Tall Story

Tall Story is a 1960 American romantic comedy film made by Warner Bros., directed by Joshua Logan and starring Anthony Perkins with Jane Fonda, in her first screen role. It is based on the 1957 novel The Homecoming Game by Howard Nemerov, which was the basis of a successful 1959 Broadway play titled Tall Story, by the writing team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The film was a considerable departure from Logan's previous two projects, the drama Sayonara, which won multiple Academy Awards, and the blockbuster South Pacific. It was Robert Redford's first film — he played a basketball player in an uncredited role. The film is a farcical social satire of American campus life, making fun of the way college life can become a marriage market for some students. Fonda portrays a character who is the complete opposite of the independent liberated woman she later personified. Plot At Custer University, Ray Blent is an honor student and college basketball star. June Ryder has come to the university to study home economics and to find a husband. Both students and faculty are scandalized by Ryder's unashamed pursuit of Blent. She joins the pom-pom girls and attends all the classes taken by Blent to ensure she has maximum contact with him. Everyone is aware of her designs on the sexually naive Blent except for him. She succeeds in convincing him that she has an intelligent, inquiring mind that he admires, although this is all done through deception. She eventually gets Blent to fall for her and propose marriage. However, they need several thousand dollars to set up a home. Blent is secretly propositioned, via a radio message, by a gambling syndicate to lose a key game with a visiting Russian team. He refuses to do this, but is unable to return the money as he does not know who is behind the bribe. Rather than deliberately throw the game, he decides to deliberately fail an ethics exam, which automatically disqualifies him from playing. He is the best student in class, and the only way he can fail is by copying Ryder's paper. He realizes too late that his not playing is tantamount to ensuring his team will lose and that he has given the gamblers exactly what they want.