STACK #160 Feb 2018

EXTRAS

FEATURE

Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham enters the gas chamber. The harrowing execution scene from I Want to Live

Poster for I’ll Cry Tomorrow, which garnered Susan Hayward her fourth Oscar nomination

magazines were bombarded with hundreds of letters from Hayward’s fans complaining that she was robbed of an Oscar for her outstanding performance as Lillian Roth. The following month she was invited to the Cannes Film Festival where  I’ll Cry Tomorrow was to be presented. It turned out to be a triumph for her as she was named Best Actress in the World. When she cabled Hollywood with the news, she signed it Susan Magnani. Fortunately, her second marriage proved more successful than her first. Hayward was now so happy with her private life that she semi-retired and decided to wait for the right movie roles to come along. She turned down countless offers including  The Three Faces of

At last, a Best Actress Oscar for Susan – pictured

below with fellow actor

winners Burl Ives and David Niven at the Academy Awards in April 1959

Eve  (1957), which made a star and Oscar winner of Joanne Woodward. Susan shrugged it off by stating, “The Academy would never have awarded me an Oscar anyway”. But in 1958 that all changed when her old friend and mentor, film producer Walter Wanger, offered her the starring role in  I Want to Live . The film told the story of Barbara Graham, who was one of the few women to be condemned to

Susan Hayward’s final Hollywood movie The Revengers, with William Holden

Actress Academy Award. At the ceremony, after receiving her statuette from James Cagney and Kim Novak, she politely thanked the Academy. When she returned to her seat, she said to her husband, “Finally dear, I’ve climbed to the top of their dung heap.” Robert Wise, the director of  I Want to Live , perfectly described why Hayward was a great movie star when he praised her with the following statement: “Susan Hayward is to the movies what Sarah Bernhardt was to the stage. She has a chemical combination that can excite

and hold audiences as surely as Garbo and few other greats of the screen. She is one of the few actresses who can hold up a movie all by herself.” Hayward starred in a further eight films from 1958-1967. After a five-year hiatus she appeared in her last Hollywood movie, playing a minor role in the western  The Revengers  (1972). That same year she was diagnosed with multiple brain tumours that proved inoperable (the curse of  The Conqueror ? No one knows). Many media reports over the following three years often had her close to death but she bravely fought the disease until finally succumbing to it in March 1975. An exceptionally fine actress and a real gutsy lady all the way through to the end.

the gas chamber in California, and for a crime she may not have committed. Her role as the doomed Graham brought Hayward acclaim and recognition around the world, even from her most stubborn detractors. Her death scene in the film is shockingly realistic. When the prison matron suggests she take a deep breath of the cyanide gas to hasten her death, Hayward calmly delivers the memorable line, “How would  you know?”. Her performance won her a fifth Oscar nomination and finally the Best

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