Cheap Biography - Mel Torme (Video) (A & E Biography, Mel Torme) Price

Until a 1996 stroke silenced his singing career, crooner Mel Tormé basked deservedly in one of pop music's happier comeback stories: a child star who attained teen-idol stature by the early 1940s, the Chicago native's stubborn devotion to classic American pop all but doomed him to obscurity after rock & roll cast a lengthening shadow from the 1960s onward. Yet Tormé's determination not to surrender to the Big Beat, which left him without a recording contract for years, later conferred upon him the mantle of true believer when repentant boomers and retrohip Gen Xers rediscovered the glories of pre-rock pop. From the '80s onward, the "Velvet Fog," as he'd been dubbed three decades earlier, thrived both commercially and artistically, selling out concerts and releasing albums that codified his remarkable powers as a song stylist and curator of great songwriting.

Subtitled Smooth as Velvet, this excellent overview of Tormé's substantial talents and checkered career benefits from still and movie footage dating back to the late '20s, when Tormé first turned heads singing in a Windy City restaurant. Tracing his precocious evolution as a vocalist, drummer, and songwriter, the profile captures the heady bloom of his '40s success, including his promising graduation to feature films and his first writing successes (including "The Christmas Song," the Nat "King" Cole signature tune), as well as his fall from commercial grace. Tormé himself is a vivid source, but testimony also comes from peers such as singer Vic Damone and trumpeter Ray Anthony and friends Hugh Hefner (whose Playboy Jazz Festivals frequently headlined Tormé) and Night Court's Harry Anderson, who integrated his then-eclectic idolatry of Tormé into that show by creating a series of cameos for him.

Tormé's brief but well-received dramatic acting career (forced in part by his exile from records) is also noted, as well as his tongue-in-cheek stint as a Mountain Dew pitchman. Lastly, the show doesn't flinch from his turbulent succession of marriages and his struggle to gain custody of his children. --Sam Sutherland

ACTORS:	A & E Biography, Mel Torme
CATEGORY:	Video
MANUFACTURER:	A & E Entertainment
MPAA RATING:	NR (Not Rated)
FEATURES:	Color, Black & White, NTSC
MEDIA:	VHS Tape
# OF MEDIA:	1
UPC:	733961140866