Torch Singer (Alexander Hall & George Somnes, 1933)

 

The 1933 Torch Singer, directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes, is a calculatingly melodramatic star vehicle for Claudette Colbert, but rooted in a still-bracing initial frankness as her pregnant character Sally shows up penniless at what we understand is one of the few New York hospitals willing to extend charity to an expectant mother who won’t name the father (he’s a wealthy businessman who’s in China for some unspecified reason, not knowing what he’s left behind); for a year or so afterwards she manages to make it alone (an extended scene of Sally during bathtime with her own and her roommate’s baby showcases why the expressive “Baby LeRoy” was deemed worthy of star billing for a brief period), but eventually gives up the child to adoption, and thereafter achieves notorious stardom under the snappier stage name of Mimi Benton (while eventually picking up a contrasting sideline as the sweet-voiced “Aunt Jenny” on a daily kid-oriented radio broadcast). Colbert is magnetic and alluring throughout, not least modeling a series of perilously low-cut dresses, but one’s attention is even more fully drawn to Mildred Washington as her maid Carrie, emanating an alertly playful intelligence, all the more fascinating for the knowledge that the actress died of peritonitis in the year of the film’s release; it's a funny coincidence (presumably) that one of the film’s other most striking presences is also Black, the uncredited 4-year-old Carlena Beard delivering a sweetly unaffected-seeming minute or two, Colbert seeming genuinely charmed by her. The film becomes more conventional and less interesting once Sally’s lost love reappears on the scene and she becomes ever more preoccupied with regaining her child (which, hardly a spoiler, the movie accomplishes with not a thought for the rights or emotional investment of the adoptive parents), and the final moments feel as resigned as they do triumphant.