SUSAN HAYWARD has done some vivid acting in a number of sordid roles that have called for professional simulation of personal ordeals of the most upsetting sort. But she's never done anything so vivid or so shattering to an audience's nerves as she does in Walter Wanger's sensational new drama, "I Want to Live." ... it's a brutal and gruesome ordeal they have concocted for Miss Hayward to perform as the heroine waits in prison for the possible reprieve that never comes.... Miss Hayward plays it superbly, under the consistently sharp direction of Robert Wise, who has shown here a stunning mastery of the staccato realistic style. From a loose and wise-cracking B-girl she moves onto levels of cold disdain and then plunges down to depths of terror and bleak surrender as she reaches the end.

I Want to Live! is a drama dealing with the last years and the execution of Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward), who was convicted at one time or another of prostitution, perjury, forgery and murder. It is a damning indictment of capital punishment.