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 Lillian Roth is a singer who has a drinking problem. The movie follows her
days as a child actress "manipulated by her scheming stage mother" all the way
to her time on Broadway and her descent into constant drunkeness. The movie
also shows her conquering her problem with the aid of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They note that the real-life Roth changed her singing style to match Hayward's
when she made her comeback once the movie came out. They say this movie is a
"powerful drama for all time". 1955, 120 minutes, VHS
So was this movie supposed to give me a drinking problem or something? It's
about two in the morning and I'm watching Susan Hayward flopping around in
some flop house bed, like one of those ambitious little snakehead fishes trying
to walk between ponds in an effort to take over the state of Maryland (and if
you think they've got them all, you're an all-day sucker). I've
always suspected that this was some of type of environmental terrorism launched
by the red Chinese in an effort to destabilise the government of Maryland, much
as they have done with the West Nile Virus (memo to Chairman Mao: Maryland's
yours buddy, have at it - just make sure you "re-educate" Orioles owner Peter
Angelos please). Anyway as I watched Ms. Hayward's seizure that practically
screamed "I liked to thank the Academy and also Lillian Roth for having such a
crappy life..." I was thinking about how interesting this would all be if I was
completely wasted. If I was rolling around on the floor, lightheaded with
cheap hooch, surrounded by crumpled up cans that proved how wasted I really
was, this movie would be so much more than the two hours of uninteresting
benders that Hayward's Roth screeched, shook, and cried her way through. I
knew we were in for one of those self-important "my life is such garbage, but
you can admire me for making it through it" type stuff that is always the
antithesis of entertainment when the movie started off with a quote from
Lillian Roth herself. I don't recall exactly what it said but the message was
that her whole life had been planned out for her and that somehow this was a
bad thing that caused her take up with abusive men, crawl into the bottle, and
fight with her mother. Lily, Lily, Lily. Don't blame the fact that your life
has been planned out for you. That's not something to rail against, it makes
living in this world of fecal bacteria easier to tolerate. You just need
someone other than your self-centered stage mommy planning it out for you.
Also, in the future, filmmakers would be better off beginning a movie with a
quote I could actually remember. In a flick like this, something like "tastes
great, less filling" or "why ask why". I was also disappointed that of the
several show-halting numbers Susan foisted on us, the Hamms Beer song was not
among them.  Well, after this quote shows up (I would have felt more confident if it had
been in haiku form or something) the movie gets on with telling the story of
Lillian Roth. In a nutshell, she was a singer and/or actress that no one has
ever heard of, but who is famous for being an alcoholic played by Susan
Hayward. I'm not sure if that was exactly the career trajectory that her
overbearing mother Katie foresaw when she warped her daughter's childhood in an
effort to make her brat a star. As I watched the opening scenes where Katie
gets pissed after Jon-Benet, I mean Lillian, fails to win another audition, she
pretty much body slams her kid to the sidewalk in the middle of New York City,
I was thinking that I'll bet the real life Katie wasn't at the premiere of this
film. Lucky her. Somehow, Lilly starts to become a big star though I was
never quite sure what it was she did. She seemed to be filming a musical
number for a movie at first, but then her career seemed to consist of going on
tour and singing in various cities. This doesn't sound like the career of a
gigantic star, but of someone more along the lines of Kathie Lee Gifford
without the clothing line made by slave labor or the embarrassing indifference
the audience had when she finally quit her show and was relegated to making CDs
no one wanted. Once she's finally about to "break" as we showbiz types put it,
who should appear, but her old pal from the old neighborhood, David. He's now
a hotshot lawyer with a big brain tumor or something. I don't believe we were
ever told what it was (maybe Lillian was told, but it was probably during a
blackout), but when we see him, he grabs his head in pain once and ends up in
the hospital. Now, in between bouts of brain tumors, David and Lillian
rekindle their romance and become an item. It isn't long before David is dying
in the hospital and Lillian is off somewhere performing instead of being with
her man (Dammit Jim! She's a singer, not a brain surgeon!). When he croaks
before intermission, Lily gets there to find only the cheap little stuffed
monkey she gave him to hold while the reaper tapped him on the shoulder, so
that at least he wouldn't croak alone. Why don't you just go ahead and start
lining them up barkeep!  As you probably already know, I'm not the sort of person who is going to pass
judgment on someone or criticize their shortcomings. Lord knows there were
plenty of important family events I missed because I had other commitments (back
in 1982 I went to a showing of Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone instead of my uncle's wedding. First of all the movie was being shown in 3-D,
so how
was I going to pass that up, and secondly, it wasn't like this was my uncle's
first marriage or anything. Most importantly though was that it wasn't like
the movie was any good and in fact it gave me a pretty bad headache.), but I've
always been around for funerals and death-related stuff like that. I was also
at
the wedding of another uncle once and my grandmother's fat ass split her skirt
which had an effect on my vision similar to that of a brain tumor. What I'm
trying to get at with this stumble down memory lane is that I think I've walked
a mile in this Lillian Roth's shoes and in fact, obviously had it much worse
than she did (not that I'm the type to go on and on and whine about it or
anything), so this is one of those times where I feel qualified, nay
compelled, to offer up my take on Lillian's predicament: drink up sister!
You're no good and people only like you for the money you give them! I
especially liked the scene where Lillian is waiting for some guy to show up at
her apartment for lunch and she's all shaky from not drinking in the last half
hour and her mother shows up and is really there just to pick up her monthly
check, though periodically she says that she's worried about Lillian's drinking
or that she's been meaning to talk to her about it, but the bank closes at
three in the afternoon so you know how that goes. Even though we didn't spend
much time on this whole David and Lillian romance or his illness and death
(that would take screen time away from Hayward's performance as a drunk), it's
portrayed as the sole reason that she started drinking. You know, first a few
nips to help her sleep, then some to help her feel up and some to help her feel
down and the next thing you know she's married to some soldier she doesn't love
and can't remember the wedding (Sure you do, my grandma's ass was hanging out
all over the buffet!).  Lillian gets divorced from her first husband (the Internet Movie Database lists
eight different husbands for the real Lillian Roth, though none of them have
the same names as the two husbands she has in this movie.) because all they had
in common was drinking and she eventually takes up with a guy who is also a
drinker. But he plays a little rougher than the first guy, though all we see
is some pushing and shoving and him being mean to her, so it's just left to our
imagination as to exactly what the extent of his abuse was (shoot, I wouldn't
want to try and keep a wasted Lillian Roth under control). The new hubby gets
in some action that will have you laughing when Lillian tries to throw out some
of his booze and he splashes it in her face saying something about how she
should
smell it and realize how expensive it is. That's how they do wine tastings,
right? Finally, she leaves him and goes back home to her mother and that
doesn't really work out, but this is where some of those histrionic moments
that you knew this movie had in it occur. These two harpies screech at one
another about how awful they have it and I was reminded of my own childhood
when my mother
would yell at my father about something or other and he would sit there,
pointing the remote at her pushing the "mute" button repeatedly. I believe
that this is what all these relationship experts call "fighting fair".
Eventually, that scene gets played out for Lillian and she leaves to get a room
at a flop house and gets a running start toward the open window. You know, in
spite of the fact that I know that Lillian conquered her addiction, I was still
stupidly hoping that she would take the swan dive and give this movie the heft
it was missing, despite the leather-lunged efforts of Susan Hayward to show us
how awful it is to be an alcoholic (Really? I thought it was glamorous. You
know like hanging with the Rat Pack or something.). She passes out and falls
back into the room instead of to the street below (Stupid booze!) and when she
wakes up, it's off to AA. If you insist on watching this movie because you've been brainwashed into
believing that actors and actresses over-emoting and portraying characters with
various handicaps are somehow giving us great performances, instead of the
ego-gratifying showy melodrama that all these un-nuanced roles truly are, go
ahead and turn the movie off, because Susan is finished with her over-the-top
drunk performance. Now, she turns it down several notches as she falls in love
with her AA sponsor Eddie Albert. And the only thing less interesting than
seeing Susan beg for an Oscar (She was denied this time! But the movie did win
for best black and white costume design.) with her "sick" character, it's an
ever bigger tedium to sit through her getting sober and falling in love with
the kindly and polio stricken ex-boozehound Burt. That and having to watch
these AA cult meetings where everyone brags about being an alcoholic or
something and they all say "hi" in unison whenever someone gets up to bore the
group with some story about how they drank rubbing alcohol or sold the family's
station wagon to buy some Thunderbird (Where's the stories about the casual and
anonymous sex?) like they're sitting in Miss Lander's class with the Beaver or
something. Is it really healthy for all those lushes to be hanging around in
the same room reminiscing wistfully about how much they used to drink all the
time? These AA meetings need to be a whole lot more anonymous if you ask me.
You do get one moderate-sized laugh if you stick it out for the whole two hours
when Lillian goes on This Is Your Life to tell her story (I'll bet that was
shorter than this movie) and the host introduces her by saying that it is a
story of "shame and degradation". Finally, someone willing to say what all us
non-drunks are thinking! This is certainly one you're not going to want to
seek out, even for its kitsch factor (not nearly enough funny moments - drunks
aren't funny - they're tiresome). I guess some of you would probably be
impressed by Susan's obvious Oscar-grab here, what with all the high-pitched
emotionalism and wild-eyed looks she gives in an admittedly hard-working effort
to be a serious actress. Her problem is that Lillian Roth's life (at least as
presented in this movie) is really pretty darn dull. She sings every so often
and she gets wasted the rest of the time, then she sobers up after a weekend of
the shakes, before hitting on that guy from Green Acres. Maybe this was a big deal in 1955, but today we expect our celebrities to
routinely get busted at airports with marijuana and periodically check into
rehab for "exhaustion". I worry about those who have never been in treatment
(they're obviously still in denial) or on Barbara Wawa tearfully telling us
about their personal battles as well as showing us a clip from their new summer
film. It's all become such a routine part of someone's career that I can't
imagine any movie being made about any of our modern celebrities' battles with
addiction (their
real addiction is to media attention). Maybe it would work as part of a bigger
life story, but Lillian Roth's life as presented here was nothing more than her
addiction. Besides, I still have no idea who Lillian Roth was so that I should
care whether she ever dried up or not. It would be nice if she didn't cry and
whine so much. Weren't you supposed to cry tomorrow?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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