I'LL CRY TOMORROW (1955). Director: Daniel Mann.The more or less true story of singer Lillian Roth (Susan Hayward) and her battle with alcoholism. Although Hayward has a couple of self-conscious moments, basically she gives a very strong performance as this tormented woman who lost the first man (Ray Danton) she loved to illness and an early death, married a heavy-drinking gigolo and party boy (Don Taylor), then -- worst of all-- got hitched to a wife-beating thug played by Richard Conte (pictured). Virginia Gregg and Veda Ann Borg show up in much smaller roles. Carole Ann Campbell is excellent as Roth as a young girl, but the movie is basically stolen by Jo Van Fleet, who is simply superb as Lillian's mother. Hayward sings her own numbers, and isn't bad, although one can't imagine she would have been as successful a singer as she was an actress. Reviews of the film have noted that the atmosphere is more of the fifties when it was made than the period during which most of the story takes place. There is a nice score by Alex North.
Verdict: Watch Susan Suffer! ***.
This is the one I wish she had won the Oscar for! Hayward does her own very throaty singing and has a chance to chew up the scenery. Jo Van Fleet, Eddie Albert, Richard Conte and the rest of the cast are terrific too.
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A bizarre footnote. Lillian Roth wound up playing a pathologist in a small part in the zesty shocker "Alice, Sweet Alice!" She appeared in two more films after that.
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