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Did anyone else catch this a few weeks ago when it aired on TCM? Though I'm not particularly enamored with Joshua Logan's output, he's directed so few films that I figured it couldn't hurt to seek out a rarity to come closer to completing his oeuvre, but to say this exceeded low expectations is an understatement.

The film is a synthesized exemplar of a prevalent comedic model of the late 50s/early 60s, the "innocent" sex comedy, a genre which presents itself as good clean fun while constantly undermining its frontward wholesome morality with a more progressive satirical bite. That Tall Story is legitimately funny on the family friendly level is what makes it all the more charming: it isn't content to be smug or superior, not does it rest on easy audience pleasing bonafides. Rather, it takes a whipsmart script (one that still retains a lot of bite despite being no doubt neutered by the censors) and pairs it with a willing and able cast. Jane Fonda makes her film debut as a ludicrously kittenish frosh who has come to college to find a husband and immediately zeroes in on Anthony Perkins' BMOC. I've always thought Perkins showed an untapped comedic potential, but I guess someone was drawing from it after all. While Fonda and Perkins present real adeptness at timing, especially during their riotous, fogged-up courtship early in the film, the surprising MVP in the pic is that for better or worse inescapable figure of 60s comedy, Ray Walston, as the university's harried ethics professor. It's a brilliant comic performance (like, ever) that turns the innate aloofness in Walston's typical onscreen personas into the driving force behind an internal, madly logical illogic approach to the constant barrage of these two young things who want nothing more than to win the big game, pass their classes, jump each other, &c. His behavior of course speaks to the culture clash kids vs adults thematics that spurred some of the most interesting popular culture artifacts of the 50s and 60s, and it's in this aspect that the film is arguably most successfully navigated from merely good film to a great one.

There was a Warners logo afterwards, so presumably this will be getting dumped in the Archives, but who can say? It certainly deserves a wider audience, as I genuinely found it to be a key film of this period, and what a delightful marker it is!

Just announced for release via Warner Archives

I really enjoyed this as what appears to be a college sex comedy constantly diluted with intelligence in diverse interests to become a commodious screwball. There is a more welcoming tone to shifting generational perspectives that reminded me of Peyton Place if it focused on one arc and played it for comedy. While this film maintains the ‘olde’ 50s generational equality in acknowledging both intellectualization and athletics as admirable avenues of experience, it doubles down by proposing that letting go of ideology and having fun is as important as socially expected actions and achievement. Dating can be prioritized alongside studies without the universal judgment from adults that a melodrama might draw philosophical calamity from, though without at least some there wouldn’t be much to say here - whether seriously or for comedic effect, and Ray Walston serves a terrific purpose along with being just plain funny.

I especially liked the other adults’ playfulness, best emphasized in the secret bookie betting when out to dinner. Walston’s wife’s liberal attitudes towards life including Fonda and Perkins’ romantic courtship (she even gives them a space, her space, to flirt - while taking the responsibility of caring for her children for crying out loud) is a breath of fresh air and a sign of blossoming traditionalist feminist theories to come. Whether chasing boys, chasing thrills, or chasing books - all agendas feel fair here, and the meshing of the seasoned with the youth successfully deconstructs the myth that adults are removed from their own juvenescence. Everyone is allowed to flaunt their spirits, and so screwball becomes rooted in a particular context of the 50s->60s culture shift of ideological breakdown to external identity formation without losing its bearings on the strengths of the subgenre; if anything it projects those strengths on this specific era to show that the anxiety around change doesn’t need to be totally serious, but can be amusing too. After all, if adults can be self-reflective and find their own inner child, maybe we can bridge change with understanding rather than oppressive fracturing. Of course this isn’t a message movie, but in taking the unexpected route of blanket validation for development in youth by retaining that youth in adulthood, a safe space is created to draw laughs, charms, and optimistic satisfaction for the pleasures in life that don’t stop once you reach graduation day.