I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) User Reviews (40)

"This story was filmed on location...inside a woman's soul!"

[jhkp · 6/10 · 16 September 2015]

MGM director Charles Walters was originally assigned to I'll Cry Tomorrow; and wanted to cast June Allyson (who was not unlike the young Lillian Roth, in some respects). Walters wanted to start with Roth as an innocent girl, slowly chipping away at the surface, until the innocence was eaten away by fear. He knew June was tougher than people realized, and was certain she would excel. They had been working on the role, when Susan Hayward decided she wanted it. Taking her case to Roth herself, she eventually prevailed, causing Walters to quit, noting that Hayward had already played an alcoholic, in Smash Up (1947), and a famous singer who faced tragedy, in With A Song In My Heart (1952). By the way, if you sometimes get all three of these pictures mixed up, join the club.

At any rate, there are people who think Hayward was brilliant in this film, and those who feel she overdid it. Not over-acting, but perhaps, over-feeling. I fall into the latter category. She starts in a rather high gear, and just goes higher. While she's commendably emotional, and touching, I think we lose track of the story and the character, due to the focus on unbridled histrionics. Eventually, she just seems to be devouring everything in her path - including the movie. If this fascinates you, well, it fascinated me, too, but is it a performance?

Jo Van Fleet (in the role Walters wanted Mary Astor for) doesn't exactly back away from the big gesture, herself. A good actress with a nice understanding of the material, she nonetheless pulls out the stops, giving us the long-suffering mama complete with European accent (Roth found this surprising, noting that her mother only had a Boston accent). Much younger than her part, she does a good job - but the histrionics may wear you out. Especially when she and Hayward go at it hammer and tong.

As for the singing of Susan Hayward, you probably won't be asking yourself what took her so long to decide to sing in motion pictures. She does reasonably well, but it's not the voice or style of a successful professional singer.

Towards the end, we have Eddie Albert and his real-life wife, Margo (whom you may remember had a problem when she tried to leave Shangri-La, in Lost Horizon, back in 1937). They help Susan - I mean, Lillian - get back on her feet, with the assistance of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're still around (and why not? It's a fairly gripping picture, overall) you may be touched, and a little relieved, that the shouting, and maybe even the singing, is over for a while.

Based on Lillian Roth's autobiography - Hayward owns this role

[PudgyPandaMan · 7/10 · 21 January 2009]

I was shocked to learn that this was based on a true story about a singer/actress named Lillian Roth that was at her peak in the 1930's. That was well before my time, so no wonder I never heard of her. What a sad, tragic tale of alcoholism and the destruction it wrought in this woman's life. Add to that a driven stage mom who was pimping her and her sister out for entertainment - she first appeared on Broadway at the age of six. It's one thing when a child seeks out performing - but another when a parent pushes them.

I looked up photos of Lillian and she was a beautiful, vivacious looking woman in her youth. I didn't see any photos of her later in life - no telling what alcoholism did to her youth and beauty.

Hayward does an amazing job bringing this tragic tale to life. You feel every bit of her painful and tortured life. At first I thought this would be a typical 50's melodramatic soap opera tale. But it goes much deeper into a strong character study of this unfortunate woman's life and the leeches that attached themselves to her. I have not seen many of Hayward's performances but this undoubtedly has to be one of her finest. I was also impressed that Hayward did her own singing in this and did a good job of imitating Roth's deep vocal ranges and theatrical style. I listened to some of Roth's tunes on iTunes and was impressed with the similarity. However, if Roth were on American Idol today, Simon would slam her for being "over-the-top", too theatrical, and "over-singing". But that was the style back then.

My only criticism is that I'm not sure they went for realism in the retelling of the tale. It looks to be set more in the modern time is was filmed (1950's) rather than 30's and 40's when most of the events took place. Also, they kept Hayward's hair red rather than dark brown like Lillian's. Other than that, it was a very good film.

Beautiful, ethereal, but still with home-girl qualities

[dlbhina622 · 8/10 · 18 November 2013]

I have no doubt that this was both Susan Hayward's and Jo Van Fleet's finest performances. The two actresses show a profound understanding of the limits of a mother-daughter relationship, as well as a deep, gut-wrenching well of female emotion that, well, is hardly seen on screen. When Lillian runs into the hospital to find an empty bed where David was, and realizing that he is dead, collapses in tears: not overplayed, not hysterical, but as real a scene only a seasoned, highly professional actress could play.

The story is interesting, if not with a little over-indulgence, but it is, after all, a biography. I would pay any price to see Ms. Hayward play this role, with her tragically expressive eyes, her ethereal yet next-door qualities. She deserved an Oscar for this role.

Hayward alone makes this movie great, but the story is well told, too...

[secondtake · 25 July 2011]

I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)

Well, never mind the famous Alcoholics Anonymous ending, Susan Hayward is just fabulous through and through. This is a drama based on real life singer Lillian Roth, and Hayward (who does her own singing) pulls off both the successful early years and the decline into drinking. It's lively and vivid and tragic.

Richard Conte is second billing, and a big name at this point in his career, but he's got a small, if important, role, perfectly suited to him. I just happened to see Conte and Hayward yesterday in a movie together, "House of Strangers" (from six years earlier). The relationship of their characters is more compact and complicated here, but in both cases Conte plays a cool type, smart and in control. But Conte here has two sides, is wonderfully manipulative, and ends up having his own demons that come from drinking too much.

Hayward often plays strong characters, and emotional ones, and yet her approach is grounded with an inner calm. I'm not sure why she wasn't a legendary star the way Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and Joan Crawford were, because she acts her heart out and has good, rich roles. It's no surprise she got an Oscar nomination for this performance, just as she did for an earlier amazing performance as an alcoholic, the terrific 1949 "My Foolish Heart" across from Dana Andrews, who is a more compelling actor overall than Conte. Hayward did finally win that big Best Actress award for her gutsy performance in "I Want to Live" (where director Robert Wise made everything look good as well as come alive).

Jo Van Vleet, who play's Lillian Roth's mother, is scary perfect as a controlling mother with seemingly good intentions. There's no shortage of movies about mothers who mess up their daughters by trying too hard ("Mommy Dearest" is the most famous, but it gets even more sordid in "Where Love Has Gone" with Hayward playing the mother).

There is a terrible colorized version of "I'll Cry Tomorrow" out there which is best to avoid--it's a simple color palette applied across the board, and everyone comes off uniform and pasty. It matters less what color her hair is when it's simply colorless. That colorized version is also cropped (pan and scan) to fit the 4:3 format of television, and the original is shot with some helpful moderately wide widescreen expansiveness, so the edges of faces don't get chopped. Arthur Arling's cinematography is very good in the way that all movies were at this point, but it isn't remarkable on its own terms. The soundtrack, by the way, is interesting to many because it has Hayward singing rather rich versions of some standards of Roth's.

Good Susan

[style-2 · 6/10 · 31 January 2005]

The magnificent Hayward, again demonstrating her prowess in portraying alcoholics, this time in the true-life story of chanteuse and general party-girl, Lillian Roth. We begin with Lillian as a little girl, being trotted to all kinds of auditions by her scheming and manipulative stage mother, played by Van Fleet. One thing becomes another and soon Lillian is a star (with a repertoire that includes a much too serious rendition of "The Red, Red Robin…"), and Mother is pleased to be accumulating the trappings of luxury that she so richly deserves. But, when love enters the picture, Lillian is smitten and all of Mother's plans are threatened with derailment. When Lillian's young lover dies of an unnamed illness, she is devastated and has no interest in performing. But all-powerful Mother wields her strength, telling Lillian to snap out of it. It is a painful decision for Lillian, but she throws her mother out, and as Mother slinks off to the sidelines, Lillian, like her counterpart in "Smash-Up", soon takes a wee little drinkee to ease the pain. But as all alcoholics know, one drink is too many and a thousand is not enough, and soon Lillian is on the road to ruin. She gets tossed out of all the classiest places, and wakes up in bed with a strange man – even though they're both fully dressed and in twin beds. She falls under the spell of a Svengali, compellingly played by Conte, who convinces her that it's okay to drink, but just know when to stop. Of course, if that were possible for alcoholics, no one would need AA. She runs away and attempts suicide. But Hayward, being Hayward, survives it all, and with the help of AA (and Hollywood) she's back on top in no time. The video box informs us that the popularity of this movie at the time rekindled Miss Roth's career, but to a degree that Miss Roth began imitating *Miss Hayward's* version of Miss Roth. Life imitating art imitating life.

Susan's best work

[jjnxn-1 · 10/10 · 30 April 2013]

Sad story but Susan Hayward's powerhouse performance holds you from beginning to end. She's matched by Jo Van Fleet as her mother, even though she's overbearing and grasping she makes it clear that she loves her daughter and is at a loss as to how to help her as she washes away in a sea of alcohol. This could be Hayward's career best performance even if it's a stretch at the beginning to believe she's suppose to be in her late teens. Forget that and watch as she takes you through the downward spiral of this tormented woman, doing her own vocals most impressively. Her scenes when Lillian has hit rock bottom are almost painful to watch but her mastery is assured.

The song in her heart has been spoiled by liquor....

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 14 August 2014]

Over a decade after this movie was made, Susan Hayward would snap at Patty Duke about how Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope. It's too bad that Helen Lawson wasn't around when Lillian Roth was at her height, because she might have snapped it out of her, too. Unlike her role as Jane Froman, Susan Hayward got to actually sing here, and rather well, too. Froman's voice was too identified for another to sing her story through song, but by the mid 1950's, Roth was a blowsy character type whose parade might not have yet passed her by, but wasn't quite what it had been back during her heyday of the late 1920's and 30's.

When you see Lillian Roth in her 1930's film appearances today, she seems like a cute and sweet pixie with lots of vim and verve. But there was trouble in her supposed paradise with a ruthless stage mother (played by Jo Van Fleet with venom in her seemingly sweet demeanor), and so when you see Roth in her series of Warner Brothers shorts or supporting parts in "The Love Parade" or "Ladies They Talk About", you are seeing the artist, not the human being. Susan Hayward brings on the human being, and that makes for another engrossing tale of the rise above major problems and what glories come out of it.

Hayward shows the lowest of the lowest points in Roth's life, falling apart even in spite of the fact that she was a very popular artist. Hayward's breathy voice is perfect for the musical numbers, especially "When the Red Red Robbin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along". The men in her life are brilliantly played by Richard Conte and Eddie Albert, but it is Hayward and Van Fleet who score big here. The drunken singer tale wouldn't be so well told a few years later when Ann Blyth was miscast as Helen Morgan whose tragic life had no upward swing to it. For Roth, she would be back on Broadway in supporting roles in "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" and "70 Girl 70" long after this movie had come out and reaped praise on its star, a nice footnote in a life that ended up being triumphant rather than tragic.

My Life Was Never My Own

[bkoganbing · 10/10 · 20 August 2006]

I'll Cry Tomorrow was the title of the autobiography of Lillian Roth, former singing star of the Twenties and Early Thirties whose career like her contemporary Helen Morgan took a nose dive into the toilet. Unlike Morgan, Roth survived to tell about it and became one of the first name clients of Alcholics Anonymous.

That does seem like an oxymoron because as an organization AA does survive on the anonymity of its members. But Lillian Roth went public with her story as a warning to those becoming to dependent on alcohol.

Susan Hayward gave one of her best screen performances ever in essaying the part of Lillian Roth. In fact she does her own singing here and even made a record of four of the songs she sang in this film, When the Red Red Robin, Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe, Sing You Sinners, and Waltz Hugette. She had previously played singers in With a Song In My Heart and Smash-Up, but was dubbed by others.

Hayward was an amazing talent, even in some of her worst films she comes across like no other actress. Even Bette Davis who could chew scenery in a bad film to make it entertaining could never hold a candle to my fellow Brooklynite, Susan Hayward. That she could sing too, is no surprise to me.

Probably Lillian Roth's best known screen roles are in Cecil B. DeMille's Madam Satan, in the Marx Brothers comedy, Animal Crackers and in the first screen version of the Vagabond King. The first two are out, I wish the third was also, a print might no longer exist.

Jo Van Fleet played Hayward's mother, the Jewish stage mother from the lower depths. Van Fleet gave one of her most acclaimed performances here. Her Jewish New York accent is the only clue to Lillian's ethnic background. It's a sad portrayal of a woman who both lived vicariously through her daughter and is pushing her because she wants her not to have as tough a life as she had.

Richard Conte, Ray Danton, Don Taylor, and Eddie Albert all play men in in Roth's life and though the protagonist is a woman, each of the guys makes an indelible image. Ray Danton plays her boyhood fiancé who dies young and helps start Lillian's downward spiral. In that Roth's story was very similar to that other star of the Twenties Marilyn Miller who lost a husband early and never recovered from it. That's all depicted in the Marilyn Miller biographical film, Look for the Silver Lining from 20th Century Fox a few years before this.

Hayward got a deserved Oscar nomination for this part, but lost to Anna Magnani. That was a year for substance abuse because Frank Sinatra got a nomination for playing a junkie in The Man With the Golden Arm. Both Sue and Frank went through gut wrenching withdrawal scenes in both films.

I'll Cry Tomorrow is always listed among the five best films of Susan Hayward's. It's some people's personal favorite and while mine happens to be I Want to Live, this one is right up there.

The film is very good and yet very bad---a strange combination, that's for sure.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 28 January 2013]

As a history teachers and film nut, the first thing I noticed about this movie was its very anachronistic sets, costumes and hairstyles. Now I am not saying it's a bad film, but it was very sloppy in portraying the life story of Lillian Roth. The film is supposed to stretch from about 1916 to 1955--but ALL of it looks like 1955. While this is occasionally a problem in films, I can't recall seeing one worse when it comes to replicating the era in which it was supposedly set. This is odd when you think about it, as this was a prestige film--with an expensive cast. So, you'd think they would have tried harder to get the look of the film right.

When the film begins, it's about 1916 and young Lillian is out on her first tryouts with her mother in tow. Suddenly, the film jumps some time in the future--when Lillian is an established star and life is pretty good (this would be about 1930). It's odd because not once were you told WHEN this film was occurring and it was odd that it just jumped ahead so quickly. It also skipped much of Lillian's life even when she was successful--and there was no mention of her film career or stage successes. Again, a bit sloppy.

What WAS done well was portraying the downward spiral of Miss Roth--especially the effects of alcohol on her functioning. In many ways, this aspect of the film and Susan Hayward's acting were the highlights of the movie. Her life as a drunk was every bit as vivid as Ray Milland's in "The Lost Weekend"...no, perhaps more so. While I am not a huge Susan Hayward fan, in this sort of loud and intense performance, she was at her best. Subtle was not her forte--and here she is well matched to her skills as an actress.

Now you need to see this bio-pic not as a literal version of the life of Lillian Roth. It's more like the paraphrased and altered life. While she was married many times, most of these marriages aren't mentioned and the men who she did marry in the movie were NOT the men she actually married--the names were different and I have no way of knowing if they were like the men in real life. So, for its quality as the actual life story of Roth, I'd give this one a 2 or maybe a 3. But, for its portrayal of alcoholism and its effects on her as well as its entertainment value, it deserves a 10! Its portrayal of her life change through AA is quite inspiring but not quite as good--simply because it implies that there is a 'finish' to sobriety (such as her sponsor telling her she no longer needs a sponsor and that she's 'graduating' from AA--two things that are NEVER true). This is very strange, I know, but the film is so good and so bad at the same time--it's a real mixed bag. Overall, I'd say the film is a solid 7 and is well worth seeing.

By the way, when Hayward first sings "Red, Red Robin" on stage, look carefully when it shows her and the audience. If you look really carefully, you can see that the audience was NOT originally in the scene but it was added afterwords--just look for the jittery border that separates the two. It's probably only noticeable on a very large TV and you have to be looking for it.

You'll Be Optimistic Tomorrow After Seeing this Film

[edwagreen · 10/10 · 15 December 2005]

One of the best pictures ever made showcasing the talent of the brilliant Susan Hayward.

Miss Hayward was never better as Lillian Roth. Her drunk scenes are unbelievably realistic. Just ask any alcoholic.

Susan Hayward was equally matched by the terrific supporting performance of Jo Van Fleet as her mother. Van Fleet would win the coveted Oscar that same year (1955) for "East of Eden." I'll never understand why. She was far better as Katie Roth.

Hayward, who did her own singing, did very well. It is even said that Lillian Roth tried to emulate Hayward, when trying to make a comeback.

The film co-stars Ray Danton as Hayward's ill-fated fiancé, whose death from an apparent rapidly growing brain tumor, sets Roth on a downward spiral. Don Taylor, who would later become a director, is effective as Wallie, the guy who Roth marries when she is dead drunk. Richard Conte steals the show as the brutal Tony, who takes Roth for a ride, before she dumps him in California.

Eddie Albert, in one of his greatest roles, is terrific as Burt McGuire from AA. A recovering alcoholic, still hesitant about life, he acted beautifully in some memorable scenes.

Hayward's singing and dancing, especially in the number, Sing You Sinners from the Vagabond King, is marvelously staged.

Susan Hayward began her long trek in playing troubled women in the 1947 hit Smash-Up: The Story of A Woman. Both she and Eddie Albert got great experience for their parts, 8 years later, in this fabulous movie.

Hayward shows actressy grit playing alcoholic Lillian Roth

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 10 December 2006]

Well-intentioned movie based on singer/actress Lillian Roth's memoir about her troubled life before finding success, battling with her mama (Jo Van Fleet) and later nearly destroying her own career with an addiction to booze. The scenario isn't as tidied-up as one may expect, and pathos are kept to a minimum. In the lead, Susan Hayward isn't a revelation--vulnerability doesn't come easily to her--but neither is she overtly melodramatic, and Helen Rose's Oscar-winning costumes keep her looking every inch the star (this is a movie-star vehicle, after all). The best performance is given by Eddie Albert as a counselor from AA. So-called 'woman's picture' is professionally-assembled and has several strong scenes. **1/2 from ****

Susan Hayward is sensational!!!

[kidboots · 10/10 · 1 October 2008]

Susan Hayward is sensational in this no holes barred biography of tragic performer Lillian Roth. Miss Hayward also did her own singing which was much more in the style of Miss Roth than Doris Day was to Ruth Etting in "Love Me or Leave Me". Who won the Academy Award this year - could anyone have turned in a better performance than Susan Hayward????

As drednm says there was no care given to authenticity of the period (50s costumes, dates and events mixed up) but it didn't really matter - Susan Hayward was electrifying. Lillian Roth's book was very hard hitting (more awful than the film if that's possible) and the ending gave more detail about her time in AA. She toured Australia and was one of the first stars that actually stood up and said "I am an alcoholic and I want to help others".

"Broadway's Youngest Star" had a grueling childhood, pushed into show business by a relentless stage mother, Katie (Jo Van Fleet, matching Hayward's performance - she is marvellous!!!). She didn't enjoy a normal childhood. When she is an up and coming film star (Hayward makes a sensation entrance singing "Sing You Sinners") she meets childhood friend David (Ray Danton) once again. He is already sick but keeps the seriousness of it from Lillian and together they plan their future. Katie is livid that he has come between Lillian and the success that Katie craves. She tries all in her power to keep them apart, intercepting notes, forgetting to give messages. David dies while she is on a singing tour that he has organized and Lillian then spirals into a deep depression.

When the nurse, Ellen, gives her a drink to help her sleep, Lillian is on her way down, marrying Wallie (Don Taylor) while on a drunken bender - she doesn't even realize she is married!!! She then marries sadist Tony Bardeman (Richard Conte) who not only encourages her to drink but also beats her up as well. As Lillian Roth said in her book "when people questioned how she could marry him, she replied that she had hit rock bottom and didn't think she deserved any better".

In between times there are performances where she is too drunk to stand up and needs a chair to steady her on stage. She finally makes the break from Bardeman, hits skid row (Timothy Carey plays an uncredited part as a drunken derelict) then goes to live with her mother.

When a suicide attempt fails she goes to AA and after some harrowing scenes, drying out, going "cold turkey", she begins to live again, with the help of Burt McGuire (Eddie Albert) and Toni (Margo). The last scene is of her walking down the aisle to appear on "This is Your Life".

Highly Recommended.

Hayward, in melodramatic overdrive, elbows Lillian Roth clear off the screen

[bmacv · 6/10 · 1 July 2003]

Susan Hayward never lets her foot up. As Lillian Roth in I'll Cry Tomorrow, she sticks with her strident, pedal-to-the-floor style. Whether she's belting out 'Sing, You Sinners' on a Paramount set, screeching at her mother or one of her husbands, or writhing with the D.T.s, Hayward elbows Roth clear off the screen.

And that's a shame, because this story of a singer laid low by her alcoholism (based on Roth's memoir) doesn't need turbocharging. But, like his star, director Daniel Mann keeps twisting the dials up to 10, opting inflexibly for ear-splitting melodrama over quieter insight. Those necessary connecting passages hold little interest for him. So, with abrupt, disorienting shifts of time and locale, the movie judders along from one star turn to the next (as would, two years later, the almost identical The Helen Morgan Story).

In his rush to get to the juicy parts when Roth starts sliding off banquettes in ritzy nightclubs, he whizzes through the Lower East Side shtik of stage-mama Jo Van Fleet pushing young Roth in front of the footlights, and through a pivotal romance with childhood sweetheart Ray Danton (his death starts her drinking). During a blackout, she marries a stage-door Johnny; after a drunken spat, it's suddenly two years later and he's long gone. From Roth's lavish layout in Manhattan, she boards a train and ends up in a dump of a Los Angeles apartment; we're left to supply the why.

When cool sadist Richard Conte enters her life, all but twirling a moustache, he slows things down a bit. But it's never clear who he is or why he married her. For her fame and money? Or just because he needed a vulnerable victim to torment? Leaving him furtively in the middle of the night, she stumbles around the Bowery for – days? Weeks? Years? The director's grasp of the passage of time is as slippery as his subject's.

Most centrally, we never see the precise point when she becomes unreliable – unemployable. In one of the most affecting scenes, when she can barely walk but must perform, she tells a grip 'Better put the chair on the stage.' But then, propped against it, she sings the truest, most understated number in the movie, 'Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe.'

Finally, after failing to hurl herself out a hotel window, Hayward/Roth creeps into AA. But even that venerable fellowship gets treated to a full Hollywood rewrite. She and sponsor Eddie Albert fall in love, she turns the meetings into her private cabaret, and then goes on This Is Your Life to tell her story on national television (so much for principles before personalities).

As a tale of transformation, I'll Cry Tomorrow is seldom less than fascinating. But it's not as much a journey from alcoholic squalor into sobriety as it is the change from a heartfelt account of recovery into an ambitious actress' overwrought bid for an Oscar.

Susan Hayward Suffers, Gets Drunk, Sings Three Songs

[bob-790-196018 · 5/10 · 4 March 2011]

If all you knew about Lillian Roth was this movie, you'd know almost nothing except that she was a woman who suffered and drank a lot--pretty much the story of a lot of alcoholics. Susan Hayward does sing three songs, though her singing is more histrionic than talented. But the Lillian Roth who was a leading performer in the 1920s and 1930s never really appears. For that matter, this 1955 movie provides almost no sense at all that the action is taking place during that period.

Even a glance at the Wikipedia entry on Lillian Roth shows that her life was a lot more complicated, interesting, colorful, and filled with trouble than than this movie hints at. Leonard Maltin says the film is "everything a movie biography should be." That may be, if you take the film on its own terms and forget that it is based on a real life.

In this movie, Lillian's life is a series of suffering. She has an overbearing mother determined to live through her daughter's career. A young man she has loved from boyhood and who wants to marry her dies tragically. She meets a charming man who turns out to be a sadist. No wonder she drinks. It's all that simple.

The resolution of the movie involves her joining AA and then appearing on "This Is Your Life."

Really, this is a depressing movie. We are told that Lillian Roth is, or was, a show business celebrity, but in the film she could be any alcoholic--an ordinary person. And while the 1950s gave us many "kitchen sink" dramas about the troubles of ordinary people, the best of these dramas illuminated the lives of their characters and made us see them in universal terms. No such luck for viewers of "I'll Cry Tomorrow."

Superb Susan Hayward

[drednm · 13 June 2006]

Superb performance by Susan Hayward as Lillian Roth.

No eye for period detail, not even an attempt, and probably a lot of hooey biographically, BUT....

Terrific performances by Susan Hayward as Lillian Roth and Jo Van Fleet as her mother. The two women give stunning performances.

The film is a tad preachy with the AA message but Hayward and Van Fleet (born a year apart) are a feast. I don't think any actress ever gave better performances as a drunk than Hayward (SMASH-UP), And Van Fleet, who made her film debut in 1955, scored in this film as well as EAST OF EDEN and THE ROSE TATTOO--all in 1955! Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Margo, Don Taylor, Virginia Gregg, Ray Danton, Henry Kulky, Veda Ann Borg, and Tol Avery co-star......

Anyone know who did the singing voice for Hayward?

Lillian Roth was a big stage star who made a few good films in the early 30s and always seemed likable.

Susan Hayward shines in this autobiographical drama about Lillian Roth

[jacobs-greenwood · 6/10 · 8 December 2016]

Directed by Daniel Mann, with a screenplay by Helen Deutsch and Jay Richard Kennedy, this slightly above average biographical drama about the rise and fall (and recovery) of singer-actress Lillian Roth earned Susan Hayward, who sings, her fourth unrewarded Best Actress Oscar nomination (she would win on her fifth and last nomination for I Want to Live! (1958)).

Based on an autobiography co-written by Roth, it details her fast track to fame as a teenager due to a stereotypical, unrelenting, ambitious mother (Katie, played by Jo Van Fleet), the death of her childhood friend David Tredman (Ray Danton), her "pick me up" drinking which led to alcoholism, two failed marriages, attempted suicide and ultimately her recovery with the help of Burt McGuire (Eddie Albert), a recovering alcohol who helps her.

Don Taylor and Richard Conte play Roth's husbands; Taylor a youngster named Wallie and Conte a particularly sadistic brute named Tony Bardeman, who uses Roth's weakness against her to get her money.

The film won an Academy Award for its B&W Costume Design and also received Oscar nominations for its B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration and Cinematography.

The film is almost an advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous, the film includes the Serenity Prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Susan Hayward Magnificent

[williwaw · 9/10 · 15 January 2013]

Susan Hayward was a contract star at 20th loaned out to MGM for this starring role.

Ms. Hayward like all great stars had acting "tricks" but drops most of them for this performance. Some of the scenes are so great that they rank among the best of the era. Jo Van Fleet, Eddie Albert, Ray Danton and Richard Conte give great support to the Star.

Director Daniel Mann who guided Shirley Booth to an Oscar for Come Back Little Sheba, Anna Magnani to an Oscar for The Rose Tattoo and Elizabeth Taylor for an Oscar turn in Butterfield 8 ( and guide another glamor girl Lana Turner in a comedy Who's Got The Action) directed Ms. Hayward who gives an acclaimed performance in the real life story. This performance garnered Ms. Hayward the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and an Oscar nomination (where Hayward lost to Magnani's Tattoo). Years later Hayward would declare this performance her favorite over her Oscar winning I Want To Live. To me Susan Hayward should have won the Oscar 3 times: For Smash Uup, I'll Cry Tomorrow and I Want To Live. Hayward would declare Daniel Mann her favorite Director.( THey would reunite for the political drama Ada.) I'll Cry Tomorrow is a great film with a brilliant performance by a great star, Ms. Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward In A Real-life Melodrama

[atlasmb · 6/10 · 28 September 2016]

A cautionary tale about alcoholism, "I'll Cry Tomorrow" is an adaptation of Lillian Roth's autobiography. Susan Hayward portrays Ms. Roth with ferocity and authenticity, but sometimes overacts. Actually it's most noticeable when the dialogue falls short of authentic.

Lillian deals with an overbearing stage mother, then a succession of failed relationships. Eventually, she becomes dependent on alcohol to her horror. Predictably, she sabotages her career and sinks to the depths of despair.

The end of the film is basically an ad for Alcoholics Anonymous, detailing its methods. It's a good message to advertise, and it probably had more impact when the film was released. Today, the nature of dependency is better understood.

Regarding the three songs featured in the film, two of them are well-suited to the film. The other--which is probably the first song I remember from my childhood--is the catchy but misplaced "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along", which has the gravitas of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

In my opinion, other films have better captured the desperation and degradation of alcoholism, but this film--being biographical--deserves an audience.

One of the best screen performances of all time

[HotToastyRag · 10/10 · 24 July 2018]

If you've read my reviews on Hot Toasty Rag, you know my intense frustration about the Academy Awards of 1955. If you watch The Man with the Golden Arm or I'll Cry Tomorrow, you'll know why I have no respect for the Academy. Frank Sinatra and Susan Hayward gave not only the best performances of their careers but two of the best screen performances I've ever seen. Ernest Borgnine and Anna Magnani won the Oscars instead.

In I'll Cry Tomorrow, Susan Hayward stars as Lillian Roth, a real-life stage actress who became an alcoholic after tragedy ruined her happiness. Susan's pushy stage mother, Jo Van Fleet, taught her at an early age to put her tears off until later, so the show can go on. "Cry tomorrow. You've got all day to cry tomorrow," she says. Ironically, Jo won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1955, but for East of Eden, in which she walked through her fifteen minutes on the screen. Jo deserved a nomination, if not a win for I'll Cry Tomorrow.

The Lost Weekend was hailed as a realistic tribute to alcoholism, but I'll Cry Tomorrow is so much more realistic. In the former, Ray Milland is an alcoholic and methodically goes on a bender. He loses his temper and hallucinates, but that's pretty much it. I'll Cry Tomorrow delves into the reasons why someone would turn to alcohol, and the steps she takes to hide her addiction. It shows the gritty, the dirty, the raw. Susan doesn't just lock herself in a room for the weekend and cower from an imaginary bat. She talks to herself, wakes up in the gutter, begs for drinks in bars, and sabotages her career and alienates her family. These are raw, powerful scenes that make up a very emotional, moving film.

There's so much I love about this movie, and while almost all of those facets are credited to Suzy's performance, a great deal of credit goes to screenwriters Helen Deutsch and Jay Richard Kennedy. Adapted from Lillian Roth's autobiography, they show the audience a very natural and realistic slide into substance abuse. The film shows how alcohol can become someone's only friend; its not only understandable but relatable that Suzy lets her friend take over. She destroys herself slowly, and in showing Susan during her earlier, successful scenes, we can see the subtle changes in her behavior. In one of the famous clips, Susan is shown backstage on the verge of tears, but when she hears her musical cue, she steps into the spotlight with a grin on her face and sings "When the Red Red Robin. . ."

Richard Conte, Ray Danton, Don Taylor, and Eddie Albert play the men in her life, each with a purpose, and each giving such great performances, you'll never be able to see them in any other type of role. If you've never seen Susan Hayward in a film before, you'll probably think she's a God when you watch this movie. If you know her and love her as I do, this movie will confirm her Goddess status every time you watch it.

Fascinating but overwrought performances...

[Doylenf · 7/10 · 14 June 2006]

SUSAN HAYWARD has some strong, searing scenes full of fireworks in I'LL CRY TOMORROW--as does JO VAN FLEET as her overbearing stage mother--but there are times when you just wish Daniel Mann would keep the theatrical melodramatics a bit more under his control.

The story of a confessed alcoholic singer is an unpleasant one and this is all the more reason why a little soft pedaling now and then would have helped. As it is, Mann has chosen to pull out all the stops and give us a saga of grim and unrelieved suffering for too lengthy a time.

All of the performances are respectable enough--including EDDIE ALBERT and MARGO as a couple who try to help the alcohol addicted Roth back on her feet again after an attempt at suicide forces her to go to the AA clinic. And Hayward does well by the songs that Roth supposedly performed in nightclubs, using her own voice and gestures she undoubtedly picked up from Jane Froman, whose biography she also did on screen a bit earlier.

A toning down of the shrill melodramatics would have helped--but, nevertheless, this is a frank and disturbing portrait of a woman on the skids and Miss Hayward does her best to give a convincing portrait.

Lost in a sea of sorrows drowned by alcohol

[clanciai · 9/10 · 14 March 2019]

This is a true story and very meticulously told, as Susan Hayward enters the role deeply enough to make it overwhelmingly convincing and true in heartrending sincerity. The only foible of the film is that it is too long, some scenes are unnecessarily overdrawn in their painfulness, while the most interesting and rewarding part of the film is the inside picture of the A.A. Of course everybody knows about Alcoholics Anonymous and what it is all about, but only true alcoholics get to know it from the inside, while this film actually reveals it from the inside, so that you feel that you become one of them and included in the community. Only a talented and intelligent actress like Susan Hayward could have gone through with making this role convincing all the way, and her performance raises the film to top level, very comparable to Ray Milland's "The Lost Weekend" by Billy Wilder ten years earlier, more efficient and impressive, but this film is more elaborate and documentary. Of course, you can hardly bear seeing it more than once in your life, while "The Lost Weekend" is a film many will return to.

Susan Hayward's drive and passion carry the film with her

[JamesHitchcock · 7/10 · 29 September 2015]

Lillian Roth (1910 -1980) was a well-known singer and actress during the thirties and forties; she made a few Hollywood films during the early thirties, but became better known as a Broadway performer. In 1954 she published her autobiography," I'll Cry Tomorrow", in which she dealt frankly with the alcoholism which had badly affected her life and career. The book was a best-seller and led to her making a comeback on Broadway. This film version followed only a year later. It presents us with a somewhat edited, simplified picture of Roth's career, omitting her Hollywood years and reducing the number of her marriages from five to three.

In the early part of the film, Lillian is eight years old and is being groomed by her pushy mother Katie for a stage career. The action then jumps forward by about twenty years. Roth is now an established star, but Katie is still constantly trying to interfere in her life. Katie has taken a particular dislike to Lillian's boyfriend, David, fearing that if Lillian marries him she will give up her career in show business. There is, however, to be no marriage. David is suddenly taken ill and dies, and Lillian turns to drink to try and cope with her grief.

She continues performing, despite her worsening drink problem. She makes a brief, unhappy marriage to an airman, Wally, but cannot remember her wedding as she was drunk at the time. Her second marriage only makes matters worse. Her new husband, Tony, is also a heavy drinker, although he can hold his liquor better than she can, and encourages her drinking. When she tries to give up alcohol and to persuade him to do the same, her becomes physically abusive to her, and their marriage collapses. Eventually she decides to straighten her life out and joins Alcoholics Anonymous, where she meets her third husband, Burt, here portrayed as the great love of her life and the man who saves her from herself. (Nobody could have known in 1955 that this marriage would turn out to be as unsuccessful as Lillian's others and that a few years later Burt would walk out on her, taking much of her money with him).

According to her biographers Robert LaGuardia and Gene Arceri, Susan Hayward struggled to obtain the sort of dramatic parts in which she could shine and had numerous battles with her studio and with producers who were content to carry on casting her in undemanding roles. (One explanation I have heard is that in the fifties most of the best roles were in black-and-white movies but the studio preferred to cast her in colour films which they felt showed her red hair off to its best advantage). She was desperate to secure the part of Lillian Roth for herself and eventually succeeded.

Hayward's determination paid off, because she gives one of her finest performances here. She was an actress who could give the impression of not really trying very hard when she was forced to take on something which did not interest her, "The Conqueror", made a year after "I'll Cry Tomorrow" and in which she was horribly miscast, being a notorious example. When given something which really challenged her, however, she could come good. She received a "Best Actress" Oscar nomination for her heartfelt portrayal of the tortured Lillian, but lost out to Anna Magnani in "The Rose Tattoo". (She would eventually win an Oscar for "I Want to Live!" from three years later). Because the film concentrated more on Lillian's singing than her acting, there are several musical numbers, and Hayward did all her own singing, even though she had never sung in a film before and even though it was common practice in the fifties to use professional singers to dub the voices of well-known actors. She copes, however, very well with the demands made upon her, singing in a deep, throaty voice; I never would have thought it possible to invest with such depth and passion a song as cheerfully bland as "When the Red, Red Robin" (which was Lillian Roth's signature tune).

Not all of the cast are as good, although there is a decent contribution from Jo Van Fleet as the domineering Katie and little Carole Ann Campbell is delightful as the young Lillian. (Katie is a stage mother comparable to Rosalind Russell's character in "Gypsy", with the difference that Russell largely played her character for laughs whereas Van Fleet is more serious). The action can at times be too slow, especially in the second half when the film seems to turn into one long extended commercial for Alcoholics Anonymous. Susan Hayward's drive and passion, however, are enough to carry the film with her. 7/10

Still Very Watchable 60 Years Later

[LeonardKniffel · 9/10 · 27 April 2020]

Susan Hayward plays singer and actress Lillian Roth in this biopic, a raw early film depiction of alcoholism, which threatened to destroy Roth's life and career. Hayward won the Best Actress Oscar for "I Want to Live" four years after this film, but her performance here (for which she was nominated) is every bit as compelling. She continues to be under-appreciated even though the intensity of her acting style is astonishing.

Solid Alcoholic Film - I'll Cry Tomorrow

[arthur_tafero · 7/10 · 30 December 2021]

Hollywood has a penchant for making good alcoholic fllms; the granddaddy of which was Lost Weekend with Ray Milland. Days of Wine and Roses would follow this film a few years later and win an Oscar for Jack Lemmon. A case could be made for an Oscar for Hayward in this role as Lillian Roth, but winning an Oscar is not the most important thing; the play's the thing. It is the story that is harrowing as we follow Roth in her own private Hell for years on end. It was amazing she was able to come back from these terrible events. A film not to be missed.

Is She an Alcoholic or Just Auditioning for "The Exorcist?"

[evanston_dad · 5/10 · 3 March 2011]

Susan Hayward gives a performance worthy of a high school drama student in this overwrought biopic about actress/singer Lillian Roth and her struggles with alcoholism.

Hawyard seems to think Acting with a capital "A" means that she, or at least some part of her, must be in motion at all times. Therefore, she's constantly grimacing, rolling her eyes, arching her eyebrows, flinging her arms around, tossing her hair, swaying, stumbling, slurring. She's at her most histrionic and unwatchable when her character is at rock bottom; her portrayal of alcoholism looks more like demonic possession.

It doesn't help that the film around her is pure 50s melodrama, with absolutely no effort to capture the period during which the events depicted occurred. I had to look up Lillian Roth on the Internet to figure out what time period we were supposed to be in -- Hayward never looks like anything other than a 50s housewife.

Though Hayward's performance is damn near unbearable, there are some good performances given by others, and one, that of Jo Van Fleet as Roth's mother, that's almost great. Too bad she seems to be acting in a different movie.

Grade: C