Basketball Jocks and Pom Pom Girls

Jane Fonda (in her film debut) and Anthony Perkins appear in a publicity still for the 1960 romantic comedy TALL STORY, directed by Joshua Logan.

The film debut of a soon-to-be-major movie star is not always an event of any significance when it first occurs. Nor is it often a movie with any artistic merit that can stand the test of time and become an important topic for analysis among film scholars. Jane Fonda’s movie debut, Tall Story, will surely never make the AFI’s top 100 films list and it wasn’t a commercial or critical success upon its release in 1960. Yet the film is important in the career arc of Ms. Fonda. It’s also an enjoyable, often witty romantic comedy that plays much better today than when it first premiered.

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The Jimmy Piersall Story

Anthony Perkins plays baseball player Jimmy Piersall in the 1957 biographical drama FEAR STRIKES OUT.

There are enough films about baseball and famous ballplayers in the American cinema to constitute its own subgenre but Fear Strikes Out (1957) is a special case that stands alone. Based on the autobiography by James A. Piersall, the former outfielder and shortstop for the Boston Red Sox, and Albert S. Hirshberg, the film is less about Jimmy Piersall’s brilliant though erratic career and more about his struggle against bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive illness). 

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