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Susan Sings: I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956)
Review Copyright Roger Zotti, 2001
Based on Lillian Roth's autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow is the story of a talented entertainer driven by her ambitious mother (Jo Van Fleet). Roth (Susan Hayward) achieves stardom as a singer, but following the death of the first man she loved (Ray Danton), she begins drinking. After several unsuccessful relationships, Roth makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt. When she reaches rock bottom, she joins Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Roth role was a perfect fit for Hayward. During the nineteen fifties she portrayed women who suffer with more sincerity and believability than any actress - airplane crash survivor Jane Froman in Walter Lang's With a Song in My Heart (1952); the alcoholic Roth in Daniel Mann's I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956), for which was nominated for Best Actress; and a woman condemned to death row in Robert Wise's Want to Live (1958), a performance that earned her the Oscar for Best Actress.
When MGM musical supervisor Johnny Green told Hayward her voice was good enough to sing the Roth songs herself, Hayward was skeptical and spent several weeks rehearsing before she realized she could sing. So, it's not Roth's voice but Hayward's the audience hears.
Hayward's biographer Beverly Linet, in Portrait of a Survivor, quotes Hayward as saying, "It was a big surprise gift, a new career to be explored."
Shocked to learn that she wouldn't be doing her own singing, Roth also found out that Hayward "was a very forceful person. ... she never allowed me to get to know her. But she wanted to know everything about me. Everything!" It got to the point where Roth "didn't know if I was me or Susie was me, and vice versa."
Though Roth was critical of the studio "because they were so nervous about the subject of alcoholism! And they were afraid to touch the subject of the nut house I was in," she praised Hayward's performance as "Real wonderful!"
According to Linet, a reporter told Hayward it took guts to play Roth. Hayward remarked, "It took guts to live it."
Cast
Susan Hayward, Jo Van Fleet, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Don Taylor, Ray Danton, Virginia Greg, Don Barry. D: Daniel Mann
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