Due to some circumstances beyond my control I lost my copy of my third beloved Crawford film Torch Song. I found a copy finally after searching for a year that will hold me until I can get the Crawford discs back. In order to celebrate my joy with everyone Im posting Torch Song trivia. Enjoy! This film marked Joan Crawfords return to MGM after a ten year absence. She was previously under contract to MGM from 1925-1943. In the song-and-dance number Two-Faced Woman (music by Arthur Schwartz, lyrics byHoward Dietz), Joan Crawford performs in blackface. Crawfords singing voice was dubbed by India Adams, whose pre-recording was originally intended for Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon (1953). The song-and-dance performance by Charisse - with Oscar Levanton piano - was dropped from the film. However, the footage appears on the DVD release from Warner Home Video. In Thats Entertainment! III (1994), the Charisse and Crawford versions are compared via split screen. In her mothers apartment, Jenny Stewart - played by Joan Crawford - listens as the phonograph plays one of her greatest hits: Tenderly (music by Walter Gross, lyrics byJack Lawrence), which, in reality, was a huge hit for Rosemary Clooney, via her 1952 Columbia single. As Jennys platter spins, the voice of India Adams is heard, while Jenny reminisces about her early show business career to her mother, played by Marjorie Rambeau). In Crawfords own singing voice, she offers phrases of the classic ballad while the record plays. MGMs ad campaign for the film erroneously boasted that this was moviegoers first chance to see Joan Crawford in Technicolor. However, Crawford had appeared in a Technicolor sequence in MGMs The Ice Follies of 1939 (1939), released some 14 years earlier. The music used for the opening dance sequence between Joan Crawford and Chuck Walters is recycled from the previous MGM film Royal Wedding (1951). It was Fred Astaires dance music for Youre All the World to Me. The film marks the first of two times Maidie Norman played Joan Crawfords maid. The second time was nine years later in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Joan Crawford was given complete freedom, without guidance or supervision, to develop her own make-up, hair and costumes for the film.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:13:14 +0000
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