Torch Singer (1933)

Torch Singer is a 1933 pre-code offering from Paramount starring Claudette Colbert.

Sally Trent (Colbert) is an out-of-work aspiring singer. She’s broke and pregnant and she has her baby in a charity hospital. She tries to make a go of raising her daughter on her own but it’s to no avail. With a baby to care for she can’t find any way to earn a living and she can’t pay the rent and her attempt to persuade the family of the baby’s father to take responsibility fails as well. She has no choice. She puts the baby, whom she has named Sally, up for adoption.

Then she tries to get work as a singer. It takes a while but eventually she starts to enjoy some success, using the professional name Mimi Benton. And that success steadily builds. While her success grows her notoriety grows even faster. Mimi Benton is known for her wild living and her immorality.

Then fate plays a strange trick. Mimi is at a radio station and a kids’ show is about to go on the air for the first time. The show will feature a 15-minute segment by Aunt Jennie. Aunt Jennie will tell the children a story and then sing them a song. But the woman who is to pay Aunt Jennie, a nice middle-aged lady, freezes completely at the last minute. It’s every radio station program director’s worst nightmare. Seized by a whim Mimi grabs the microphone. She throws the script away and improvises a story. Her story is much more exciting than the scripted story.

The broadcast is a huge success. Mimi is a natural. Children throughout the nation instantly love her. Of course it was just a crazy whim and it was just a one-off. The show’s sponsors and the show’s producer, Tony Cummings (Ricardo Cortez), realise however that somehow they must persuade Mimi to continue. They must get her to sign a contract. Mimi of course has an emotional thing about children, having given up her own child for adoption. Playing Aunt Jennie is strangely satisfying. She signs the contract.

The broadcasts continue to be immensely popular. The one worry is that someone might reveal the truth, that Aunt Jennie is really the infamous torch singer Mimi Benton, widely considered to be the most brazen hussy in the city. This is a secret that must be kept.

Inevitably Mimi starts to think about her own daughter. Maybe little Sally is one of her listeners. Mimi becomes obsessed with finding her little girl.

What Mimi doesn’t know is that while she is searching for little Sally someone else is searching too, and that someone is searching for the woman once known as Sally Trent.

The stage is set for lots of emotional dramas.

This is an odd movie. It has two natures - it veers between soggy sentimentality and breezy sexy fun. Of course the character played by Claudette Colbert has two natures as well, the loving mother desperate to find her child and the wild good time girl Mimi Benton. Colbert manages to switch effortlessly between these two sides of the same woman. In the early 1930s Claudette Colbert truly could do no wrong and it’s her performance that carries the movie.

It’s fun seeing Ricardo Cortez playing a nice guy, and doing a pretty good job of it. David Manners plays a key role and he is as dull as always. Charley Grapewin provides some amusement as the radio show’s sponsor who is totally captivated by Mimi.

One of the most enjoyable things about pre-code movies is the stunning gowns worn by the female stars. Women’s fashions at this time really were wonderfully slinky and Claudette Colbert looks fabulous, and very sexy, wearing such clothes.

The script is of course a bit contrived but that’s to expected - this is a tugging at the heartstrings melodrama and every drop of emotion has to be squeezed from the story.

I like the fact that the screenplay zips along at breakneck pace and maintains a laser-sharp focus. It wastes no time whatsoever on extraneous subplots or secondary characters.  

How pre-code is it? It doesn’t have as much overtly racy content as some pre-code movies but it certainly doesn’t judge Sally/Mimi for being a unmarried mother and it certainly doesn’t take the view that such a woman deserves punishment. There’s also no suggestion that being a notorious night-club singer would make a woman an unsuitable mother. So in fact it is very pre-code.

Torch Singer isn’t the sort of movie I would normally enjoy but Claudette Colbert makes any movie worth watching. Recommended.

This movie is one of the six that make up the Universal Backlot Pre-Code Collection DVD boxed set, a set that is a must-buy for pre-code fans. Torch Singer gets a very good transfer.

I’ve reviewed other movies from this DVD set including Hot Saturday (1932), the 1931 version of The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell (1932) and Murder at the Vanities (1934)