Une femme en enfer

This film was the 4th nominated performance for Susan Hayward portraying the true life story of Lillian Ross. Ms. Hayward a 20th star was on loan out to MGM to play this role a role coveted by many including Jane Wyman. This is the first of 3 films Susan Hayward starred in directed by Daniel Mann whom Susan Hayward proclaimed her favorite director.

Jo Van Fleet, Ray Danton, Richard Conte et al fill out a superb cast but it is Ms. Hayward's commanding performance that grabs the viewer and doesn't let go. Hayward was a favorite to win the Oscar but lost to another Daniel Mann directed star Anna Magnani in Paramount's The Rose Tattoo.(Mann had quite a record directing strong actresses Shirley Booth in Paramount's Come Back Little Sheba and Elizabeth Taylor in MGM's Butterfield 8 won Oscars directed by Daniel Mann.Mann directed Paul Muni in the superb Columbia film The Last Angry Man, and of course directed Hayward in I'll Cry Tomorrow. 5 Nominated Performances 3 of which won Oscars! Quite a track record

Ms. Hayward deemed this film her favorite of the many fine films she starred in, and Mr. Mann her favorite Director.

MGM director Charles Walters was originally assigned to I'll Cry Tomorrow; and wanted to cast June Allyson (who was not unlike the young Lillian Roth, in some respects). Walters wanted to start with Roth as an innocent girl, slowly chipping away at the surface, until the innocence was eaten away by fear. He knew June was tougher than people realized, and was certain she would excel. They had been working on the role, when Susan Hayward decided she wanted it. Taking her case to Roth herself, she eventually prevailed, causing Walters to quit, noting that Hayward had already played an alcoholic, in Smash Up (1947), and a famous singer who faced tragedy, in With A Song In My Heart (1952). By the way, if you sometimes get all three of these pictures mixed up, join the club.

At any rate, there are people who think Hayward was brilliant in this film, and those who feel she overdid it. Not over-acting, but perhaps, over-feeling. I fall into the latter category. She starts in a rather high gear, and just goes higher. While she's commendably emotional, and touching, I think we lose track of the story and the character, due to the focus on unbridled histrionics. Eventually, she just seems to be devouring everything in her path - including the movie. If this fascinates you, well, it fascinated me, too, but is it a performance?

Jo Van Fleet (in the role Walters wanted Mary Astor for) doesn't exactly back away from the big gesture, herself. A good actress with a nice understanding of the material, she nonetheless pulls out the stops, giving us the long-suffering mama complete with European accent (Roth found this surprising, noting that her mother only had a Boston accent). Much younger than her part, she does a good job - but the histrionics may wear you out. Especially when she and Hayward go at it hammer and tong.

As for the singing of Susan Hayward, you probably won't be asking yourself what took her so long to decide to sing in motion pictures. She does reasonably well, but it's not the voice or style of a successful professional singer.

Towards the end, we have Eddie Albert and his real-life wife, Margo (whom you may remember had a problem when she tried to leave Shangri-La, in Lost Horizon, back in 1937). They help Susan - I mean, Lillian - get back on her feet, with the assistance of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're still around (and why not? It's a fairly gripping picture, overall) you may be touched, and a little relieved, that the shouting, and maybe even the singing, is over for a while.

As a history teachers and film nut, the first thing I noticed about this movie was its very anachronistic sets, costumes and hairstyles. Now I am not saying it's a bad film, but it was very sloppy in portraying the life story of Lillian Roth. The film is supposed to stretch from about 1916 to 1955--but ALL of it looks like 1955. While this is occasionally a problem in films, I can't recall seeing one worse when it comes to replicating the era in which it was supposedly set. This is odd when you think about it, as this was a prestige film--with an expensive cast. So, you'd think they would have tried harder to get the look of the film right.

When the film begins, it's about 1916 and young Lillian is out on her first tryouts with her mother in tow. Suddenly, the film jumps some time in the future--when Lillian is an established star and life is pretty good (this would be about 1930). It's odd because not once were you told WHEN this film was occurring and it was odd that it just jumped ahead so quickly. It also skipped much of Lillian's life even when she was successful--and there was no mention of her film career or stage successes. Again, a bit sloppy.

What WAS done well was portraying the downward spiral of Miss Roth--especially the effects of alcohol on her functioning. In many ways, this aspect of the film and Susan Hayward's acting were the highlights of the movie. Her life as a drunk was every bit as vivid as Ray Milland's in "The Lost Weekend"...no, perhaps more so. While I am not a huge Susan Hayward fan, in this sort of loud and intense performance, she was at her best. Subtle was not her forte--and here she is well matched to her skills as an actress.

Now you need to see this bio-pic not as a literal version of the life of Lillian Roth. It's more like the paraphrased and altered life. While she was married many times, most of these marriages aren't mentioned and the men who she did marry in the movie were NOT the men she actually married--the names were different and I have no way of knowing if they were like the men in real life. So, for its quality as the actual life story of Roth, I'd give this one a 2 or maybe a 3. But, for its portrayal of alcoholism and its effects on her as well as its entertainment value, it deserves a 10! Its portrayal of her life change through AA is quite inspiring but not quite as good--simply because it implies that there is a 'finish' to sobriety (such as her sponsor telling her she no longer needs a sponsor and that she's 'graduating' from AA--two things that are NEVER true). This is very strange, I know, but the film is so good and so bad at the same time--it's a real mixed bag. Overall, I'd say the film is a solid 7 and is well worth seeing.

By the way, when Hayward first sings "Red, Red Robin" on stage, look carefully when it shows her and the audience. If you look really carefully, you can see that the audience was NOT originally in the scene but it was added afterwords--just look for the jittery border that separates the two. It's probably only noticeable on a very large TV and you have to be looking for it.

I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)

Well, never mind the famous Alcoholics Anonymous ending, Susan Hayward is just fabulous through and through. This is a drama based on real life singer Lillian Roth, and Hayward (who does her own singing) pulls off both the successful early years and the decline into drinking. It's lively and vivid and tragic.

Richard Conte is second billing, and a big name at this point in his career, but he's got a small, if important, role, perfectly suited to him. I just happened to see Conte and Hayward yesterday in a movie together, "House of Strangers" (from six years earlier). The relationship of their characters is more compact and complicated here, but in both cases Conte plays a cool type, smart and in control. But Conte here has two sides, is wonderfully manipulative, and ends up having his own demons that come from drinking too much.

Hayward often plays strong characters, and emotional ones, and yet her approach is grounded with an inner calm. I'm not sure why she wasn't a legendary star the way Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and Joan Crawford were, because she acts her heart out and has good, rich roles. It's no surprise she got an Oscar nomination for this performance, just as she did for an earlier amazing performance as an alcoholic, the terrific 1949 "My Foolish Heart" across from Dana Andrews, who is a more compelling actor overall than Conte. Hayward did finally win that big Best Actress award for her gutsy performance in "I Want to Live" (where director Robert Wise made everything look good as well as come alive).

Jo Van Vleet, who play's Lillian Roth's mother, is scary perfect as a controlling mother with seemingly good intentions. There's no shortage of movies about mothers who mess up their daughters by trying too hard ("Mommy Dearest" is the most famous, but it gets even more sordid in "Where Love Has Gone" with Hayward playing the mother).

There is a terrible colorized version of "I'll Cry Tomorrow" out there which is best to avoid--it's a simple color palette applied across the board, and everyone comes off uniform and pasty. It matters less what color her hair is when it's simply colorless. That colorized version is also cropped (pan and scan) to fit the 4:3 format of television, and the original is shot with some helpful moderately wide widescreen expansiveness, so the edges of faces don't get chopped. Arthur Arling's cinematography is very good in the way that all movies were at this point, but it isn't remarkable on its own terms. The soundtrack, by the way, is interesting to many because it has Hayward singing rather rich versions of some standards of Roth's.

I have no doubt that this was both Susan Hayward's and Jo Van Fleet's finest performances. The two actresses show a profound understanding of the limits of a mother-daughter relationship, as well as a deep, gut-wrenching well of female emotion that, well, is hardly seen on screen. When Lillian runs into the hospital to find an empty bed where David was, and realizing that he is dead, collapses in tears: not overplayed, not hysterical, but as real a scene only a seasoned, highly professional actress could play.

The story is interesting, if not with a little over-indulgence, but it is, after all, a biography. I would pay any price to see Ms. Hayward play this role, with her tragically expressive eyes, her ethereal yet next-door qualities. She deserved an Oscar for this role.