Lillian Roth was famous by the time she was eighteen, but the time she reached her mid-twenties, her career was over, a victim of alcoholism. You may not have heard of her because her career peaked in the 1930s. "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955) is a biopic of her life starring Susan Hayward who won Best Acting award at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar.
The movie is a melodrama so this is not the acting most of us are familiar with, such as method acting used by Marlon Brando and Mickey Rourke. It is highly emotional and overacted, very similar to a soap opera only taken to the next gut wrenching level of pain (or overacting depending on your view).
Susan Hayward is over the top in her performance as she goes from her mother's kitten to a hardened drunk to a suicidal drunk. No matter how drunk she gets, she is always looking for love and it never works out for her (the real Roth was married 8 times).
The movie is a product of its time, so beware. This means that Hayward’s Roth is written as weak willed, morally clueless, and like all women everywhere, is only happy when marriage and kids are in her future (it’s the death of that dream that apparently sets her to drinking). Critiquing of the script based on our standards isn’t fair, so I won’t, but beware because even though I’ve seen a million (exaggeration for effect!!) old movies, it still annoys me but try to get past that and the black and white film because Susan Hayward could level a city faster than Godzilla with the intensity of her acting. She’s amazing but even better in “I Want to Live!” (1958).
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