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"Psycho" and "Tall Story" (1960)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I've posted on "Tall Story" before but it was on TCM last night. I watched a lot of it and it remains an utterly bizarre companion piece to "Psycho" that, I contend, is a must see for Psycho buffs -- but that's not all that's worthy about it.

"Tall Story" was, I gather, a box office bomb, but it is famous for two things: Jane Fonda made her debut in it; and its Anthony Perkins last film BEFORE Psycho. I believe it was released only a few months before Psycho, in the spring of 1960. This was the last chance for audiences to take Anthony Perkins as a "normal boy next door." Except he isn't, really.

The film is a love story of its year -- with young lovers Tony and Jane (playing hormonal collegians) itching for sex but only if a marriage licensed is attached. Tony is the star basketball player; Jane is a cheerleader who is in college in search of her MRS degree. (I've sometimes opined that Tall Story is the motivation for Jane's veer into radicalism about a decade later.)

The film had a big director attached -- Joshua Logan (South Pacific), who did a trailer Hitchcock style -- on camera and talking to us about his "major new find" Jane Fonda(daughter of Logan's pal Henry Fonda -- that's why Logan did this small, minor b/w film.)

Two amusing character men are there in support: Ray Walston (in his Apartment year and two years after the Devil in Damn Yankees) as the math professor who is flunking Perkins(its a dry run for his teacher Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High), and Murray Hamilton -- 7 years from playing Mr. Robinson, 15 years from playing the Mayor in Jaws and here coming off memorable supporting roles in Anatomy of a Murder and The FBI Story(where, as Jimmy Stewart's fellow FBI agent, gets the great exchange after gunfire: "You OK? Good...because I'm not." And dies.) Hamilton's the basketball coach out to force Walston to give Tony another test.

But that's a subplot. As is the OTHER subplot of unseen gangsters trying to bribe/force Tony into throwing a exhibition game against -- the Russians! ("Do it for international relations," an unseen voice over a car radio implores Tony.)

No, the REAL plot is about how a young, luscious, oversexed Jane Fonda is out to snare her man and how -- quite interestingly -- a nervous, tic-ridden Tony Perkins is most receptive and clearly driven by sexual desire himself. This IS a sexy movie except for the fact that...it stars Norman Bates.

Really, it does. Perkins' every line reading and intonation sounds not only like Norman, but like Norman in SPECIFIC Psycho scenes: "Oh, he sounds like the parlor scene here...oh, he's talking like he did to Arbogast here..." Same with facial expressions, gulping throat, hands in pockets, how he WALKS.

The only real difference is a shorter jock's haircut -- almost a crew cut, which doesn't look good on Perkins. And one notices that while Perkins is a beauty of a young man, there remains something weird to his overall countenance. There are times in "Tall Story" where he looks like a space alien under assault from La Fonda.

"Tall Story" makes the case for Hitchcock's brilliance in giving Perkins the role of Norman Bates: in Tall Story, Perkins is handsome and youthful but way too WEIRD to play a "normal college jock." Hitchcock elected to cast Perkins AS a very weird person...and then used Perkins' beauty and gentleness to draw sympathy and to make Perkins' personality finally seem "right at home." Norman Bates IS Anthony Perkins, as Hitchcock re-designed the character from Bloch's overweight middle-aged man.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

There is a scene about mid-way through Tall Story that interested me in various ways.

Tony and Jane go to an off-campus trailer park to visit a young married couple who live in a small trailer. The young man is played by Tom Laughlin, a rather rugged chap(in contrast to Perkins) who would have brief fame 11 years later as "Billy Jack." I don't know who played Laughlin's wife, but she is presented as being in a black, sheer negligee that shows off a lot of 1960 bosom.

The message of this scene is clear, and its the message of the first scene in Psycho: when you are married, you can do a lot of things...you'll swing! The idea is that Laughlin and his negligee-wife are having sex all the time, any time, that's what you can do when you are married. And Jane and Tony are practically bursting at the seams wanting that for THEMSELVES.

And then comes the piece de resistance: Laughlin shows Tony and Jane the teeny-tiny little SHOWER in the trailer. He notes that he and his wife often take showers together ("Sometimes we even turn the water on") and then directs Tony and Jane to pull back the shower curtain and climb in clothed together. Yes its Tony Perkins in Another 1960 shower scene and -- spoiler alert -- "Tall Story" will end with Tony and Jane married and understood to be naked and necking IN that shower.

Anthony Perkins told Dick Cavett that he believed Tall Story to be his worst movie. Interesting he made his worst movie just months before he made his best movie. But that's show biz. Hitchcock had his sights on Tony Perkins for a movie since seeing Fear Strikes Out in 1957, but Tall Story almost seems to DEMAND that Perkins be rescued from romantic comedy and given the persona that would fit him for decades to come: handsome boyish weird guy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Side-issue: the debuting Jane Fonda sure had it going on. Henry Fonda's beautiful male features transferred to Jane with a knockout female beauty that is apparent all the time in Tall Story. Logan was a skilled enough director that he gives Jane plenty of close-ups in which Fonda transfixes Perkins -- and us -- with some come-hither looks that would melt steel. It was one of those times where Hollywood nepotism was entirely justified -- a star WAS born. Fonda overcomes the sexist(for today) character she is playing but emphasizing the young woman's mad passion for Tony Perkins. And we buy it.

We know today that Jane Fonda spent most of the sixties as a sex kitten to rival Ann-Margret -- big fluffy hair, total fixation on lust, come hither expressions and a shapely curvaceous figure. She married French film director Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot's ex, and followed his muse straight to the defining role of "Barbarella"(1968.)

But soon Fonda divorced Vadim, rejected her sex kitten hood and reinvented herself as a tough radical type in movies like "They Shoot Horses Don't They," "Klute" and "Steelyard Blues." THAT Jane Fonda favored a seventies shag and a certain sex-averse toughness(even as a hooker in Klute) and with her next husband, the rather ugly firebrand Tom Hayden...left Tall Story way behind.

Which is all the more reason to watch Tall Story in a state of astonished, amused befuddlement. Tony Perkins as Joe Basketball, Big Man on Campus! Jane Fonda as a woman whose only goal in life is marriage and kids! Norman Bates and Barbarella.

I found the movie fascinating. Bad, but fascinating.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

PS. Tom Laughlin, the rugged young man who plays the over-sexed married trailer owner and would be Billy Jack later, was considered for the role of Sam Loomis by Hitchcock, writes Stephen Rebello. He strikes me as wrong for the role -- too young and too coarse for Janet Leigh.

And there is a weird, tough coda to the scene where Laughlin gives Tony and Jane a tour of his trailer. Tony and Jane want to get married, buy the trailer from Laughlin, and leave college. Tony has some of the money saved to buy the trailer, but not all of it. He asks if he can put a down payment on the trailer. Laughlin's face clouds:

Laughlin: Hey, sorry pal. Four days ago, I was a carefree college student. But today I'm a businessman. And I require CASH.

Some pal. All this leads to Tony and Jane dithering over trying to borrow money from rich relatives to buy the trailer and get married. They are cash poor, you see.

They are Sam and Marion.

Hell, maybe LOTS of young people in 1960 felt like Sam and Marion , or Jane and Tony. Young, in love, hormonal...and too broke to move forward.