User Reviews

I love this film. Jane Fonda is darling and irresistible and Tony Perkins is adorable. It is so blatantly 50's style sexist but great fun. Great supporting cast including "My Favorite Martian" guy and "Billy Jack". I just love Jane Fonda in this as well as in "Cat Ballou". She is sexy and oh so American girl cute. Unfortunately, it is not out on DVD yet, just VHS so I can't get it from netflix. I'm a sucker for Doris Day/ Rock Hudson movies and this is in that genre. In this movie, living in a trailer is celebrated and marriage is the goal for every girl, just like in a Jane Austen story. Warning: extremely sexy shower scene :), a far cry from the one in Psycho!

I was pleasantly surprised to find this playing one morning on TCM. I didn't know anything about the film before, so I was completely unprepared for what turned out to be a truly delightful comedy. At first I thought the movie was serious, then it started turning sillier and sillier. Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda do a great job. This was a perfect vehicle for Fonda to launch her acting career. And I must admit I agree with her - she does have quite beautiful legs, and I feel fortunate that we are treated to seeing them in her cute little cheerleader outfit.

This movie is entertaining and I recommend viewing it on a lazy afternoon one day, it is much better than watching re-runs of Gilligans Island.

Basketball players flock to "Custer College" and its team. Located somewhere in sunny California, the university is known for scholastics and athletics. After drooling over a portrait of popular All-American player Anthony Perkins (as Ray Blent), pretty young Jane Fonda (as June Ryder) enrolls as a home economics major. Looking to make Mr. Perkins her husband, Ms. Fonda decides to join activities which show off her comely legs. Of course, this puts her on the court in a short skirt. Fonda also takes the same classes as Perkins – modern ethics with Ray Walston (as Leo Sullivan) and chemistry with Marc Connelly (as Charles Osman). Cupid's arrow lands safely and Perkins proposes. Their future happiness is threatened due to lack of money – then Perkins is offered $4,000 to throw a game...

This was an odd assignment for director Joshua Logan at the time, but he makes it an enjoyable collegiate comedy about ethics – with sexual overtures. Chiefly responsible for the passing grade are costars Perkins and Fonda. This was his last role as a "teen idol" as the next released "Psycho" (1960) changed Perkins' image forever. Here, he is innocent and genuine. In her very first performance, Fonda is obviously beginning her "sex kitten" phase. She is lovely and arousing. The supporting cast is full of interesting names and faces. "Tall Story" is best when making itself fun – Fonda on her bicycle, seeing Van Williams naked, colliding with Perkins on the basketball court – Highlights are the love scenes, Fonda' sexy babysitting seduction and the couple trying out Tom Laughlin's shower for size.

****** Tall Story (4/6/60) Joshua Logan ~ Anthony Perkins, Jane Fonda, Ray Walston, Marc Connelly

I was surprised to see that the play on which this is based is from 1959 and not 1939; it has so much of the flavor of 30s college flicks. Just imagine it with a cast from a quarter-century earlier and it makes for a more comfortable fit. Who would you cast in the principal roles? The contemporary young 30s actors to play Tall Naive Guys could be say, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, even musical comedy hoofers such as Ray Bolger or Buddy Ebsen for a different flavor. For the go-getter girl June (who needn't be tall) the possibilities are broader. Ginger Rogers? Early Betty Grable or Lucille Ball? Toby Wing? One could amass quite a list of potential Junes...

Let me confess that I didn't get to see this all the way through, but from what I saw I found it rather weird to find all these young people existing in a 1960 world devoid of young peoples' music, i.e. rock 'n' roll, doo-wop etc. When the couples are out spooning under the moon they're even singing "Cuddle Up A Little Closer, Lovey Mine", published in 1908 (the same year the director, Joshua Logan, was born). Granted this song had been revived to considerable success in the 40s during wartime and was still popular in the 50s, but it just didn't seem credible to me.

However, once one accepts that "Tall Story" is set in a time and place all its own it's a perfectly enjoyable trifle. Perkins is likably boyish, callow and gawky, and a trifle awkward to be convincing as an athlete, but one can swallow that with the rest of it-- remember, Willing Suspension of Disbelief. So we can buy Fonda's character being so besotted with the guy and pulling every string to land him. She of course is a thorough charmer, which is fun to watch from the perspective of the present day, looking back on her life and career.

This is a quite watchable piece of filmmaking, and a definite curiosity. Just put your brain in neutral and let it roll by.

Jane Fonda before "Barbarella", Anthony Perkins the same year as "Psycho", Tom Laughlin before "Billy Jack", Ray Walston doing the same professor bit he utilized in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High", and still the flick's a dud! Set on some mythical college campus, one inhabited with well-scrubbed students who look as if they're about to burst into song a la "Good News", "Tall Story" comes up short on realism, with a forced-friendly atmosphere masking wispy story of a basketball player targeted by a pretty co-ed who really wants a Man! Debuting Fonda is alternately coy and coquettish--not a credible mix--though she does look cute in her chemistry glasses; Perkins fares worse, with a voice that sounds dubbed by a 12-year-old boy on the verge of puberty. It's not a complete loss--the director is Joshua Logan, who knows how to put a picture together--but the results are still pretty tired. *1/2 from ****

I noted that in this comedy about a college basketball star lanky Anthony Perkins sure looks the part. But if you watch closely there are no real shots of him actually playing basketball. I suspect that Perkins in real life was no athlete though the story focuses on him potentially missing a big game.

A big game it is indeed with no less than a team of Soviet All-stars touring the USA and playing many colleges. Perkins missing the game would certainly affect the odds.

So when money is dumped on him from a mysterious source to throw the game this throws Perkins in an ethical quandary. And because he's got Ray Walston his professor who is his ethics professor the whole thing becomes a mess as Perkins deliberately flunks Walston's class to miss the big game.

Although Perkins and a young Jane Fonda as the coed looking to snare Tony for a husband, the real star of this show is Walston. When he flunks Perkins and then refuses to give him a makeup exam to make him eligible he's got everyone hating him including his wife Anne Jackson and next door neighbor and colleague Marc Connelly.

In 1959 Tall Story ran on Broadway for 108 performances. Authored by the legendary team of Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, only Connelly and Robert Wright as the college president repeat their Broadway roles in the film.

Some mention has to be given to Murray Hamilton as the frantic basketball coach who has the idea that the university exists to give his basketball team a home. What could possibly give him that idea in the America of 1960 let alone today?

The stars do well and the supporting cast is fine. But this film is a must for fans of Ray Walston.

Watch this for the charm of its furmture stars, not the comedic script. Ten minutes in you see gorgeous Van Williams exit a locker room shower in a towel. It is all down hill from there.

It is basically two hours of a naive girl stalking a gay basketball player. Anthony Perkins before he went Psycho and Jane Fonda before she got heavily into politics and over-exercising.

Anne Jackson is priceless as usual.

Tony Perkins wasn't type-cast after "Psycho." Not at first. For the next six years, he went on to act in seven or eight other movies, most of which were shot in Europe by some of the world's best directors including Orson Welles, Claude Chabrol, Jules Dassin and Anatol Litvak and none of the roles were similar to Norman Bates. In fact, Perkins went on to be a bigger star in Europe than he ever had been in America after starring in "Goodbye Again" in 1961, for which he won he Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. "Pretty Poison," released in 1968, was the first movie in which he played a similar character to Norman Bates, and only after that film did the "type-casting" begin. But it was really all of the "Pyscho" sequels that did him in, so to speak. Perkins had a wider range as an actor than producers, directors (and casting directors) had given him credit. Too bad he did not have a more "creative" agent for the second half of his career. (Ironically, he was represented by CMA also known as "Creative Management Associates.")

Jane Fonda is quite winning in her film debut about a boy-crazy college co-ed, chasing after star athlete Anthony Perkins. The plot thickens when Perkins is propositioned by gamblers to throw a key game against a visiting Russian team. It's all innocuous fun, but what's most funny about the film is how different Fonda's character is from her real-life persona as an independent, liberated woman, instead here portraying a flirtatious, man-crazy college girl studying home economics and determined to land herself a husband. Besides this being Fonda's film debut, "Tall Story" also marks the film debut of Robert Redford in a supporting role. You also have solid supporting performances from Ray Walston, Murray Hamilton, and Gary Lockwood. Overall, "Tall Story" is a breezy and enjoyable comedy, though thoroughly lightweight.

The writing is horrible! Epstein obviously used up his ability years earlier in Casablanca. The acting is horrible! Fonda and Perkins are not believable at all, and I assume that Tony had never even seen a basketball game before filming this movie, just like Julius.

I understand that it's very dated, but that doesn't inherently make a movie bad. This is nauseating. I sat through it just to be able to write an honest review.

Perhaps most notable as Jane Fonda's screen debut, "Tall Story" is also remarkable for what it didn't do for Anthony Perkins: define his acting career. Released the same year as Hitchcock's classic thriller "Psycho," "Tall Story" shows the charming, naive and humorous side of Perkins. He stars as Ray Blent, Custer's star basketball player and star student who finds himself caught in an ethical nightmare just before the biggest game of his life against the Russian Sputniks. Fonda is adorable as a cunning co-ed whose one aim in college is to snare the unwitting Ray. Unfortunately, we didn't see more Perkins characters like this one because the actor was typecast as a psychotic madman following his admittedly excellent portrayal of Norman Bates in "Psycho." This movie shows the virtuosity of a great actor who regretfully didn't get the chance to demonstrate his full range of acting skills more often.

I am only commenting on this now, but I've thought about it for some time. Tony Perkins is, without question, the most physically inept actor ever to play an athlete on film. Ever see his portrayal of Jimmy Piersall of the Boston Red Sox in "Fear Strikes Out"? This guy could not walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In "Tall Story," he plays a college basketball star. Every time he goes to shoot the ball, the next shot is a tight close-up of the ball going through the hoop. What that should tell anyone is that the movie would have gone over budget if they needed 500 takes before he could make an actual shot. Really, no one should ever make a sports movie with a lead actor who is so uncoordinated and klutzy. As far as being typecast after "Psycho," hey, Perkins was excellent as a crazy person, which is why "Fear Strikes Out" wasn't a total bomb. Also excellent as disturbed persons (it should be a separate genre) are Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper, except that both are better actors than Mr. Perkins was.

Anthony Perkins shines as a small town basketball star who finds more than sports success at Custer College. Jane Fonda is wonderful in this morally simplistic depiction of

small town life.

"Tall Story" is a film that is sort of like a throwback...a film similar in plot to films of the 40s and 50s. However, despite having an older sort of plot, there are also some adult aspects which make it like a bridge to the past and to the more modern sensibilities.

The film is Jane Fond's first movie...and she co-stars in it as a character you would NOT expect based on her later films. June Ryder is a lady in college to get her MRS degree. In other words, this is no feminist and her one and only goal is to marry the star basketball player, Ray Blent (Anthony Perkins). For a while, Blent is oblivious to her concerted efforts to bag him...though eventually he succumbs to her charms. But, before they can marry and THEN indulge in their carnal lusts, there is the big game between his school and the Russians...and someone knows Blent needs money to marry and offer him a fortune...if he makes sure the Russians win!

The film is a passable time-passer. There's nothing particularly wrong with the film, but the nice momentum it maintained seem to screech to a halt when the basketball fix plot was introduced. An odd film, surely, but one worth seeing.

Forced, unfunny what passed for comedy in 1960, bout a college enrollee (Jane Fonda, in her screen debut), i don't say student, since her only purpose in being there is to find a Good Man to marry. Which I'm sure was true to life, otherwise how is it we still have such a paucity of capable women in Positions That Matter?

I guess this is actually supposed to be about college basketball, but i found Jane's desperation to score the Right Man so annoying and distasteful that it ruined anything else there may have been there for me.

Well Jane, guess you gotta start somewhere. Just glad she's been able to live long enough to look back and laugh.

June Ryder (Jane Fonda) is a new student at Custer College, which is most renowned for its boys' basketball team, although it also has a high academic standing that can rival that of any of the more famous colleges on the west coast. There a young shy and insecure college sportsman (Anthony Perkins) is in trouble when he is offered a bribe to fix a game, he is torn even more about the matter. In addition to the pressure of the exam, Perkins is is being pressured by gamblers to throw a game against the Russians. He wants to marry his very straightforward girlfriend, also a student, but has no money. At the end an exciting basketball competition takes place between the local team: Custer and the Russian visitors, Sputniks. Such fun!. That college girl who can't help lovin' tall boys!.. Here's everything and everybody that made Broadway blush at the howling stage smash! (at $7 per seat). Students: If you want to go to college don't let your parents see this picture!. Joshua Logan's super-saucy production of "tall story" That experiment in Japanese kissing! That baby-sitting romance! That girl in the boys locker room! Those pom-pom girls!... and that cool cool shower!. Sensational Bobby Darin sings the title song!. Joshua Logan - He makes the great ones! Sayonara! Picnic! Bus Stop! South Pacific! Starring Anthony Perkins and the fabulous new young star Jane Fonda.

An uneven comedy based on the novel 'The Homecoming Game' by Howard Nemerov and on the play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse that opened on Broadway, in Manhattan, New York City with big hit and ran for more than 100 performances. Jane Fonda makes her screen debut as a cheerleader who is so awe-struck by Perkins that she takes the same classes just to be close to him. While Perkins is a star basketball player who must pass a crucial test in order to continue to play the game. The two protagonists are nice, but they are really cloying, especially when they sing a song together. As the film results to be excessively sweet, rich, or sentimental, especially to a disgusting or sickening degree. In 'Tall Story' the main fun is guessing or discovering which secondary characters appear here and there, including a notable suppport cast such as Ray Walston as a strict philosophy teacher, Anne Jackson as his wife, Murray Hamilton as the coach, Marc Connelly who was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor in the Drama for "Tall Story" in the same role of the film as Professor Charles Osman, and Fred Aldrich, Tom Laughlin. And others uncredited feature film debuts such as: Gary Lockwood, Van Williams and Robert Redford. As well as final feature film appearance of both Barbara Darrow and Elizabeth Patterson. And two newcomers who subsequently emigrated to Italy to star in Peplum and Spaghetti Western: Richard Harrison and Brad Harris. While Jane Fonda shows up star billing, the future famous actor Robert Redford appears unbilled; being the first of four films were cast together, the others were: ¨The Chase¨, ¨Barefoot in the Park¨, ¨The Electric Horseman¨.

The motion picture was middlingly directed by Joshua Logan. This craftsman was a good filmmaker who directed successful films, usually dramas and musical, including big name actors, such as ¨Picnic¨, ¨Bus stop¨, ¨Sayonara¨, ¨South Pacific¨, ¨Fanny¨, ¨Ensign Pulver¨, ¨Camelot¨ and his greatest success: ¨Paint your wagon¨. Logan was a man of theater who educated at Princeton University where a fellow classmate was James Stewart who influenced his interest in the theatre but he found himself confined to backstage activities which would contribute to his producing. He won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical, "South Pacific", collaborating with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Logan won seven Tony Awards: two in 1948 for "Mister Roberts¨; four in 1950 for "South Pacific," and one in 1953, as Best Director for William Inge's "Picnic." He was also Tony-nominated on two other occasions: in 1959, as co-producer of Best Play "Epitaph for George Dillon," and in 1962 for "All American". Rating Tall Story (1960): 5.5/10, mediocre comedy. The flick will appeal to Jane Fonda and Anthony Perkins fans.

There was life before 'Psycho' for Anthony Perkins. I'm not so sure how much there was afterward. Prior to that movie's 1960 release (the same year as 'Tall Story') he could get roles in light comedies like this one, and other kinds of work, too. The Hitchcock picture identified him forever with one character, and though he achieved fame, his options as an actor were severely limited.

That's a shame, because he's very good in this pleasant story of a college basketball star being pursued by a single-mined husband-hunter. There are some funny lines and moments, especially in the latter third of the film.

This was Jane Fonda's first starring role and she is already fully formed as an actress. With all due respect to Henry and Peter, even early on in her career it's evident who was the standout talent in the Fonda family. She must shake her head sometimes about the role she played here. Near the film's start her character tells two professors she came to this college because she was tall. They look puzzled, so she explains she will have a better chance of snaring a husband at this school, with its outstanding basketball program. This role might embarrass her more than Barbarella.

There's a fine supporting cast of old pros on hand including Ray Walston, Marc Connelly, Anne Jackson and Murray Hamilton. Look closely and you'll see Gary Lockwood ('2001...') as one of the basketball players. But even if you are a fan of the 'Billy Jack' movies, you might not recognize Tom Laughlin as a married friend of the young couple.

Ray Blent (Anthony Perkins) is the star basketball player at Custer College and the top man on campus. June Ryder (Jane Fonda) is a student who is looking to get married like all the girls and she has set her sights set on Ray. Prof. Leo Sullivan (Ray Walston) is new at school. Prof. Charles Osman (Marc Connelly) become his fast friend. Ray happens to be in both their classes and June only has one remaining slot.

Talk about casting against type. At least, they are cast against their future types. Anthony Perkins is far from the jock and Jane Fonda is no marriage-obsessed girlie girl. Watching an earlier film like this can be problematic in that sense. We've seen their futures already. The good news is that Ray plays basketball by using his scientific intellect. He's a nerdy jock. She's a joyfully devious character and that's within her range. The bigger problem is the subject of the comedy. If it's a satire, it's not satirical enough. They're not actually making fun of June's efforts to ensnare Ray. The funnier movie would be her trying all her craziness to catch an arrogant jock and ends up with the nerdy nice guy. This movie is not actually biting or funny. Certainly, comedies can become dated over time. I don't think this was funny even for its time and social limitations. It's still interesting to see these future legends and it's her first credits.

We stumbled upon this, and, although my husband and I are huge Jane Fonda fans, neither one of us had ever heard of Tall Story. During the cheezy opening credits, we looked at each other and said, "Uh-oh. This could be pretty bad." We couldn't buy Anthony Perkins for one second as a basketball player - or a "hunk" that a woman as gorgeous as Jane would need to snare in a matrimonial trap. To sum it up in one word, it would probably be "cornball". Now I know why neither one of us had ever heard of it.

Shot in B&W and released in 1960, "Tall Story" was directed by Joshua Logan and starred Jane Fonda (in her screen debut) and Antony Perkins. The story is set at a the small campus of Custer College, a liberal arts school where the basketball team rules. Jane Fonda plays June Ryder, a student who transfers to Custer just to meet the star of the basketball team, Ray Blent (Perkins). Purpose: matrimony. The film is a comedy and while "Tall Story" laughs at the premise, it does so with a wink, knowing that the primary reason many coeds went to college was to find a husband.

The story is infused with an innocent air. Later in the film, we find that the big dilemma of the film is Ray flunking an exam, prohibiting him from playing in the big game. In 1960, there were Beach Blanket films and fluffy Rock Hudson/Doris Day films. In a few years, America's male students would still play basketball, but college attendance would mean an educational deferment from the military draft. In the early 60s, things would change quickly.

"Tall Story" is beautifully filmed. And the background music is excellent. The story is, of course, somewhat silly. But the cast makes it well worth watching.

Jane Fonda is fresh-faced, enthusiastic, and undeniably sexy. It would be five more years before what I consider her big break, "Cat Ballou", but the screen loves her from the first seconds she appears on film, when her character brashly advises two professors that they must compete for her enrollment in their classes. Fonda is about age 22 and working with the director (Logan) who convinced her to enter acting. She is wonderful in this role.

Tony Perkins is about age 27 during the filming, but he easily portrays the star collegiate athlete who the fans hoist on their shoulders. Is he convincing as an athlete? Probably not. But June is not interested in him for his athletic abilities; she thinks he's a dreamboat. 1960 is also the year that Hitchcock's "Psycho" would hit the big screen, transforming Tony Perkins' career.

In this film, professors are oddball academics, but lovable. The two professors are played by Ray Walston and Marc Connelly. As usual, Walston is delightful. Connelly stays right with him in this film, as does Anne Jackson who plays Walston's wife. Three years after this film, Walston would make an impact in the TV comedy "My Favorite Martian". Much later in his career, he would again play a teacher, the iconic Mr. Hand in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

"Tall Story" is dated, but deliciously so. The big game is going to be against the "Sputniks", the touring Soviet national team. Can Custer's men of the hardcourt withstand the Soviet machine? Of course, because Ray has a secret weapon--his "scientific" theory for shooting a basketball. The discerning viewer will note that his theory is nonsense and actually rooted in mysticism, evidenced by the way June, like a disturbance in the force, disrupts his abilities by standing too close to him.

The longest scene in the film is a flirting scene between Ray and June. Ray is no smooth Casanova. Perkins plays him as a gulping, romantic incompetent. But June manages to turn his head and redirect some of his ambitions.

In one scene they visit a trailer court for married couples. It is a picture of marital bliss (and young passions). June's friends live in a trailer dubbed "Lovesville, USA"--cozy (cramped) quarters decorated with hearts. The couple is played by Tom Laughlin (who would become Billy Jack in 1971) and Barbara Darrow, an actress I am unfamiliar with, but who I think dominates the screen when she is in it.

This film is adapted from the stage, something Joshua Logan had done successfully many times. Here he directs an extremely enjoyable cast, resulting in a comedy that is entertaining and fun to watch as a period piece.

Jane Fonda is so cute! She's the cutest girl in the whole world, and if you don't agree, you've obviously not yet seen Tall Story. She plays an irresistible college student who's desperately in love with basketball star Anthony Perkins. She quickly twists her professors, Marc Connelly and Ray Walston, around her finger and recruits them in her master plan. She takes all of Tony's classes, becomes a pom-pom girl to attend all his games, and tries to impress him with her incredible intellect, to distract him from the fact that she has only come to college to get him to marry her.

It's light, it's funny, it's dated, but it's incredibly fun during a matinee weekend with a fresh batch of popcorn and a bunch of girlfriends around to giggle with. We've all had a crush in our high school or college years, one we would have done anything to catch. The fact that Jane doesn't do anything devious or mean to win Tony shows what a sweet girl she is. If you need any more incentive to rent this oldie but goodie, it was her film debut! What a doll, and what a screen personality!