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, at the age of 22. It is based on the 1957 novel "The Homecoming Game" by Howard Nemerov, which was the basis of a successful 1959 Broadway play, called 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.

Tall Story 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 (Anthony Perkins) is an honor student and college basketball star. June Ryder (Jane Fonda) 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.