User reviews

Tomorrow Is Another Day is NOT the sequel to Gone with the Wind but a lovers-on-the-lam story, and a surprisingly alert and moving one as well. For a supposed hack relegated to B-minus features like The Devil Thumbs A Ride, Felix Feist proves adept at filling his work with unexpected, inventive details. Steve Cochran leaves prison after 18 years for killing his brutal father when he was only 13, and now he's still a tentative, gawky pubescent operating inside a man's hulky frame. Lonesome, he visits a 10-cents-a-dance palace and falls for brassy, grasping Ruth Roman. But the sudden shooting of her police-bigwig boyfriend causes the ill-matched couple to hit the road, ending, like the Joads, in a California migrant-worker camp.

Roman's the revelation; in her best-known role, as Farley Granger's fiancee in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, she was ill- and under-used. Here she modulates persuasively from bottle-blonde taxi dancer to sacrificing wife and mother-to-be (and a brunette, to boot). Cochran's almost as good, waffling between the suspicion of a wounded child and the explosive reactions of an under-socialized male. And the ending, while unconvincing, is nonetheless welcome. Along with They Live By Night and Gun Crazy, Tomorrow Is Another Day displays a redeeming sweetness and warmth that belie its film-noir pedigree.

"Tomorrow is Another Day" is a B movie; those often looked down upon stepchildren of the Hollywood system peopled with so called second stringers. When a B movie is as good as "Tomorrow is Another Day", one realizes just what an amazing factory Hollywood was in its heyday. Helmed by the not too well known director Felix E. Feist it stars Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran in the leads. They were both dependable performers with a fairly strong screen presence, but here they both turn in compelling performances and indeed carry the film wonderfully. These characters have come from tough backgrounds and as the film progresses we sense them softening as their relationship develops. The transition is subtle and well handled. While the story itself may have its pitfalls, the dialogue is crisp and credible with some of those wonderful noir one liners one comes to expect from such fare. What elevates "Tomorrow is Another Day" so far above its peers is the wonderful work of cameraman Robert Burks. No wonder Burks was often chosen by Hitchcock for his masterly work, ("The Birds" and others.) Despite the modest proportions of this B movie, Burk takes great pains with each shot; selecting interesting and effective angles. It's his work that puts the stamp of class on this movie. While certainly not a classic, the poorly titled "Tomorrow is Another Day" offers a very satisfying movie watching experience.

"Tomorrow Is Another Day" is an example of why I love TCM.

Included as part of the station's "Summer of Darkness" series, highlighting my favorite genre, film noir, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" aired at 10:45 pm. I had no intention of watching it, since I was tired and I'd already sat through two other movies in the series that evening: "The Gangster" and one of my all time faves, "Gun Crazy." But then the host started talking about how "Tomorrow..." is a "dark gem" in the noir canon and how it's relatively unknown, and I started to think about when I would ever have the chance to see it again and decided I had to sit down and watch the damn thing.

And man was I glad I did. A gem indeed, "Tomorrow..." stars Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman as a recently released con and a dance hall hostess, respectively, who move away from the city and set up house, only to find that his criminal past will not be left behind so easily. There's a whole sub genre of noir that involves flights from big cities into the open spaces of America and how those open spaces are no longer safe; the decay of urban environments will follow relentlessly, and the open spaces are even more dangerous because there are fewer places to hide. Cochran and Roman have incredible chemistry together, and the movie really makes you root for both of them, even though he comes across as perhaps a tad off his rocker.

In case I've oversold it, don't think this film is going to change your life. There's nothing groundbreaking to be found here. But it is a fresh surprise in a genre that's full of fresh surprises.

Felix Feist (who?) provides the playful direction.

Grade: A

An ex-con and a dance hall girl flee the cops and a wrongful murder charge.

Catch that early scene in the tacky dance hall— it's a gem. I've seen a lot of cheap dives in movies, but none I think combines atmosphere and annoyance better than this one. Between the hard dames and the 1-minute buzzer, the guys better hold onto their wallets. Then too, the Warner Bros. production manages uncommon attention to detail. Note how taxi-dancer Cay (Roman) ends the dance hall scene by soliciting another customer. That way we know she's a real hard case no matter what she's said to poor Clark (Cochran).

These touches continue throughout, as with the back-and-forth wristwatch mirroring Cay's and Clark's relationship, or the heart-stopping dropped keys that unlock the carry-all car. All in all, these are the kind of deft touches that turn a good film into a memorable one.

However, despite the excellence of this noirish first half, I have to agree with reviewer Teller. The second half unfortunately collapses into unremarkable melodrama. Frankly, Cay's big turnaround from loose woman to wifely Madonna is simply too complete to be believable. That transformation is signaled in her change of hair color. There, Cay washes out the dance hall blonde for the darker natural color underneath, thereby releasing the real person redeemed now by true love. However, the problem remains-- the personality contrast between the "hard-case before" and the "all-sweetness after" is simply too strong and abrupt not to draw critical attention, regardless of how worthwhile the message.

That's not to say the second part is wasted. Those clapboard shacks for the transient pickers are right out of Grapes of Wrath and just as realistic. Plus, Clark's personality remains volatile and believable, though undergoing the inevitable softening. I just wish the film had modulated Kay's change in a similarly subtle manner. Then we might have had a memorable whole instead of a memorable half.

I can't think of any other film from the pre-Moon Is Blue period that deals with so many tough social issues (without, of course, QUITE breeching the Production Code): prostitution, rape, pimping, and even premarital sex. Steve Cochran is excellent as a brooding ex-con on the run from a crime he didn't commit. Outstanding atmosphere, photography, and screenplay. Even the scenes in the lettuce fields are outstanding!

Tomorrow is Another Day from 1951 stars Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Lurene Tuttle, and Ray Teal.

Bill Clark (Cochran) went to prison as a teenager and is released 18 years later, having had little to no life experience. Due to being exposed in the newspaper where he lives, he gets out of town and goes to New York City.

Desperate for human companionship, he enters a dime a dance joint and becomes interested in Cathy (Ruth Roman in a horrible blond wig reminiscent of Stanwyck's in Double Indemnity). She's as tough as they come, doesn't really want Bill around, and tells him he has to buy her presents to impress her. He buys her a watch.

Cathy has a touch of vulnerability - and Bill is pathetic - so she agrees to take him around New York and show him the sights. When they arrive back at her apartment, her Sugar Daddy Connover, a cop in plain clothes, is waiting for her. Bill and Connover fight; Bill is knocked out. Cathy gets the gun and shoots Connover.

When Bill regains consciousness, she leads him to believe that he shot the police lieutenant. They wind up on the run together.

Some time must pass, though it's not shown, because it's obvious the two become lovers, and Cathy has softened quite a bit. She's also back to looking like Ruth Roman. Eventually, changing their names, they join farm workers picking lettuce.

I really liked this film. I do feel like Ruth Roman turned into a housewife awfully fast. However, she does both personalities very well. Cochran was terrific, awkward, shy, not like the Steve Cochran I've seen in other films. Tuttle and Teal play husband and wife farm workers who befriend the couple.

Very good.

The title sounds like a soap opera, and it kinda is, with some noirish touches. The first 30 minutes are familiar fare to any noir fan: ex-convict has troubles finding his way on the outside, meets a scheming blonde who only thinks of looking after Number One. At her place they run into her beau, who's none too pleased. Fists fly, and soon enough a shot is fired,hitting the boyfriend. We know it's the dame that did it, but since the ex-con was knocked out before the gun went off he doesn't know he's innocent. She doesn't clear things up for him, for obvious reasons. Fearing the worst, they hit the road together. From then on the melodrama takes over: she washes the bleach out of her hair, and becomes a reformed woman almost instantly. Love starts to bloom and they throw in their lot together. Will they ever find true happiness? At this point the movie lover who likes his noir hard-boiled might as well switch off. Those who sit out the rest of the movie either learn to care for the star-crossed couple or will feel cheated out of a good chase movie. I'm sort of on the fence about this one; both leads are engaging enough, but the story could have used more grit. Noir fans should try this one out, it has enough going for it, but be warned: Bonny And Clyde it ain't.

This film screened at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on April 7, 1999. It was described in the American Cinematheque schedule as follows:

"TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY 1951, Warners, 90 min. Steve Cochran's an ex-con who's never been with a woman. Ruth Roman is a dime-a-dance dame with no use for sappy men. A hotel room, a dirty cop, a gunshot - the perfect jump-off for a fugitives-on-the-run love story. This virtually unknown noir is Felix Feist's masterwork, packed with revelatory set-pieces. Cochran was never more vulnerable, Roman never sexier. Imagine GUN CRAZY scripted by Steinbeck - it's that good."

I just saw this film, and I agree with every word of the above description.

Bill Clark is released from prison after over 18 years. Imprisoned since he was 13 for murdering his father, he vows never to return. He gets into a fight with reporter Dan Monroe but Dan refuses to press charges. He leaves town and encounters taxi dancer Catherine Higgins in NYC. He's childlike and inexperienced. He goes back to her apartment where he gets into a fight with her boyfriend who turns out to be NYPD detective George Conover. He gets knocked out and she shoots George. George is wounded and vows to get her later. Bill follows her and she lies to him that he killed the cop. Fearing a return to prison, he joins her to go on the lam.

I like the premise of his character. He's impulsive and lacking in social graces due to his imprisonment from an early age. He's 31 and acting like a rash teenager. I love his initial interactions with women. He needs to retain more of this childlike quality. I don't know about being farmhands. It would be more intense to go on a crime spree. I like the car transport driver and wish that he continued along with the more exciting crime wave.

A man is released after 18 years for killing his father, and falls right into hot water again when he meets a dodgy dancehall dame. Starts out strong and fizzles out. In the early stages, it's classic noir, with an intriguing femme fatale, appealing stylization, a rough edge and some good on-the-lam scenes. Then Ruth Roman's character takes a rather unbelievable turn and the film becomes a pretty dull melodrama. Once in a while an interesting facet will surface, but it's a big dropoff from the movie's early promise. Other films have pulled off this kind of shift quite nicely: ON DANGEROUS GROUND and ONE WAY STREET come to mind. But here it feels like the air being drained from a tire. Steve Cochran is pretty good throughout, and Roman is excellent up until the change (when she goes from blonde to brunette). While the movie never gets bad, it does get disappointing. The ending is a little too convenient as well.

A B-movie with A-movie pretensions - it starts off quiet enough with an ex-con looking to go straight; still, he gets tangled up with people and it's as if he is in danger of living his wayward life all over again. What looks to be a plain noir crime flick turns into a quite subtle portrait of desire, guilt, and trust with better-than-expected acting and ever-improving cinematography throughout. A sharp edge of paranoia and fateful irony runs across this story, as the surface narrative that the public knows about our lost protagonists is far from the truth of who they are as people. Other reviews have spoken of the realist settings with an eye for detail and it does have a slight cinema verite touch about it. Way better than it has a right to be if you overlook some tiny flaws - this well-crafted somewhat unpredictable tale will keep you engaged. So glad found it. Enjoy!

From the start I can say I was not expecting the out of the blue happy ending that I got in Tomorrow's Another Day. The whole film had an air of tragedy all about it.

Steve Cochran plays a man who did a stretch in prison for manslaughter and is on edge. It won't take much to set him off or set him up. When police detective Hugh Sanders is shot. Cochran becomes a likely suspect especially when he runs off with Sanders's kept dime a dance woman Ruth Roman.

Roman's quite the brassy noir dame when we meet her, but she and Cochran form quite the bond on the run.

Special mention should be given to Lurene Tuttle and Ray Teal as a couple who pick up the hitchhiking Cochran and Roman. Some of their best big or small screen work.

This should have gone in the direction of the Henry Fonda/Sylvia Sidney classic You Only Live Once. Let's just say it didn't and leave it at that.

...for a suspenseful,absorbing,often moving film.

My favorite scenes are the very first ones:Bill/Mike leaving jail and discovering the outside world,struggling to adjust to something which is completely new for him.When he asks for three slices of cake ,everybody laughs at him,but we do not.This man spent 18 years in jail for something he had never done.

Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman (fresh from "strangers on a train") are a good pairing .The screenplay is not very new ,and sometimes verges on melodrama (M.Dawson's accident) but it's a well-constructed story of redemption (a double redemption) one can recommend to films noirs buffs.

People. People who feed people, are the unloveliest people in the world. At least, that's the message often conveyed in film noir. Released after eighteen years, three months and six days behind bars, Steve Cochran's initial, 'kid in a sweet shop' fascination with post war gadgetry soon unravels when he stumbles into a lunch counter and encounters dour, dismal 'Dutch', the kind of glum, glowering figure who could start an argument in an empty house! Who cares if Cochran wants three different pies? Whose teeth are going to be chomping on them, anyway? But for his pledge, 'nobody's ever gonna lock me up again', it might have been enough to make him want to sign up for another eighteen year stretch.

Cochran becomes further disaffected by life on the outside, when a seemingly benevolent journalist advises him of a job opportunity, only to splash his picture and case history across the front page of the next morning's local rag.

Seriously seeking love, Cochran hooks up with dance hall girl, Ruth Roman. The shooting of an antagonistic cop, leads the pair to an audacious escape in the back of the world's first driverless car, before they descend into train hopping, hitch-hiking hobos. It's not going very well.....until they finally find friendly farmers and steady work, but they constantly fear that the demons from the past are only a newspaper headline or a radio bulletin away.

Less gritty and suspenseful than many of its ilk, but with several possible outcomes still on the table as the final minutes beckon, 'Tomorrow' remains engaging throughout. The primary focus is upon its main characters' unenviable plight, coupled with their warmth and devotion to each other. Cochran's cynical insecure loner, occasionally spills into little boy lost territory. Having known only confinement for most of his life, he constantly struggles with romance, rehabilitation and finally redemption, when all he REALLY wants.....is a life of pie.

Bill Clark (Steve Cochran) is a guy who was sent to prison at age 13 for the murder of his father. Now, 18 years later, he's being released and is experiencing an all new world....one in which he's awkward and out of place. After trying to return home and having his past thrown in his face, he picks up and moves to New York City. Soon he meets Cathy (Ruth Roman), a B-girl with a heart of lead. When they go to her apartment, an undercover cop attacks her and begins slapping her about the place. Bill tries to intervene but gets decked by the cop. While he's unconscious, Cathy takes the gun away from the cop and shoots him. After Bill awakens, he is convinced by Cathy that he shot the attacker...and the attacker was a cop. Soon they are on the run...he not realizing he's done nothing illegal in the least. She's keeping the lie alive, presumably, to have a fall guy in case they are caught.

This is a very good film and kept my interest throughout. The writing is very good and Cochran is very sympathetic. While this is enjoyable, however, it's not really film noir. I mention this because noir has a lot of friends, but the style and camerawork are much more conventional...in case you care.

In 'The Killers', the first 13 minutes or so that was written by Ernest Hemingway were terrific. But then it falls into a typical, contrived film noir. So it goes with 'Tomorrow is Another Day'. It's a decent enough film-noir when Ruth Roman is a hard, street-wise NYC blonde. But when she takes it on the lam with lonely ex-con Steve Cochran and they stop at a motel where she dyes her hair brunette, her personality suddenly (and unbelievably) softens 180 degrees and the whole movie switches gears (jumps the shark) and becomes some kind of wannabe 'Grapes of Wrath'. It really sucks too because, when Roman is a blonde, it's got a nice, gritty noir feel. But the smarmy later stuff just flat out ruins the movie. Another quite noticable change is Roman seems to lose her NYC accent after becoming a brunette, as well.

My recommendation? Watch it until Ruth Roman's hair color and speech changes, then forget it.

Kind of a poor man's "You Only Live Once" or a poor woman's "They Live By Night", this noir of two fugitive lovers on the run is lifted pretty far above the ho hum level by the performances of its two stars. Perhaps it was because of his dodgy offscreen behavior or the fact that he was in a bunch of clunkers but Steve Cochran was a most under rated actor, never coming close to an Oscar nomination, even though he's usually reliably good and, as in this film, quite a bit more than that. His portrayal of a self pitying, resentful, vulnerable ex con whose youth was taken from him by incarceration is reason enough to watch this movie. And if you need another try the portrayal of a femme neatly balanced between fatale and life giving, essayed by Ruth Roman, like Cochran a solid actor who never got the recognition she deserved. Also good in key supporting roles are Lurene Tuttle and Ray Teal as another couple who straddles the line between right and wrong. And the cinematography by Hitchcock's favorite camera guy, Robert Burks, is quietly effective in setting a dreamy, uneasy, mostly night time mood.

Debits include director Felix Feist's slowing the film down in the second half when it most needs a pick me up and, the bigger flaw, a too upbeat for a noir ending, for which I'll blame the screenwriters, Art Cohn and Guy Endore. Oh, and let's work on that "uplifting" title, guys. Give it a B minus.

I stumbled across this noir the other night. I love it when I find an unknown film from the noir genre that exceeds expectations. And wow, this one really did...and it's been restored perfectly. Don't pass this gem by because the actors aren't big names. It's almost a perfect example of every noir story arch there is...so well done.

(1951) Tomorrow Is Another Day CRIME DRAMA

It opens with a former convicted felon, Bill Clark (Steve Cochran) and given some money after he has done serving time. And upon his return he then tries to adapt to the city where he used to grow up in and at the same time try to find some employment. Except that as soon as he went to a diner to have something to eat another young man follows him there without noticing. And he manages to land him a welding job, and once he was done with the interview, he decides to buy a newspaper and realizes he was nothing more but a reporter attempting to get a story.