I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)

Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Katie, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her marriage to her childhood ... See full summary »

Director:

Daniel Mann

Writers:

Helen Deutsch (screenplay), Jay Richard Kennedy (screenplay),

Stars:

Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert

Won 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 5 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Susan Hayward	...	Lillian Roth
Richard Conte	...	Tony Bardeman
Eddie Albert	...	Burt McGuire
Jo Van Fleet	...	Katie Roth
Don Taylor	...	Wallie
Ray Danton	...	David Tredman
Margo	...	Selma
Virginia Gregg	...	Ellen
Don 'Red' Barry	...	Jerry (as Don Barry)
David Kasday	...	David as a Child
Carole Ann Campbell	...	Lillian as a Child
Peter Leeds	...	Richard
Tol Avery	...	Fat Man

Storyline

Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Katie, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, David Tredman, he dies and Lillian takes her first drink of many down the road of becoming an alcoholic. She enters into a short-lived marriage to an immature aviation cadet, Wallie, followed by a divorce and then marriage to a sadistic brute and abuser Tony Bardeman. After a failed suicide attempt, Burt McGuire comes to her aid and helps her find the road back to happiness after sixteen years in a nightmare world, not counting the first twenty with her mother.

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Plot Keywords:

marriage | alcoholic | divorce | drink | breadwinner | 

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Taglines:

Filmed on location; inside a woman's soul.

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Genres:

Biography | Drama | Music

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 December 1955 (USA)

Also Known As:

Und morgen werd' ich weinen

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In her second autobiography published in 1958, "Beyond My Worth," Lillian Roth noted that although her mother Katie spoke with a Boston accent, Jo Van Fleet portrayed Katie as sounding ethnically Eastern European Jewish.

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Goofs

When Susan is giving her "I'm a drunk" speech in the bar (at around 1h 16 mins) the woman she has accosted suddenly turns into a man in a dark suit.

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Quotes

Lillian Roth: What I'm doing now is 'wrong'... and I'm *doing* it!

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Connections

Featured in MGM Parade: Episode #1.11 (1955)

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Soundtracks

"The Vagabond King Waltz"
Music by Rudolf Friml (uncredited)
Lyrics by Brian Hooker (uncredited)
Performed briefly in a medley montage by Susan Hayward (vocal) and Eddie Albert (piano)

User Reviews

Fascinating but overwrought performances...

SUSAN HAYWARD has some strong, searing scenes full of fireworks in I'LL CRY TOMORROW--as does JO VAN FLEET as her overbearing stage mother--but there are times when you just wish Daniel Mann would keep the theatrical melodramatics a bit more under his control.

The story of a confessed alcoholic singer is an unpleasant one and this is all the more reason why a little soft pedaling now and then would have helped. As it is, Mann has chosen to pull out all the stops and give us a saga of grim and unrelieved suffering for too lengthy a time.

All of the performances are respectable enough--including EDDIE ALBERT and MARGO as a couple who try to help the alcohol addicted Roth back on her feet again after an attempt at suicide forces her to go to the AA clinic. And Hayward does well by the songs that Roth supposedly performed in nightclubs, using her own voice and gestures she undoubtedly picked up from Jane Froman, whose biography she also did on screen a bit earlier.

A toning down of the shrill melodramatics would have helped--but, nevertheless, this is a frank and disturbing portrait of a woman on the skids and Miss Hayward does her best to give a convincing portrait.