is well-known for his roles as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H , Pete Porter on both Pete and Gladys and December Bride , Detective Bill Gannon on Dragnet , and Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey...

 (billed as "Henry Morgan"), Gig Young

Gig Young

Gig Young was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.-Early life and career:Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St...

, Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:Rambeau was born in San Francisco, California to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and...

, Dorothy Patrick

Dorothy Patrick

Dorothy Patrick, was an American film actress and a John Robert Powers model.-Early Life:...

, Eugene Loring

Eugene Loring

Eugene Loring American ballet and other dance-forms dancer, choreographer and teacher and administrator.-Biography:...

, Maidie Norman

Maidie Norman

Maidie Norman was an African American actress of stage, screen and television.-Career:She made her film debut late in life in the 1947 film, The Burning Cross...

 and James Todd

James Todd

In 1865, James Todd and his family established a ranch south-east of Kamloops, British Columbia. He and Lewis Campbell could be considered the first settlers of Barnhartvale, British Columbia.- Starting out in North America :...

.

Torch Song has gained note for the musical number Two-Faced Woman from The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon is a 1953 musical comedy film that many critics rank, along with Singin' in the Rain, as the finest of the MGM musicals, although it was only a modest box-office success. It tells the story of an aging musical star who hopes a Broadway play will restart his career...

in which Crawford, in blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

, lip-syncs to the voice of India Adams while writhing with male dancers. The film marked Crawford's return to MGM after a ten-year absence. Her original recordings for the soundtrack, which were not used in the film, have survived and been included in home video releases.

Plot

Jenny Stewart (Crawford) is a tough Broadway musical star, alienating her colleagues with her neurotic demands for absolute perfection. Jenny takes offense when her new rehearsal pianist Tye Graham (Wilding) criticizes her song stylings and ruthless ways.

Graham was blinded in WWII but fell in love with Jenny when he was a young reporter. Deep down, Jenny yearns for a real and lasting love but is disenchanted with the men around her such as Broadway parasite Cliff Willard (Gig Young

Gig Young

Gig Young was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.-Early life and career:Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St...

).

At the home of her mother (Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:Rambeau was born in San Francisco, California to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and...

), she discovers an old newspaper clipping in which Tye reviewed one of her first shows and made it evident he loved her. Jenny realizes she is loved, goes to Tye, and they embrace.

Reception

Otis Guernsey, Jr. in the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "Joan Crawford has another of her star-sized roles...she is vivid and irritable, volcanic and feminine...Here is Joan Crawford all over the screen, in command, in love and in color, a real movie star in what amounts to a carefully produced one-woman show." Crawford's dancing drew raves, thus reminding critics and audiences that she still had it as a dancer and showed her legs were still in great shape. Torch Song was regarded as a return to form for Joan Crawford, who when the picture was released, was fresh off an Academy Award nod for her superb performance in Sudden Fear

Sudden Fear

Sudden Fear is a 1952 RKO Radio Pictures feature film starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance in a noir-ish tale about a successful woman who marries a murderous man. The screenplay by Lenore J. Coffee and Robert Smith was based upon the novel by Edna Sherry. Sudden Fear was directed by David...

, the previous year.

Award Nominations

Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Rambeau was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:Rambeau was born in San Francisco, California to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and...

 was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 at the 26th Academy Awards

26th Academy Awards

The 26th Academy Awards honored the best in films of 1953.The second national telecast of the Awards show draws an estimated 43,000,000 viewers. Shirley Booth, appearing in a play in Philadelphia, presents the Best Actor award through a live broadcast cut-in, and privately receives the winner's...

.