Tonight's movie was called "Torch Song" (1953), a musical comedy/melodrama starring Joan Crawford as a Broadway diva who is so unpleasant to everyone around her that her latest show is about to fall apart before opening night. Ultimately her longtime pianist quits after a projected bout of verbal abuse from Joan, and now the production really is going to be cancelled unless her saint of a production manager can find a replacement. I call him a saint because he puts up with Joan Crawford.
Now, I normally like Joan Crawford. Despite her post-"Mommie Dearest" image - that of the definitive show business shrew - I have found that if you watch a selection of her movies from throughout her career (and not just the later ghastly ones), you will see a fine actress at work, and one with a major amount of Hollywood Movie Star charisma.
I don't know the accuracy of the "Mommie Dearest" tales, but if "Torch Song" is any indication, Joan's daughter was telling the truth. It seems she is playing herself! This is one weird movie, folks. I described it as a comedy/melodrama, which would seem like a paradox, but I don't know what else to call it.
All Joan Crawford does for the first twenty minutes of the movie is bitch at her fellow actors during a production rehearsal. She also yells at her pianist. Her long suffering and sainted producer tries to step in from time to time, to quiet Joan down and smooth things over, but it doesn't work.
So for the first twenty minutes, nothing else happens. It's as if you walked into the rehearsal yourself, in real life, and watched the real Joan Crawford teeing off on her cast mates. But no story advancement happens during this time. Not until the pianist quits does anything resembling a plot begin.
You know how sometimes I rave about the legendary screenwriters of the Golden Era, many of whom were so talented that they could weave a lifetime of themes and plot twists together in creating an epic movie that ran only 90 minutes?
Well, this wasn't one of those screenwriters. :)
This whole movie was of the "what were they smoking"? variety.
A single theme plot does arise when a substitute pianist (played by Michael Wilding) is found to keep the rehearsals going. He is blind, which bugs Joan Crawford to no end. That he was a war hero who lost his eyesight in battle wins him no brownie points either. Now, to be fair to Joan, he is a bit on the smug side, and has a way of stating his opinions in a superior tone, as if they are absolute fact.
In other words, despite his blindness and musical gifts - which would ordinarily generate sympathy for a character - he is not very likeable himself (though he is not a monster like Joan).
So here we have a romance developing.......or is it a mutual hate-fest? It's hard to tell, because while Joan clearly has feelings for Wilding - and he for her - neither one of them can show it. All they do is fight.
This would make for a very unfortunate motion picture experience, were it not for the camp atmosphere that surrounds all the turmoil. Joan Crawford is playing her Image here, or maybe she's playing real life, but at any rate it's a performance John Waters would love. The other saving grace is the Technicolor art direction that bathes the film in luxurious purple and yellow pastels. You can "watch" it without turning it off just for this reason, because it looks so good. Did any time period ever look so dreamy on film as the 1950s?
Well anyhow, "Torch Song" is also saved, partially, by some classic laugh-out-loud one liners that I suspect were meant to be serious but in hindsight are part of the camp, or "comedy/melodrama" as I have called it.
This is as nutty a movie as I have seen in quite a while, a true Joan Crawford bitch-o-rama. I am gonna give it One Single Thumb Sideways, rather than a total rejection, because while I was tempted to turn it off during the first twenty minutes, I was not able to do so, and I remained in my seat, if not glued to it, watching the film to the end because of the Technicolor look and the non-stop histrionics of Miss Crawford. "Torch Song" has a happy ending, but it is one of the unhappiest of happy endings in Hollywood history, so there you have it.
As a person who watches millions of movies, I am glad I saw it, but I cannot recommend it to a casual movie fan in any way. This one is only for the Joan Crawford fanatics; you know who you are. ////
I am reading "King's X : The Oral History" by Greg Prato, which as I may have said is turning out to be one of the greatest rock biographies ever written. Anything and everything you've ever wanted to know about the guys and their music is in this book. I am also reading the Schopenhauer biography and the one about Hugh Everett III. What you do when you are reading several books at once is just read 10 to 15 pages of each per day. That way you don't lose the thread of any of them and you keep each book alive in your head, reading them all little by little. The importance of books is beyond my ability to state, and I hope you have your own favorites and are reading at least one at the present time.
I also finished my "Underground Tunnel" drawing, one of my best yet. Tonight I began a pencil sketch for a drawing of the time when a helicopter hovered above 9032 in 1995. This one will take some time to get right. ////
See you in the morning with love sent to you throughout the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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