I'll Cry Tomorrow

Back in the early fifties celebrities did not tell much that was real about themselves in books or magazine articles. Everyone mostly told how wonderful, beautiful, talented and gifted they were. Flaws were not written about. Anything that their publicists and studio didn't want known about them was brushed under the rug. So when Lillian Roth wrote a tell all, flaws and all, it became a runaway bestseller. I recall reading the book shortly after it was published in 1954 and like so many people I found it was riveting, most revealing and seemed so very honest. Much of it, at that time, seemed shocking. Here was a lovely and very talented woman who made it to the top in New York and Hollywood. She had it all and lost it all! Lillian Roth wrote in vivid detail about the spiraling effect that alcohol had on her career and on her life. It seems so honest and poignant. She speaks of the horrors of many of her relationships and marriages. She writes of how several husbands used her and abused her and took her for as much as they could.