TALL STORY

US, 1960, 90 minutes, Black and white.
Anthony Perkins, Jane Fonda, Ray Walston, Marc Connolly, Anne Jackson, Murray Hamilton, Tom Lachlan.
Directed by Joshua Logan.

Tall Story is a slight romantic comedy of the early 1960s. It is set on an idealised campus where the Americans are to play the Russian visitors at basketball. Interestingly, the film was released a year before Nikita Khrushchev’s tantrums and the building of the Berlin Wall.

Anthony Perkins had just appeared in Psycho and had made his mark in a number of romantic films as well as serious films, with his neurotic personality, in the 1950s. Jane Fonda was introduced in this film and went on to a very successful career, political controversy, marriage to significantly high-flying husbands as well as being an expert on women’s fitness. She won Oscars for Klute in 1971 and Coming Home in 1978.

The film was directed by Joshua Logan whose successes were principally on stage. His films tended to be large, colourful and sometimes cumbersome. This one is a black and white exception. His films include Mister Roberts, South Pacific, Picnic, Camelot.

1. The significance of the title, tone, humour?

2. The conventions of romantic comedy? American romantic comedy? How enjoyable an example, how conventional, better than usual?

3. The American world of 1960? The style of the film: black and white photography, music, songs? Heroes and heroines, university students, romance, ambitions? How different now? the fresh approach, calculated? How naive does it seem now? Nostalgia?

4. The world of the university, study, science, philosophy, the academics, the administration, sport and the coaches, the coverage of sport by television, fans, the status of basketball? How well did the film re-create this world?

5. The topicality of the Russians playing basketball with the Americans?

6. The contrast of the stuffy and academic world with reality? The values of both? Human compromise? The background of academics, the police, gangsters?

7. Anthony Perkin’s style as Ray? The all-American hero, the touch of nervousness? Status at the college, sport, study, admiration for study, taxi work, baby-sitting, romance? His sense of integrity, the money and the bribe, his decision to fail the exam and cheat from June, his confrontation of the difficulty, the exam, the heroism, the courting of June in the caravan, the happy ending and reconciliation? A pleasant American hero?

8. Jane Fonda's first film and her style as June? The all-American girl, her ambitions at university, study, baby-sitting, pursuit of Ray, the caravan, the truth. the reconciliation, the happy ending with the money? An American heroine?

9. The humour with the Sullivans? would this happen to Ray and June? Humanity, stuffiness, comic situations, principles? Charlie and his role at the university, the president, the coach?

10. The humorous sequences, the university life. the sports sequences, the gangsters? An entertaining film? The treatment of typical American values?