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”.
All Fall Down (1962)
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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