The feelings that Mother Angela Lansbury has for Son Warren Beatty in this movie are creepy.
Note especially creepy is the scene where Warren Beatty returns from being in jail in Lousville (Christmas) and the look Angela Lansbury gives him is so loving and then the kiss on the lips she gives him is downright romantic....ewwww so creepy.
It was the same with Laurence Harvey in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
shareI don't recall that angle in the novel, but it was a theme screenwriter William Inge explored in a few of his plays. Coincidentally, Lansbury had a similarly creepy relationship with her on-screen son that same year in "The Manchurian Candidate."
shareToday was Angela Lansbury day on TCM and it seems she had the corner on creepy or incestuous mother parts.
Except for her part as a floozy "Harvey Girls"
And the impertinent Cockney maid in Gaslight, her first role.
Am I anywhere near the imaginary cliff?share
Momism was a hot topic back then...
shareI saw "All Fall Down" this afternoon. Coincidentally I saw "Blue Hawaii" last night, in which Lansbury, as Elvis's mother, keeps asking him to "give me some sugar", and she's not referring to granular sweetener for her tea. She made "Blue Hawaii" just a couple of months before "All Fall Down", which she made just before "The Manchurian Candidate". She was definitely on a weird mother streak.
shareI just saw it on TCM and theyd edited out the actual kiss. Yay censorship
shareI thought that looked weird!!!! they edited it out?!?!?! wow...
i can't believe so many people are watching TCM today!! hahaha
Are you sure it was TCM who did the editing? I haven't seen the original on video but on reviewing the clip on You Tube (search under "All Fall Down Beatty"), I wonder if it wasn't the Production Code Administration (once known as the Hays Office) that insisted on the kiss being excised. Although Hollywood was pushing hard against the Production Code in the early '60s and would eventually win the first American ratings system six years after ALL FALL DOWN was released, one can imagine that the PCA still would have demanded some toning down of the incest angle in 1962. Having said that, the scene still is a powerful evocation of the relationship between Annabell and Berry-Berry. Lansbury may have gotten Best Supporting Actress for her next role in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (another 'smother with an inecestuous edge) but this was the more subtle performance.
SPOILER HERE:
I haven't read the original James Leo Herlihy novel either, but I also wonder whether Echo's fate in the film also was dictated by the PCA, or whether it was part of the original novel.