I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Lillian Roth has it all: youth, beauty, movie and Broadway fame, and a devoted fiancé. Then her fiancé dies, and Lillian takes one drink to ease her grief. Then another. Then ten. Then thousands. And soon her youth, her career and her life are drowning in an ocean of booze. Susan Hayward earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination and a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her searing portrayal of the real-life performer. Hayward’s achievements don’t stop there. She provides her own vocals for “Sing You Sinners”, “Happiness is a Thing Called Joe” and more standards.
- Actors:
- Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Jo Van Fleet, Don Taylor, Ray Danton, Margo, Virginia Gregg, Don 'Red' Barry, David Kasday, Carole Ann Campbell, Peter Leeds, Tol Avery
- Directors:
- Daniel Mann
- Writers:
- Helen Deutsch, Jay Richard Kennedy
- Others:
- Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm Brown, Helen Rose, Edwin B. Willis, Arthur E. Arling, Hugh B. Hunt
- Studio:
- Warn
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Music & Musicals
- Collections:
- Acting Up: Top 10 Performances At Cannes
- Awards:
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Reviews (1) of I'll Cry Tomorrow
Hayward Vehicle. - I'll Cry Tomorrow review by Steve
This musical biopic cleaned up from Lillian Roth's bestselling memoir is transformed from standard fifties nostalgia for the musical theatre of the 1920-30s into a vehicle for Susan Hayward's huge, dynamic performance. It tells of Lillian's upbringing by her stage-door mother and her eventual alcoholism and hard-won recovery.
There's a great big band sound from Alex North which adds a flavour of vaudeville era Broadway, back when Lillian's mother (Jo Van Fleet) pushed her child to auditions, teaching her to fake her true feelings and desires. When stardom arrives, Roth fills her emotional emptiness with the booze that drives her from pawnshop to fleapit to dives.
Susan Hayward got to sing her own numbers, but the film doesn't really feel like a musical at all. It's all about Lillian's self destructive impulses, whether for the bottle, or men, or business choices. Alcohol completes her, and then destroys her.
Daniel Mann creates a rich and credible ambience of backstage rootlessness and after show parties. He has a reputation as a good director of actors and credit to him for allowing Hayward to dominate to such fabulous effect. She is a sensation in one of the best performances of the decade.