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All Fall Down (1962)

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All Fall Down

Within John Houseman's production of All Fall Down there are some truly memorable passages - moments and scenes of great pith, poignance, truth and sensitivity. How disheartening it is, then, that the sum total is an artfully produced, cinematically rich, historically noteworthy, dramatically uneven near-miss.

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Within John Houseman’s production of All Fall Down there are some truly memorable passages – moments and scenes of great pith, poignance, truth and sensitivity. How disheartening it is, then, that the sum total is an artfully produced, cinematically rich, historically noteworthy, dramatically uneven near-miss.

A 16-year-old boy (Brandon de Wilde) who idolizes his emotionally unstable older brother (Warren Beatty) is the pivotal figure in William Inge’s screenplay based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel. The important issue is that the adolescent matures into a decent young man. But his path to maturity is threatened by his adulation for this brother, a selfish, irrational free spirit who survives on odd jobs and loose women. When the older boy proceeds to destroy a young spinster (Eva Marie Saint) whom de Wilde adores in a hopeless, adolescent fashion, the latter has his moment of reckoning.

Popular on Variety

Angela Lansbury and Karl Malden, as the tragicomic elders, create indelible, dimensional and deeply affecting people.

• Production: M-G-M. Director John Frankenheimer; Producer John Houseman; Writer William Inge; Camera Lionel Lindon Editor Fredric Steinkamp; Music Alex North Art George W. Davis, Preston Ames
• Crew: (B&W) Extract of a review from 1962. Running time: 111 MIN.
• With: Eva Marie Saint Warren Beatty Karl Malden Angela Lansbury Brandon de Wilde

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All Fall Down (1962): Warren Beatty’s Second Film, Directed by John Frankenheimer, Co-Starring Eva Marie Saint and Brandon De Wilde

In All Fall Down , his second film, Warren Beatty gives one of his most effective performances. In fact, the role of Berry-Berry Willart, a nihilistic, amoral, self-absorbed, misogynistic young man is inconceivable without Beatty.

Beatty benefits from William Inge’s sharp scenario, which is based on the novel of James Leo Herlihy, better known for his later book, Midnight Cowboy (which John Schlesinger made into an Oscar-winning film in 1969).

Grade: B (*** out of *****)

Inge and Herlihy have provided Beatty with an unsympathetic character, which bears resemblance to the one that Paul Newman would play a year later in Robert Rossen’s Hud (1963).

As Lawrence Quirk pointed out, it’s interesting that gay writers, such as Tennessee Williams, Inge, and Herlihy, helped shaped Beatty’s mystique as a screen persona. Inge did it in Beatty’s first film “Splendor in the Grass,” directed by Kazan, and Williams later on, in “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.” In these (and other) works, Beatty, drawing on his own middle-class background in Virginia, played a rebellious youth driven by ego and desire but stifled and repressed by rigid societal norms.

A misfit himself, Inge, like Williams, understands well the issues the rebellion against suffocating conventions, the narcissistic dreams, masculine burden, and the importance of male camaraderie.

Early on in his career, Beatty, like Paul Newman, suffered from comparisons to the Dean-Brando-Clift acting mode, even though he didn’t sound, look, or act like any of those iconic stars.

In “All Fall Down,” Beatty turns in an intensely physical, almost animalistic performance, using his broad shoulders, firm musculature, sensual lips, peering (small) eyes.

The story is told from the P.O.V. of Berry-Berry’s fifteen-year-old brother Clinton (Brandon De Wilde), who begins by adoring him unreservedly and ends by despising and pitying him.

The family thinks it’s for him to go into business, and so Clinton is sent to Florida with $200 for his brother, which the latter uses for a bail out of jail for assaulting a prostitute. Then, he sends Clinton back home to the family while he signs aboard a yacht to service an older woman who likes virile young men. Other women move in and out of Berry’s life. Power-driven and narcissistic to a fault, he’s unable to contain his unbridled.

Back home, Clinton finds life with his parents (Angela Lansbury and Karl Malden), boring compared to that with Berry-Berry, which was exciting and adventurous.

Things change with the arrival of an attractive outsider named Echo O’Brien (Eva Marie Saint), who becomes the boy’s new object to worship.

Nonetheless, as soon as Berry returns, Echo succumbs to his appeal, gets pregnant by him and in short order is rejected by him, leading to her suicide. When the outraged Clinton goes to kill his selfish brother, he finds him sobbing like a child. Pity and contempt replace rage, and he leaves Berry-Berry to his fate.

All members of the cast render strong performances under the astute direction of John Frankenheimer, who in the same year made the seminal paranoia noir thriller, The Manchurian Candidate .

Eva Marie Saint, at the top of her form, shows grace and vulnerability. Angela Lansbury, who also played a monstrous mother in “Manchurian Candidate,” once again shines as a possessive mother from hell, perhaps the one responsible for turning Berry-Berry into a perverse, twisted man. Karl Malden is also well cast as the alcoholic, passive father.

Ultimately, though, the film is a showcase for Beatty’s talents as a sensual, dark-spirited immature youngster, who’s incapable of never growing up.

The movie, despite decent reviews, was a box-office failure, perhaps due to its largely grim, downbeat tone.

Eva Marie Saint (Echo O’Brien)

Warren Beatty (Berry-Berry Willart)

Karl Malden (Ralph Willart)

Angela Lansbury (Annabel Willart)

Brandon De Wilde (Clinton Willart)

Constance Ford (Mrs. Mandel)

Barbara Baxley (Schoolteacher)

Evans Evans (Hedy)

Jennifer Howard (Myra)

Madame Spivy (Bouncer)

Albert Paulson (Captain Ramirez)

Henry Kulky (Sailor)

Colette Jackson (Dorothy)

Robert Sorrells (Waiter in Sweet Shop)

Bernadette Withers (Mildred)

Carol Kelly (Flame)

Paul Bryar (Sweet Shop Manager)

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture.

Producer: John Houseman.

Director: John Frankenheimer.

Screenplay: William Inge, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy.

Photographer: Lionel Lindon.

Music: Alex North.

Art Directors: George W. Davis, Preston Ames.

Set Decorations: Henry Grace, George R. Nelson.

Special Visual Effects: Robert R. Hoag.

Editor: Frederic Steinkamp.

Recording Supervisor: Franklin Milton.

Costumes: Dorothy Jeakins.

Makeup: William Tuttle.

Hair Styles: Sydney Guilaroff.

Associate Producer: Ethel Winant.

Assistant Director: Hal Polaire.

Opened at Loew’s State Theater, New York, April 11, 1962.

Running time: 111 Minutes.

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All Fall Down Reviews

A flashy but contrived Hollywood melodrama...

Full Review | Oct 14, 2019

Not since certain German films of the Twenties have I seen such overuse of camera angles, such cluttered sets, and such a profusion of props.

Full Review | Aug 1, 2019

In his second film, scripted by William Inge, Warren Betty gives one of his strongest and most sensual performances as the amoral youth in a role that thematically resembles Hud (played by Paul Newman).

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 21, 2008

Never adds up to much.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Aug 15, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2005

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All Fall Down

Time out says, release details.

• Duration: 110 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: John Frankenheimer
• Screenwriter: William Inge
• Warren Beatty
• Eva Marie Saint
• Karl Malden
• Angela Lansbury
• Brandon de Wilde
• Barbara Baxley

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All Fall Down (1962)

Taglines: Male enough to attract a dozen women…not man enough to be faithful to one!

All Fall Down movie storyline. Twenty-something Berry-Berry Willart (Warren Beatty) has left his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, primarily to get away from his overbearing mother and alcoholic father, Annabell (Dame Angela Lansbury) and Ralph Willart (Karl Malden), as Berry-Berry doesn’t like the way they treat him as the prodigal son.

Berry-Berry has always taken the easy way out, and will often use his good looks to take advantage of women, who are initially more than willing to help out this good looking young man until they really get to know him. But his parents, especially Annabell, believe he can do no wrong. And his bright sixteen year old brother, Clinton Willart (Brandon De Wilde), idolizes him.

Although Berry-Berry originally had no intention of ever returning to Cleveland which Ralph realizes, but Annabell refuses to acknowledge in her heart, he decides to head back to Cleveland, but initially not tell his family. Berry-Berry’s trip home coincides with a visit the Willarts receive from a family friend, thirty-one year old Echo O’Brien (Eva Marie Saint).

It’s love at first sight between Berry-Berry and Echo. Although Clinton, who loves Echo himself with Echo in turn loving him like her best kid brother, gives Berry-Berry his blessing with Echo, Clinton, deep in his heart, is afraid that Echo will end up just another one of the long string of women that Berry-Berry has abused.

All Fall Down is a 1962 American drama film, adapted from the novel All Fall Down (1960) by James Leo Herlihy, the author of Midnight Cowboy (1965). It was directed by John Frankenheimer and produced by John Houseman. The screenplay was adapted from the novel by playwright William Inge and the film starred Eva Marie Saint and Warren Beatty.

Upon its release, the film was a minor box-office hit. Together with her performance in Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Angela Lansbury (who played a destructively manipulative mother in both films) won the year’s National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was entered in the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

Its score had music composed and conducted by Alex North, whose other scores include Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963). North’s score was released for the first time on CD in April 2003, on the Film Score Monthly (FSM) label in association with Turner Classic Movies Music, as FSM0606, a limited-release of 3,000, along with North’s suite for the film The Outrage (1964), directed by Martin Ritt. FSM described North’s soundtrack as a “poignant, sweetly jazzy score…full of hushed, haunting textures, with lovely themes drawing the pained connections between the characters, delicately balanced between love and pain”.

Directed by: John Frankenheimer Starring: Eva Marie Saint, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, Angela Lansbury, Brandon deWilde, Constance Ford, Barbara Baxley, Evans Evans, Madame Spivy, Albert Paulsen Screenplay by: William Inge Production Design by: Cinematography by: Lionel Lindon Film Editing by: Fredric Steinkamp Costume Design by: Dorothy Jeakins Set Decoration by: Henry Grace, George R. Nelson Art Direction by: E. Preston Ames, George W. Davis Music by: Alex North MPAA Rating: None. Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Release Date: April 11, 1962

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All Fall Down (1962)

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Male enough to attract a dozen women... not man enough to be faithful to one!

Ralph and Annabell Willart are a feuding couple who are constantly bickering over their worthless, good-for-nothing son Berry-Berry. When Berry-Berry begins yet another meaningless love affair, this time with an older woman named Echo O’Brien, he really gets his parents at each others’ throats.

John Frankenheimer

James Leo Herlihy

William Inge

Top Billed Cast

Eva Marie Saint

Echo O'Brien

Warren Beatty

Berry-Berry Willart

Karl Malden

Ralph Willart

Angela Lansbury

Annabell Willart

Brandon De Wilde

Clinton Willart

Constance Ford

Mrs. Mandel

Barbara Baxley

School Teacher

Evans Evans

Madame Spivy

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Status Released

Original Language English

• love triangle
• adolescence
• family relationships

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