If all you knew about Lillian Roth was this movie, you'd know almost nothing except that she was a woman who suffered and drank a lot--pretty much the story of a lot of alcoholics. Susan Hayward does sing three songs, though her singing is more histrionic than talented. But the Lillian Roth who was a leading performer in the 1920s and 1930s never really appears. For that matter, this 1955 movie provides almost no sense at all that the action is taking place during that period.
Even a glance at the Wikipedia entry on Lillian Roth shows that her life was a lot more complicated, interesting, colorful, and filled with trouble than than this movie hints at. Leonard Maltin says the film is "everything a movie biography should be." That may be, if you take the film on its own terms and forget that it is based on a real life.
In this movie, Lillian's life is a series of suffering. She has an overbearing mother determined to live through her daughter's career. A young man she has loved from boyhood and who wants to marry her dies tragically. She meets a charming man who turns out to be a sadist. No wonder she drinks. It's all that simple.
The resolution of the movie involves her joining AA and then appearing on "This Is Your Life."
Really, this is a depressing movie. We are told that Lillian Roth is, or was, a show business celebrity, but in the film she could be any alcoholic--an ordinary person. And while the 1950s gave us many "kitchen sink" dramas about the troubles of ordinary people, the best of these dramas illuminated the lives of their characters and made us see them in universal terms. No such luck for viewers of "I'll Cry Tomorrow."
Even a glance at the Wikipedia entry on Lillian Roth shows that her life was a lot more complicated, interesting, colorful, and filled with trouble than than this movie hints at. Leonard Maltin says the film is "everything a movie biography should be." That may be, if you take the film on its own terms and forget that it is based on a real life.
In this movie, Lillian's life is a series of suffering. She has an overbearing mother determined to live through her daughter's career. A young man she has loved from boyhood and who wants to marry her dies tragically. She meets a charming man who turns out to be a sadist. No wonder she drinks. It's all that simple.
The resolution of the movie involves her joining AA and then appearing on "This Is Your Life."
Really, this is a depressing movie. We are told that Lillian Roth is, or was, a show business celebrity, but in the film she could be any alcoholic--an ordinary person. And while the 1950s gave us many "kitchen sink" dramas about the troubles of ordinary people, the best of these dramas illuminated the lives of their characters and made us see them in universal terms. No such luck for viewers of "I'll Cry Tomorrow."