Tall Story (1960)

A tall young girl (Jane Fonda) goes to a college that has the best basketball team so that she can find a tall husband. She sets her cap on the team's star player (Anthony Perkins). Based on the Broadway play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse which in turn was based on the novel THE HOMECOMING GAME by Howard Nemerov and directed by Joshua Logan (SOUTH PACIFIC). This rather lame comedy is so innocuous that one can't even get disturbed by its central plot point of a girl going to college strictly to find a husband rather than an education. The irony of a young Jane Fonda (in her film debut) playing the eager beaver dying to be a housewife isn't lost on the viewer. One can see where the laughs are supposed to when the lines tumble out flatly and you think, "Oh, I'm supposed to laugh here." Perkins and Fonda (even at this stage of her career) eke by on charisma but the other cast members aren't so lucky. With Ray Walston, Anne Jackson, Tom Laughlin, Marc Connelly, Barbara Darrow and Van Williams.