Tall Story (1960) Is Fonda's First and Perkins' Last Pre-Norman
When did dreamy close-ups in movies end, or havethey ended? Certainly ones like given Jane Fonda in Tall Story stopped, as in step right in and join her for a clinch sort that made
So why have I watched several times? Maybe there's pity for a thing so displaced in a changing culture. Look where Jane Fonda went from here. Barbarella was ahead by less than a decade, with Euro sex dramas during interim that got her spread over Playboy pages, an unauthorized use, but Fonda was by then vanguard of lax standards, so they'd argue she assumed a risk. Remarkable thing is her still working, as in a Netflix sitcom, plus feature reunion with Robert Redford (supposedly a small part in Tall Story, though I couldn't spot him). That's going on sixty years when you count neophyte stage work, longer than father Henry was active. Used to be news when a Gloria Swanson or Lillian Gish showed up in new stuff, but now we've got new epoch of working antiques, only more of them, lots more. Will
But back to Tall Story. It was Broadway spawned, was saucy, and again put forth proposition, known from a Plastic Age and since, that college was a Petri dish for young love, and hunting ground for husbands, that notion already discredited by dawn of the 60's, and soon to be unthinkable as a plot device. Jane Fonda is frank here as to mate-quest, and majors in home economics toward that end. Her quarry is first-billed Anthony Perkins, and here is where Tall Story achieves spooky resonance, the picture released but months in front of Psycho. There must have been heck of a fault line between audiences that saw Tall Story before Psycho and those that saw it after. Talk about adjustment issues! Tony was twitchy at best of times, but at least not dangerous, that is before he was
Much of Tall Story is known fact of athletics being true business of colleges rather than education. "Ethics" professor Ray Walston cites $4,000 as "a year's salary." Should I Google and find out if that really was case for 1960 instructors? Cold war fun is had when "
