User reviews

What I love about this film, is the fact that it includes a respectful and loving relationship between a black woman and a white man during the apartheid era of racism here in the United States (before the "Freedom Rides," which occurred not long after).

I admire Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood (especially), as rising young stars in Hollywood, for taking the chance to be in this type of picture at that time in history.

When Susan Kohner's character calls Pearl Bailey a "nigger," Robert Wagner whacks her one but good! And then he educates Miss spoiled brat and much misinformed Kohner, that Pearl is more decent than any of the white people in this movie! And more deserving of love and respect.

And folks, was he right. Bailey's character and performance are the most worthwhile in the film.

Yes, the basic story between Natalie Wood (poor country girl looking to move up in the world by passing Wagner's baby off as rich boy Hamilton's), Robert Wagner (poor confused misunderstood boy with talent for "race" music, but seemingly not much ambition to do anything with it), George Hamilton and Susan Kohner (spoiled RICH siblings taken in by Wood and Wagner -- but both hopelessly in love with the two)is schlock.

But the story between Wagner and Pearl Bailey (suicidal famous singer mourning the loss of her lover, who becomes charmed with Wagner and does her best to help him before she purposely succumbs to alcoholism) saves the day.

Also, Natalie Wood is simply outrageously gorgeous in this picture. And Robert Wagner and Hamilton are pretty easy on the yes as well. So, when the story gets to be too much, just enjoy the view!

I wish that Wood and Wagner had more screen time together in this film (and that they ended up together), but that's because I love RJ and Nat together as a couple under any circumstances (and believe me one has to love them unconditionally -- as their story lines and acting and accents don't feature either near the top of their talents).

Still, a brave story to undertake. Its bad/good and very interesting. I recommend it for having the guts to be ahead of its time.

Nancy J Ordinaryfool

A very interesting soaper, certainly much better than the Maltin review gives it credit for. The sharp dialogue is probably its best feature; the characters say things very bluntly and pseudo-honestly, like people struggling to be clever when they know, as members of a "postmodern" generation, that it's all been said before and they are doomed to re-enact old cliches themselves. They understand their own ailments and continually refer to how spoiled, afraid and enervated they are. Plot is in territory similar to "Splendor in the Grass" (love is a sickness you grow out of and can eventually re-create where you have settled) but it's real subject is how restless, discontented people spread their unhappiness around, and how this is symptomatic of these modern times. Despite Wagner playing trumpet (he does not make any attempt to sound like Chet Baker, although he IS pretty) and Pearl imitating Billie Holiday (down to a performance of "God Bless the Child") with some unfortunate prescience before Holiday's death, this is not really a music film. It's like a delayed "beat" movie that should have been made in the 50s. (Hollywood is always some years behind.) 40 years later, we needn't worry whether it seems out of date; time has been kind to this film.

If you're looking for happy moments, then this isn't your film. The problems grow and grow and you never see a solution for them. Under my point of view, it's not a bad film, but the story hasn't got a message and it's so sad that the only way to enjoy the film is by appreciating the acting, the directing, etc...

My rating is 7 out of 10

Sex and drugs in the Big City are too much for the young country reared

Southern ladies and gents to bear, in this well over the top and very

florid meller, directed by the always unreliable Michael Anderson. But

I was young (23) when I saw it at the Loew's Warfield in San Francisco,

with PLATINUM HIGH SCHOOL, on 9-19-60; and it's a movie aimed at a young

audience. I always loved Natalie Wood, back to when we both were kids;

Bob Wagner was a fave since 1950; Susan Kohner caught my eye in TO HELL

AND BACK, dazzled the world, and me, in IMITATION OF LIFE.

George Hamilton's the odd man out here, but he's credible. Story and

treatment are pure soap, but nothin's wrong with that.

The only sour note for me in this lushly produced and always interesting

walk on the 1930s wild side, is the music. Jazz and more jazz; badly

played, written, composed and sung. Stops the movie stone cold whenever

they use it, which is waayy too often. Pearl Bailey's role shoulda been

cut. This aside I found it, then and now, an absorbing and watchable drama

with a sterling cast of young stars. The two girls are excellent in

every way. Too long (124), and too much jazzy music -

This film suffers from most of the shortcomings mentioned in many of the comments above. Nevertheless, it's worth watching for two principal reasons: The breath-taking, youthful beauty of Natalie Woods, the most beautiful young woman I've ever seen, and the performance of Pearl Bailey, a fascinating personality and a marvelous actress and singer. Sadly, Pearl doesn't get to sing nearly enough (2 blues songs), but her part alone was decently written, and she acquits herself quite well in the meaty role. Wagner does a creditable job despite having to recite the idiotic and banal lines of his character, and the others are passable at best. Hamilton is borderline OK and Kohner munches the scenery something awful in most of her scenes. Were it not for Woods' stunning beauty and Bailey's excellent work, this one would truly stink.

I happened to see this film years ago in a sleepless night, zapping through some of the less commercial public canals we still had at the time in Europe. It really opened my soul because of the music included. I will not comment on the quality of the script or the acting of the young couple Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner; others can do better than I. But I like the slow pace, the melodramatic story, the dialogue lines that stay in your head, and - above all - I was thrilled by the singing and acting of Pearl Bailey as Ruby Jones. If ever you have to explain the feelings that gave rise to the blues, ahead of the ubiquitous slavery hardships and working in the cotton fields, then this movie is a 'must-see'. When Chad is in the lowest of spirits and ends up in a morning-after hang-out, he runs into this Ruby Jones, an alcoholic, but warm-hearted black singer. And she treats him with a song, unaccompanied, raw voice, that expresses his feelings so well, and gives him the idea he is not the only unhappy, lost man on this globe. I don't know if Mrs Bailey sung the track herself or was dubbed, but she succeeds in getting the blues feeling across as I've never heard thereafter. Same when later on in the movie she sings to Chad, playing the trumpet: "What am I heading for? Blues is knocking at my door". Alas! this song is spoiled by a dubbed in band and even background vocals if I remember well - anyhow, it takes away from the simplicity of just a singer and a "horn player" (as she puts it throughout the picture). The sad story of the twists and impossibilities of human relationships is to me more real-life than most of the soapy Hollywood plots that come to us by shiploads these days. Endearing, that's probably the word that says it all.

Utterly silly melodrama, adapted by Robert Thom from Rosamond Marshall's book "The Bixby Girls", plays like bad Tennessee Williams. Robert Wagner is alternately sullen and constipated as Texas trumpet-player who finds success in New York City; ex-girlfriend Natalie Wood (Wagner's wife in real-life) winds up there too--she had Wagner's baby while married to George Hamilton--and eventually their paths cross again. Unlikely, overripe star-laden product has some good jazz music to its credit, nice production design, but little else. Natalie tries hard, Pearl Bailey gets to belt out a few torchy numbers, but the dopey dialogue and characters sinks this one like a stone. ** from ****

I saw this movie long time ago in the 60s when I was just a little girl. I loved it and I have been trying to find out how I can purchase it. This film had a lot of my favorite actors in it. Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, George Hamilton, Pearl Bailey. I also loved Susan Kohen, I remember her from Imitation of life. I have check Blockbusters, Columbia House movies, TCM movies, Ebay, Amazon and just putting in searches on the internet with no luck.

Someone told me it is no longer in print, can anyone confirm that? I was told the Turner Classics was the place to go because they have a wide selection of vintage movies. So if anyone can help me locate this movie I will be eternally grateful.

You see the provocative title ALL THE FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS. Then you see the cast; NATALIE WOOD, ROBERT WAGNER, PEARL BAILEY and you think, this one's going to be good !

Very glossy with obviously decent production values hardly compensates for this awful movie. Four young and very attractive actors (WOOD, WAGNER, HAMILTON & KOHNER) interact with one another in over the top soap opera that has got to be one of the most unnecessary melodramas of all time. Actresses (NATALIE WOOD & SUSAN KOHNER) are gorgeous and dressed and coiffed to the nines thanks to Helen Rose and Sydney Guilaroff, but they almost come across like little girls in dress up as you watch them wallow in miseries of their own making. WAGNER tries too hard as hip trumpet player who is befriended by PEARL BAILEY, an alcoholic singer hellbent on self-destruction over a lost love. All involved must have thought that they were making something 'cutting edge' because of the relationship of white boy WAGNER with black woman BAILEY. WAGNER evens gets to get on a soapbox, slap KOHNER afters she refers to BAILEY'S character 'Ruby' as the 'N' word and then describe the black woman as the only truly decent person he's ever known ! Aside from the visual richness of the film, you'll quickly realize that the story is so apparently vacuous that it's like witnessing a vicious circle in motion.

TRIVIA : The piano player 'Redd' is none other than REDD FOXX, a good dozen years before the success

Anderson's movie is derivative.It looks like lite Douglas Sirk: the spoiled kid sister (played by Susan Kohner who worked with Sirk) is not unlike Marylee (Dorothy Malone) in "Written on the wind" ;besides ,Ruby's funeral will fatally make you think of that of Annie in "Imitation of life" ,a black choir singing "Free at last" replacing Mahalia Jackson.The screenwriters also borrow from Kazan's "splendor in the grass" as far as the two leads' fate is concerned.And the baby trick was used a hundred times or more in the thirties and forties melodramas (notably Bette Davis' "the big lie" and "the old maid" ;Olivia De Havilland' s "to each his own").

Having said this,one must credit Natalie Wood for making the best of the stereotyped part of a go-getter;Robert Wagner's moody looks work wonders too when he plays the trumpet and in the scene when he backs Pearl Bailey's impressive vocals.

This is the kind of movie they don't do anymore;this is the kind of story which could go on and on and on and on;in a word,it's the perfect soap opera ,and it still exists today in the form of the TV series.

Like this?try these.......

Peyton Place Mark Robson 1957

Imitation of life Douglas Sirk 1959

Better still, buy the soundtrack on CD. Dated, pretentious angst-ridden nonsense that is saved only partially by the fine music; and certainly not by an over-the-top Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. I usually like Wood (not quite so sold on Wagner), but here she seems shrill and the whole film looks and feels awfully dated. I'd rate it just ahead of the truly criminal Subterraneans of the same year (with another of my usual favourites, Leslie Caron). That also had a great soundtrack, including the great Gerry Mulligan, but in it's case it wasn't enough to induce me to watch it all the way through.

This one I did, but I'm not sure it was worth the bother.

I was amazed that Miguel wrote that the story had no meaning to it!!?? He is gravely mistaken!! I think the film's motto is that you cannot love somebody completely, if deep down yourself you know you have been cheating him!! Sarah could not bring herself to love Tony although he was the perfect husband for her. Only when she tells him the truth about their son being truly the son of her-once-lover Chad does she remarks : " the funny thing is that now I love him (Tony), I broke his heart but I love him..."

I am truly sorry that this film was never given the proper credits it deserved. I think it was a great movie, and pity it is not available on Video and/or DVD!! MGM - Turner please do us a favour!!

I saw this film some time ago and was blown of my feet. So strong, so intense. Love is not a game...or is it once it does turn against you and your lover ? The ultimate love story of the 60's where so many uncommitted lovers turned their commitments (and families) into chaos. In that perspective it's not at all unbelievable as one of the reviewers stated here, that the 'if I can't have you, I destroy you' line comes to life. You can ask yourself how much harm was done to each other by divorces and their children through all these divorces! Well all the cruelty of that battle was concentrated here on the two people destroying each other and their partners along.

Next thing which appealed to me very much, was that the great musician shown here, seems to be a role model for one of my sax-heroes and self-destructive musician in the No Wave scene of New York City: James Chance (aka as James White). The same anger and frustration jumped out of the vinyl as it did out of the screen here.

Only much later I found out that Robert Wagner and Nathalie Wood were married twice and had a dramatic life together with love, divorce and...the death of Wood. That gives this film even more dimensions than it already has. Fantastic film indeed. For always in my mind.

The title says a lot about the movie initially, because it's about four people who began to feed on other people's feelings, young people in their early twenties. (The boyish-looking Wagner was, however practically thirty at this time.) To adumbrate much, Wagner plays a poor minister's son, while wood portrays the daughter of a poor farmer, and the two end up in New York, though not at the same. In the movie, George Hamilton plays a rich student at an Ivy League university. While wood becomes emotionally involved with him, Wagner is naturally upset. Enter Hamilton's sister, who wants Wagner who, in turn, still wants Wood. Then, the cannibalism begins.

I'll issue a caveat: if a boy becomes taken with a girl who, in turn, for whatever reason wants another boy, or the other way around, don't see this movie. It is an excellent character study, but a sad movie.

I love this picture. I think it's one of his best. For years I have been hoping it come to VHS. It's time to go into that library of movies and put them in VHS. I hope someone take a look at this and put on tape.

Blame it on Tennessee Williams, but this is another intense Southern drama, involving sex, money, race and oddly enough, music the main difference here being that this is less a generational family drama than one focusing on the tangled love lives of a group of young people.

It starts with Robert Wagner and Natalie Woods as the poor star-crossed young lovers who live in a typical Southern town. Woods' Sara, who wants to be known by her invented, exotic alter-ego name of Salome, as you do, is already rebeling against the Draconian home-rule of her dad while Wagner's Chad is a talented trumpeter with an unaccountable dread of the dark. He wants to follow his dream in music but he's dead broke and when he gets her pregnant, they break up.

Sure enough he heads to New York where he hooks up with Pearl Bailey's black jazz singer Ruby who takes the fledgling talent under her wing where he quickly makes the big time. Only problem is that Bailey is slowly dying after presumably years of drink and drug abuse.

Meanwhile Woods also leaves home and on the train out meets up again with bored rich kid George Hamilton, who'd previously mistaken her for a prostitute in a downtown bar. This time, he offers her sympathy which she accepts and then love which she doesn't but for the sake of her unborn child, she agrees to marry him.

Hamilton meanwhile has a slightly strange (at least outside of films like this!) relationship with his jealous, conniving sister played by Susan Kohner. She comes to stay cuckoo -style with her sibling and his new bride and baby and turns the triangle into a quadrangle by hunting down Chad and throwing herself at him to the extent that they marry too.

This sets the scene for further high-powered emotional outpourings taking in a death, attempted suicide, family reconciliations and of course a final reckoning where all the emotional entanglements are more or less straightened out by the finish.

I have to admit I wasn't convinced by the convoluted plot or overwritten situations in which these characters are placed. I get that the movie is supposedly based on the life of real-life musician Chet (= Chad?) Baker but still found the juxtaposition with the musical world awkward and unconvincing. The movie doesn't ever show Wagner and Bailey as a couple (apparently in real life they had an affair during the shoot) and could have gone deeper and further into these various complicated scenarios to better effect.

Woods comes off well as the Southern belle forced to grow up quickly, Hamilton aquits himself passably as the smitten playboy, Susan Kohner acts her part with cattish relish but Wagner is all at sea as the tortured Chad. Forever running his hand through his hair, he constantly veers between under- and over-acting, never more so than with his musical instrument.

Michael Anderson's direction lacks dramatic focus and fails to draw in the viewer to engage with these unusual people. It almost feels as if he's simply been handed this assignment but in the end what emerges is a pale imitation if not an out and out pastiche of a would-be Williams or Inge-type drama.

This is one of my favorite movies. I first saw it years ago while baby sitting as a teenager. The title is misleading and I'm sure many overlooked it. I have tried to find it to purchase but no one has it. Can anyone help me. There are 2 other movies I think have misleading titles but are "Top Tens" 10 North Frederick starring Gary Cooper and Ice Place with Robert Ryan, Martha Hyer, Carolyn Jones and Jim Backus. I can't find them either. My brother told me about this website and this was the first time I have gotten this close to either movie. I am glad to see others still having an appreciation for the classics. These movies along with All Susan Hayward movies make a rainy Sat. afternoon fantastic!

Whenever I can view a film with Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood and see the super star Pearl Bailey, I know it will be a great film classic of 1960. Robert Wagner,(Chad Bixby),"Banning",'67, plays the son of a preacher who has some great mental hang ups and decides to become a blues trumpet player and never stops thinking about his father. Chad meets up with Pearl Bailey(Ruby Jones),"Porgy & Bess",'59, who takes him under her arm and gives him the moral strength he is deeply lacking. Susan Kohner,(Catherine McDowall),"The Gene Krupa Story",'59, gets involved with Chad which creates problems for Catherine. Natalie Wood,(Sarah 'Salome' Davis),"Dear Brat",'51, also has a strong attraction to Chad and there are many family problems among the couples. George Hamilton,(Tony McDowall),"Love At First Bite",'79, simply cannot figure out what the problem is with his wife Catherine and seems to give her plenty of time to solve her problems. There are great musical sounds through out the picture and Pearl Bailey out shines the entire cast.

The opening twenty, or so, minutes of this film are ludicrous, and I had to force myself to stay away from the delete button on my DVR. Pretty couple Wagner & Wood unconvincingly play two white-trash Texas teenagers, utilizing some of the worst faux Texas/Southern accents to ever grace (or in this case, disgrace) the screen. Granted, once the film has Pearl Bailey to work with, there are some nice moments, but they are few and far between.

Hamilton has little to do, and Susan Kohner plays spoiled rich girl Catherine so broadly, you expect the character to grow horns and carry around a pitchfork.

Sets and costumes are the usual MGM glam.

This is one of the best films I have ever seen! The story, the plot,the actors, the directing, and everything about it! It shows reality,and how people really are. Back then and now. It is awesome! It is real, and it shows how our decisions can change our life. One small decision can alter our plans forever. But I love how it shows we need to let go of the past and realize the value of what is right there in front of us. This movie has some of the best acting I have ever seen. It is completely amazing and awesome! I love Natalie Wood in everything she does. They should really remake this movie. I couldn't imagine the actors they would get for the remake. I don't know any that would compare to the originals. Yet I really think that this is a story that needs to be retold to future generations. It is a forgotten film, but it should be known by all.