From Fear to Absurdity - The Strange Turnaround of Joan Crawford

It was a strange turnaround for Joan Crawford in 1952 and 1953.  The two back to back films she made(interrupted only by her appearance in a television production of the Revlon Mirror Theatre) are as different from one another as black and white and technicolor.

In 1952's "Sudden Fear", Crawford plays Myra Hudson,  a successful playwrite from a wealthy San Francisco family.   It is a believable, taut noir thriller with Crawford playing her age as a woman who has established herself as a successful playwrite in spite of the fact that she could have coasted through life on her family's wealth.  Directed by David Miller and filmed in black and white, it makes stunning use the streets of San Francisco, and of light and shadow to create some of the most memorable sequences in noirdom.  It was Jack Palance's third film, and as Lester Blaine the aspiring actor with a decidedly lurid off stage life, he is all charm and menace as he stalks, woos, and weds the wealthy famous writer who denied him his big break on Broadway.  Crawford is perfect as Myra Hudson, showing a vulnerability and a range that garnered her a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1952.  Glora Grahame, blonde and ruthless, shows up as Lester's mistress, Irene Neves, and the two hatch their diabolical plot.

Lester starts to creep Myra out.

This film succeeds on all levels, and Crawford delivered a great performance.  It brought about a resurgance of her career that led, unfortunately, to...

"Torch Song" was filmed in blazing technicolor.  Crawford as Jenny Stewart performs "Two Faced Woman", and in a pique of temperment rips her wig off after the curtain comes down.

1953's "Torch Song" seemed like a good idea at the time.  Joan Crawford had just scored a critical and commercial success in 1952's oustanding "Sudden Fear" at RKO, and somebody over at MGM thought it might be fun to bring Joan back to the studio where it all started.  Crawford had been at MGM from 1925 to 1942.  "Torch Song" had been offered to Lana Turner, who turned against it.  The project was there for the taking, and Crawford was available and, well, the rest is camp history.

Crawford wills herself into playing Jenny Stewart, a Broadway star with a heart like a frozen bucket of nails.  She terrorizes everybody except for her maid and her fans.  She is unfailingly kind to her maid/secretary, played by Maidie Norman (later to be done in by Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"), and goes out of her way to memorize the names of a fawning herd of young acolytes who wait for her outside the stage door.  Everybody else she pretty much treats like crap, including her alcoholic playboy guy pal played by Gig Young, who, from all accounts was pretty much typecast.

Maidie Norman, the actress who played Joan Crawford's maid in "Torch Song", Ginger Roger's maid in "Forever Female", Dick Powell's maid in "Susan Slept Here".....um, about that name.....

It is only Jenny's blind replacement pianist Ty Graham, played by Michael Wilding (who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time) who ultimately breaks through and simultaneously wins and melts Jenny's icy heart.  This happens after Jenny tells him to "get yourself a seeing eye girl."  Ouch.

Crawford was too old for the part.  Her legs looked great, and she made the most of them, but her dancing was hardly at its peak.  She made a valliant attempt to sing her own vocals, but it was wisely decided to give the dubbing gig to India Adams.  Its a silly script, and if that weren't enough toward the end of the film out of nowhere comes the musical number "Two Faced Woman".  Written originally for Cyd Charisse in "The Band Wagon" and junked, it was for some reason resurrected for Crawford in "Torch Song".  It is performed in black - or more accurately, orange face. "Torch Song" was one of the last films ever to use a number in black face.  It is a jaw droppingly strange musical number, totally out of context and a little frightening. 


"Torch Song" was essentially a "B" film - glossy and slick though it was.  Pretty much everything in it was created for something else.  India Adams had already dubbed the vocal for Charisse, and they still had the recordings, so what the heck... the opening instrumental number was lifted from Fred Astaire's "Royal Wedding".  Adams as Jenny did introduce two beautiful standards in the film  "Tenderly", and "You Won't Forget Me".

"Torch Song", however,  was a commercial and critical failure.  But it continues to give joy to those with a taste for the absurd.  Its a shame a great noir classic like "Sudden Fear" was followed up with a technicolor cartoon like "Torch Song", but show business is a cruel and fickle mistress.

I've written some snarky things about Crawford in these posts, and had some fun at her expense.  Truth is, she has had a lot of bad PR in recent decades, and she is not here to defend herself.  She was the most enduring movie star in the history of cinema.  Nobody had a longer career.  She delivered some beautifully wrought performances - "Mildred Pierce", "Sudden Fear", "Humoresque".  She was also actually quite good in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". 

By all accounts, she was a total professional in her work, and respectful to the crew and cooperative on the set. She was the most loyal of friends and capable of great kindness.  After her death director George Cukor revealed that Crawford always kept a hospital room and her own physician at the ready in case anybody on the crew of one of her films needed medical care.  She did this anonymously, at her personal expense, and never discussed it publicly.