I'll Cry Tomorrow

I'll Cry Tomorrow_720p(480P)

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ****

I love movies. I love getting caught up in the all the cinematic flows that filmmakers know how to weave. But the things I value and study in film are the things that are cinematic. Some movies aren't movies. They're distributed and displayed as movies but they are simply exercises in another form, usually a play. (Naturally, it works the other way. Most books these days are cinematic.) The most common nonmovie movie is the dramatic play about a soul who loses himself — usually by drugs or alcohol — and then we share in the struggle back. Its a predictable arc, sometimes folded by having the actor play an actor. These things are popular among those who think movies are about storytelling which is all characters supported by acting. We come only to see the acting as if the engine of a car justified the voyage. So there's only one thin dimension on which to enjoy and judge this. I watched it only because it is supposed to be the best performance of the premiere redhead of the middle period — she who we see every time we see the Columbia logo. I didn't think it worth the effort. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

source: I'll Cry Tomorrow