**SPOILERS** With no money and no future to look forward to a young couple from the dirt-poor Texas town of Pine Alley Chad Bixby & Sarah "Salome" Davis, Robert Wagner & Natalie Wood, went out in the world to find a better life for themselves. With his abusive father, the town's minister, passing away Chad felt that he can now do what he wanted to do for so long pay his horn and marry Salome. Things got a bit strained when Salome turned out to be pregnant with Chad being the father of her unborn child.
Salome running away from home runs into Yale Ivy Leaguer Tony McDowell, George Hamilton,on a train going north. Tony on summer vacation had met Salome earlier back in Deep Elem, the black part of the town of Pine Valley, under not the best of circumstances.
Not having any money and with Tony having a slight acquaintance with Salome he pays her way to ride with him to New Haven Connecticut. During that long ride up north they fall in love with each other. Salome and Tony getting married and settling down soon have a new member of the McDowell family a son Peter, what Tony doesn't know is that Peter is not really his son but Chad's.
Chad meanwhile back in the sticks strikes up a friendship with the burnt out former jazz great Ruby Jones, Pearl Bailey, who since her husband left her for a younger women, as well as took all her money,is slowly drinking herself to death. It's Chad concern and compassion for her that gave Ruby a new lease on life as well as it gave Chad the opportunity to show his talents as a jazz musician. In no time at all Chad made it big in the Big Apple's,New York city, nightclub scene.
Salome now happily married and with a young child gets the news from her sister-in-law Catherine, Susan Kohner, about Clad's success in the music world. Salome talks Tony into going to New York in order to see his act which in the end opens up the old wounds, that both Salome & Chad had from their failed and sorrowful relationship back in Texas.
Big budget soap opera that has both Chad and Salome trying to get even and hurt each other, over what happened between them back in Texas. In the end only hurting those who were nothing more then innocent bystanders as well as the only one's that really and truly loved and cared for them.
Chad marries Catherine just to get back at Salome for leaving him. Cathy is driven to where she almost ends up killing herself by Chad's, being so obsessed to hurt Salome, total disregard for her and the love that she genuinely had for him. Salome is also guilt-ridden over the fact that her and Tony's son Peter isn't really Tony's and feels that if he ever found out the truth it would end up killing him. Clad is also hit with the double tragedy of Ruby dying from the effects of alcoholism and it's her sudden, but not unexpected death, that finally brings him back to earth in not just realizing what he did to Salome but what he did to his wife Cathy as well. When Tony is finally told by Salome the truth about their son Peter it hits him so hard that for a moment you would have thought that he would walk right in the middle of the highway in front of a speeding 18 wheeler and end it all.
The movie "All the Fine Young Cannibals" does in fact have a happy ending that in it's own way counterbalances all the depressing aspects that are in the film up until then. Not as bad as you would think it would be from all the bad reviews that it got "All the Fine Young Cannibals" may be a bit too depressing to take at first but the cast does it's best to keep it both interesting and poignant. The ending, though a bit too artificial, didn't hurt the storyline that much in it's attempt to right all the wrongs that were in it at the conclusion of the movie.
