Lillian Roth

(On Cable TV, April 2021) As far as musical biopics go, I’ll Cry Tomorrow is a blend of showbiz drama and addiction memoir, with our protagonist (Singer Lillian Roth, played by Susan Hayward, in a script based on Roth’s own memoirs) first suffering as a child prodigy controlled by her mom, then suffering as her fiancé dies, then suffering as a married woman whose sole shared interest with her husband is alcoholism, then suffering again as she tries to kick all of the bad habits in her life. In other words, this is not a pleasant film — for each mildly entertaining musical number, there’s one ugly scene after another. Unusually enough for the 1950s, alcoholism is portrayed from the inside as a destructive but appealing force, and the film ends up being one of the first depictions of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ll Cry Tomorrow plays according very familiar lines for modern viewers, but the vintage aspect of it can be interesting. Of course, the film’s best asset has to be Hayward, holding nothing back in a tough depiction of someone familiar to audiences at the time. It’s not necessarily a bad watch even at its most conventional.