Susan Hayward in "I'll Cry Tomorrow"
Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 10:30PM SUSAN HAYWARD CENTENNIAL WEEK
"this story was filmed on location... inside a woman's soul!"
-I'll Cry Tomorrow's tagline.
by Eric Blume
I’ll Cry Tomorrow, a biopic of singer Lillian Roth, won Susan Hayward the fourth of her five Oscar nominations, in 1955. The film starts with a young Lillian and her stage mother, played by Jo Van Fleet. Ten minutes in, though, Hayward gets a true star entrance belting out “Sing You Sinners” in a lengthy number with only four cuts.
It’s a fun introduction, partially because you try to place yourself in 1955, when part of the excitement (one guesses) was hearing Hayward sing for the first time, and it’s quite a boisterous number. Then Hayward was known mostly as a tragedienne (Hollywood star variety), it must have been a blast for audiences to see Hayward let loose (Hollywood star style) in a big production number where she gets to snarl and dance (Hollywood star style, as the musicality doesn’t come easily to her)...