I'LL CRY TOMORROW

US, 1955, 117 minutes, Black and white.
Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Jo Van Fleet, Don Taylor, Ray Danton, Margo, Virginia Gregg.
Directed by Daniel Mann.

I’ll Cry Tomorrow is the autobiography of singer-actress Lillian Roth. She published her autobiography, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, in 1954. By that stage of her life, after a career in the Ziegfeld Follies, in films (including The Love Parade and Marx Bros’ Animal Crackers), she had suffered a breakdown with the death of her fiancé and had become alcoholic. She was the first major star to acknowledge her alcoholism and to join Alcoholics Anonymous, contributing to making Alcoholics Anonymous reputable for people to join and for the public to know.

She met another alcoholic, Burt McGuire? (played here by Eddie Albert) who helped her recuperate and to begin a career as a singer once again.

Susan Hayward portrays Lillian Roth in a tough and powerful performance, Oscar nominated. She won best actress at the Cannes film festival in 1956. Susan Hayward had portrayed many strong women on screen and was to win an Oscar in 1958 for her portrayal of convicted murderess Barbara Graham in I Want to Live.

The film was directed by Daniel Mann who had guided Shirley Booth to an Oscar in Come Back Little Sheba and Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo. He was to direct Elizabeth Taylor in her Oscar-winning role in Butterfield 8.

This is tough film-making from the 1950s, a no-holds-barred portrait of a celebrity who battled alcoholism. It is also positive insofar as Lillian Roth overcame her alcoholism and was able to restart her career. She died, aged sixty-nine of a stroke, in 1980.

1. The main impact of this film? Was it in the ending and the fact that Lilian Roth was explaining her life to the public? The significance of the title and its application to Lillian and her mother?

2. How hard hitting was this film? how successfully? As a product of the drama of the fifties? The black and white photography, the music of the period, the reality of the locations and the personalities?

3. The main impact of Lillian Roth as a person? The qualities of Susan Hayward's portrayal? How sympathetic was she meant to be? How sympathetic was she? Could audiences like her? Share her suffering, the success, her victim of circumstances, her alcoholism? Could audiences understand this kind of personality?

4. How much was Lillian Roth a victim of pressures? Of late? How much freedom did she have in her life to choose for herself? The impact of her mother? the audition, the fight when she was a girl, her mother's ignoring her happiness, her mother's pushing her for her career?

5. How important was stardom for Lillian? like her mother? The confrontation with Katy and the explanation of the truth?

6. The quality of the love of David for Lillian? The impact in her life, her disappointment? The contrast of the theatre scenes and the hospital? Why was she so disappointed in David's death? Disappointment in herself in forgetting him? Her low self-image? The accident of her first touch of alcohol? desperation in giving it to her and the impact on Lillian's life? the voiceover commentary of Lillian about her alcohol limit? What kind of addictive personality did she have? why did she continue on alcohol? Why did she ignore the humiliation and the degradation? The nature of her self-pity? Her initial response to her self-pity? Wally meeting her and the drunkenness? did she marry him? The fact that she could not remember? A year's round of alcoholism and public exhibition? The impact of Wally on her life? The contrast with Tony and his seeming interest in her? The explanation of his self-control? Her infatuation and disappointment? His using of her? Her dependence on him and her disappointment in him? The impact of her ultimate degradation, wandering the streets, the DTs, the attempted suicide, the return to her mother, the going to AA? Where were the main choices In Lillian Roth's life? How much was she a victim of circumstances and of herself?

7. How did the framework of her vivid stardom, life with the songs and the Hollywood background give a framework for the realities? The picture of success and the superficiality? Her need for singing and her comment on her quality of singing?

8. What were Lillian's basic needs as seen in her telling off her mother, the confrontation with Tony and the facing of the facts about David, her reliance on Tony and her disillusionment, her need to live and the fear of killing herself? Her needs as discovered by Bert and at A. A.?

9. How interesting and accurate a picture of alcoholism did the picture give? Especially in the ultimate humiliations and the DTs? And the need for Alcoholics Anonymous?

10. How sympathetic a picture of Alcoholics Anonymous did the film give? The initial going through the door, the apathy of the people who had shared the experience, the ability to talk, the meeting, the ability to speak in public? How important was this part of the film?

11. How happy was the experience regaining self-respect and self-confidence? Her singing for the A.A. people? her mother's participation in this? Her dependence on Bert and the growing love between them? Would this last?

12. How well did the film show the drive towards living and the goals of strength in life? How impressive was this exploration of a suffering person and a victim of modern pressures? Did it give insight into human endeavour?