Tall Story

The college basketball season may have ended a month ago, but it was only recently that I watched Tall Story, the movie that introduced Jane Fonda as a movie actress.

Fonda plays June Ryder, a groupie -- not that they use the word, but she's pretty honest about what she's doing -- who enrolls at Custer College, a school known for its basketball program. She's a home economics major looking for a husband; there was a belief back in the day about women going to college to get an Mrs. degree, and Jane tells the two professors she runs into that she picked Custer because she's tall and they have that top-flight basketball team. In fact, the two professors she ran into with her bike are just the two she's looking for. Prof. Osman (Marc Connelly) is a chemistry professor, while Prof. Sullivan (Ray Walston) is hoping to get tenure in the philosophy department with his courses on ethics.

June wants to see these two because she has room in her schedule for one elective, and she somehow knows that star basketball player Ray Blent (Anthony Perkins just before Psycho) is taking an elective from each of them, and she wants to be in a class with Ray as she's decided that he's going to be the man she pursues as a husband. Ray isn't just tall; he's the star of the basketball team. Through some finagling with the dean, June is able to get into both of the electives that Ray is taking.

As you can guess, the two fall in love. Now, this being the Code era, they're not yet allowed to have sex, so we can't learn if the old wives' tale about athletes having sex just before the game is bad for performance. In any case, Blent and the rest of the team are preparing for the big game against a Soviet team that's been doing a barnstorming tour of US universities in the name of international good will.

However, some shady character gets a hold of Ray through his work-study job for the college-run taxi company, offering him big money to throw the game against the Soviet team. This is an ethical dilemma, but things get even worse for the basketball team when Ray actually fails his test in the ethics course he's taking! This one test somehow makes him academically ineligible. Most of the people at the college want Prof. Sullivan to give him a make-up test, but Sullivan actually has ethics.

Tall Story is a surprisingly limp movie, considering the caliber of talent that went into this movie. Even though it's Fonda's debut, she's already a capable enough actress, not helped one bit by the material here. Perkins was a good actor too, and the poor guy has to get this script which is full of plot holes. It feels like material that would work better for a half-hour sitcom where the writers had to come up with wacky new ideas week after week. Drawn out into a 90-minute movie, it just doesn't work. But, as always, judge for yourself.