This blog is dedicated

This blog is dedicated to Nancy, who gets it.

Joan Crawford


I believe I remember Christina Crawford saying she hated Torch Song in her memoir Mommie Dearest. It was Joan's return to MGM and her first Technicolor film.


Dubbed by India Adams, Joan Crawford took a stab at singing her own vocals. The main ballad is "Follow Me." The posters are way cooler than the flick itself. They have a Bauhaus neo-noir tinge to them, I guess due to the fact that the protagonist's love interest is blind...?


Still, the promotions hinted to much more genius than Torch Song could possibly deliver. The film's reputation is that of high-camp/BAD-movie entertainment. YouTube "Two Faced Woman" for one of the worst musical numbers put on screen, followed by a frightful ripping-off-her-wig moment that is as intense as a Tallulah Bankhead drag act bidding a bar full of truckers one final adieu...or fuck you....

Catherine Deneuve


That was not her singing on the soundtrack to The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg). Nope. Danielle Licari did those honors, although it sounds so right when heard to Catherine Deneuve's lip-syncing.

Catherine is also a very begrudging participant in Bjork's musical reveries, the technicolor subtext, of Lars von Trier's Dancer In The Dark.

Finally, Ms. Deneuve lets loose in 8 Women (8 Femmes), a nifty holiday musical/who-done-it flick where each woman gets her moment on trial and each woman gets her song. Catherine sings "Toi Jamais" as a woman of true worldly knowledge.