Attack of Berry-berry

All Fall Down (M-G-M). Berry-berry Willart (Warren Beatty) takes a long, slow pull of bourbon. "Funny things happen t'me alla time," he says reflectively. "Dunno why. Dunno what I'm gonna do next. I just--live fer kicks!" And he lays back his ears and laughs like a jackass that can smell the old pea patch.

Actor Beatty is the latest cinemale to step into the late Jimmy Dean's blue jeans, and All Fall Down is largely a description of how Berry-berry Willart gets his kicks. As the film begins. Berry-berry conks a floozy with a spittoon and lands in the frost in Florida. Bailed out by his teen-aged brother (Brandon deWilde), he thumbs a Caribbean cruise with a yachtsy-totsy (Constance Ford). "Don't you have a husband?" he wonders. "Yes," she muses, "but he wouldn't appeal to you." When the cruise is over, Berry-berry moves off with a box of the lady's baubles, picks up a schoolteacher (Barbara Baxley) on Christmas vacation, knocks out a few of her teeth in a barroom brawl, lands in the frost in St. Louis.

This time Pop (Karl Maiden) wires the bail, and Berry-berry, risking reactivation of his Momplex, hitchhikes home to Cleveland for Christmas. There he finds an unexpected present: a blonde called Echo O'Brien (Eva Marie Saint). They fall in love, and for a few idyllic weeks Berry-berry lives for more than kicks. But when Echo gets pregnant. Berry-berry gets lost. In despair, she drives her car off an embankment. "I hate life!" Berry-berry groans. But he goes right on living, if it can be called that.

On paper, All Fall Down has plenty going for it: an all-star cast, an able producer (John Houseman), a talented young director (John Frankenheimer), a screenplay adapted by a famous playwright (William Inge) from a notable novel by James Leo Herlihy. On acetate, these virtues seem reversed. The story is incidental and interminable, the scene-writing lacks Ingenuity, the characters are cliche, the direction is untidy, the actors are Actors' Studious--Beatty in particular employs a scabious charm that fails to explain his part but might be said to communicate Berry-berry.

Still and all, the picture is worth seeing, and what makes it worth seeing is the work of Angela Lansbury. She plays Berry-berry's mother as a woman with the brain of a flea, the heart of a whale, the tongue of a toad, the devotion of a dog, the cunning of a serpent, the innocence of --a noisy old parrot.

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