Henry fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda (Grand Island, Nebraska, May 16, 1905-Los Angeles, August 12, 1982) was an American film and theater actor, winner of the Oscars, Globe Gold, BAFTA and Tony. In 1999, Henry Fonda was named by the American Film Institute as the sixth greatest male star in Hollywood history.

From 1935 to 1981, Fonda had one of the most prolific (113 starring films) and successful careers in motion picture history. The directors raffled him off to work under his orders and he did it with the utmost naturalness, as if acting were a sixth sense. He became known by the nickname "One-Take Fonda"; (the Fonda One-Take), since he was able to instantly embroider his role, without needing to repeat the takes dozens of times. In his early years he proved his worth in titles such as Henry Hathaway's The Way of the Lone Pine (1936), Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937), Jezebel (1938), Henry King's Land of the Bold (1939), Young Lincoln (1939) and Indomitable Hearts (1939), the latter directed by John Ford.

The decade of the forties was the absolute consecration, thanks among others to The Grapes of Wrath (1940), again directed by John Ford, and for which he received his first nomination to the Oscar. Their lives at that time were parallel, also collaborating in Pasión de los fuertes (1946), El fugitivo (1947) and Fort Apache (1948). His second Oscar nomination was for Sidney Lumet's Twelve Angry Men (1957).

He also worked alongside many other renowned filmmakers, such as King Vidor in War and Peace (1956), Alfred Hitchcock in False Guilty (1957), Edward Dmytryk in The Man with the Golden Guns (1959), Otto Preminger in Tempest Over Washington (1962), Sergio Leone in Until His Time Came (1968), and Joseph L. Mankiewicz in Cheaters Day (1970).

In 1980 he was awarded the honorary Oscar for his entire career and, a year later, he received the best actor statuette for Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981), in which he starred alongside to Katharine Hepburn and her daughter Jane Fonda. Soon after, on August 12, 1982, he died in Los Angeles.

Fonda was also the patriarch of a long line of actors, including his children Jane and Peter Fonda and his grandchildren Bridget Fonda and Troy Garity. In 1999, he was named sixth in actor history on AFI's 100 Years...100 American Film Institute Stars list.

Biography

Early years and education

Henry Jaynes Fonda was born on May 16, 1905 in Grand Island, Nebraska, into a family of Italian origin, the son of William Brace Fonda (a printer) and his wife, Herberta (Jaynes). The family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906. The Fonda family roots are in Genoa, Italy, later emigrating to the Netherlands in the 15th century. In 1642, a branch of the family immigrated to the American colony of New Netherlands on the West Coast of North America. They were among the first Dutch settlers to settle in what is now New York, founding the town of Fonda, New York. In 1888, many of their descendants emigrated to Nebraska.

Fonda and Sylvia Sidney in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1936)

Fonda grew up Christian Science, though he was baptized Episcopalian at St. Stephen's Episcopalian Church^{[citation needed]} on Grand Island. They were a united and very supportive family, especially in matters of health, since they avoided doctors because of their religion.Despite this religious past, he converted to agnosticism. Fonda was a short, shy boy who tended to avoid girls except his sisters, and he was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. He worked part-time at his father's print shop and envisioned a possible career as a journalist. Later, he worked out of school at a telephone company. He also spent his time drawing. Fonda was an active member in the Boy Scouts; Teichmann claims that he rose to the rank of Eagle Scout. However, this was denied throughout. When he was fourteen, he and his father witnessed the brutal lynching of Will Brown of Omaha in 1919. This infuriated the young man. Fonda and maintained a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Recalling these incidents in an interview for the BBC in 1975 he said:

"It was the most horrendous vision I've ever seen. My hands were wet, there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man hanging from the end of a rope."

In her senior year of high school, Fonda grew to six feet tall but continued to maintain her shy personality. She went to the University of Minnesota, where she studied journalism, although she did not graduate. There, he was a member of Chi Delta Xi, the local fraternity, and later got a job with the Retail Credit Company.

Early years of acting

At age 20, Fonda began his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when a friend of his mother Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) invited him to join the youth cast of the play You and I, where he plays Ricky. From that moment, he fell in love with the stage, learning everything about the world of theater. When he led the cast of the play Merton of the Movies, he realized the attraction of the profession, as it allowed him to divert attention from his own shy personality and create theatrical characters based on the words of someone else's script. Fonda decided to quit his job and travel east in 1928 to seek his fortune.

He landed on Cape Cod to play a minor role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. A friend took him to Falmouth, where he joined and in a short time became one of the most recognized members of the University Players, a summer troupe. There, he worked with Margaret Sullavan, who would later become his first wife. Later lifelong friend James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left late in the 1931–32 season after make his professional debut in the production The Jest by Sem Benelli. Joshua Logan, a young Princeton sophomore who had had a double role on the show, cast Fonda as Tornaquinci, "an old Italian man with a long white beard and even longer hair". Also in the cast of The Jest with Fonda and Logan were Bretaigne Windust, Kent Smith, and Eleanor Phelps.

Shortly thereafter, Fonda moved in with his wife, Margaret Sullavan. The marriage was short-lived, but when James Stewart went to New York, his luck changed. United by Joshua Logan, "Jimmy" and "Hank" they found they had a lot in common, as long as they didn't discuss politics (Fonda was a Democrat while Stewart was a Republican). They became roommates and honed their skills on Broadway. Fonda appeared in stage productions from 1926 to 1934. They fared no better than many Americans with and without work during the early part of the Great Depression, sometimes without enough money to ride the subway.

Your entry into Hollywood

Fonda en Jezebel.

Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. His first role was the 20th Century Fox project Contrastes (The Farmer Takes a Wife) a the orders of Victor Fleming with Janet Gaynor as co-star. His role was the same as the one he played in the stage version with which he had gained recognition as an actor. The success was such that Fox decided to make Fonda a long-term contract with Fonda a salary of $3,000 a week. The same actor recalled in an interviewː

"Suddenly I found that they offered me so much money to make a movie that, although I had no interest in it, I thought it would be stupid not to accept. So I found myself becoming a movie actor."

Stewart followed him to Hollywood and put them back together as roommates, right next door to Greta Garbo. In 1935 Fonda would star in the RKO production of I Dream Too Much with opera star Lily Pons. The New York Times heralded the actor as "Henry Fonda, the most likeable of the new batch of young romantics." Fonda's career was launched, and that led him to accompany Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the first Technicolor feature film shot on location.

The crush between the camera and Fonda's face —the appearance of an honest citizen who only seems to care about not losing his dignity— was immediate. He starred with her ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, a brief revival of their relationship that led to a brief but temporary consideration of getting back together. get marry. Fonda followed his successful journey with You Only Live Once (1937), directed by Fritz Lang and in which he once again worked with Sylvia Sidney. His film career began to gain momentum with roles such as Bette Davis' fiancé in her Academy Award-winning performance in Jezebel (Jezebel, 1938) or that of Abraham Lincoln. in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), his first collaboration with director John Ford and the role of Frank James in Land of the Bold (Jesse James) (1939) starring Tyrone Power and Nancy Kelly. His other 1939 film was Drums Along the Mohawk, again directed by Ford.

Fonda en The grapes of wrath

Fonda's success as a star would come from Ford when he chose him to lead the cast of the film version of John Steinbeck's classic The Grapes of Wrath > (1940). A reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who would have preferred Tyrone Power, changed his mind at the success and agreed to sign Fonda to a seven-year deal with his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. In addition, Fonda earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination., in which many consider his best performance. After this, Fonda would work again with Fritz Lang to star in The Return of Frank James (The Return of Frank James) (1940) with Gene Tierney, would be the interpretive partner of Barbara Stanwyck in The three nights of Eva (The Lady Eve) by Preston Sturges (1941) and would coincide again with Tierney in the famous screwball Rings on Her Fingers (1942). Already in 1943, Fonda would embroider a performance again with the western The Ox-Bow Incident (Ox-Bow Incident) , which would be a box office success.

Service in World War II

Fonda in the Second World War

Fonda enlisted in the United States Army to fight in World War II, sayingː

"I don't want to be in a fictitious war in a study."

He and Stewart had previously assisted in raising money for the defense of Great Britain. Fonda served for three years, initially as headquarters third class on the destroyer USS Satterlee. He was later promoted to lieutenant in the Central Pacific Air Combat Intelligence Center and was awarded the Bronze Star and Navy Presidential Unit Citation. After being discharged from active duty due to "excess of rank& #34;, Fonda was transferred to the Naval Reserve, serving there for three years (1945-1948).

Post-war career

After the war, Fonda took a career break to party in Hollywood and enjoy civilian life. Stewart and Fonda would invite musicians such as Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Dinah Shore, and Nat King Cole. With the latter, Fonda would receive piano lessons.In 1946, she would return to work to play Wyatt Earp in Passion of the Strong (My Darling Clementine) (1946), again under the orders of John Ford. Fonda would make seven films in those years until the extinction of the contract with Fox. The last of them Between love and sin (Daisy Kenyon) by Otto Preminger in 1947. That same year, he would star in El fugitive (The Fugitive), in what would be the first project for Ford's new production company, Argosy Pictures. In 1948 he would appear in the director's next project, Fort Apache , alongside John Wayne and Shirley Temple in what is considered his first role as an adult.

Fonda in a photography of theatrical function Mister Roberts (1950)

The actor turned down another long-term contract from a major studio to focus on his return to Broadway. He focused especially on embodying his own commander in the war in the now Mister Roberts. The comedy sets us in the United States Navy during World War II in the South Pacific where Lieutenant Douglas A. Roberts (Fonda) wages a private war against a tyrannical captain. He won the 1948 Tony Award for this role. Fonda followed on stage with two more plays (and corresponding US-wide tours) Point of No Return and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. After eight years away from the screen, he returned to the big screen with the same performance as Lieutenant Roberts in Layover in Hawaii (Mister Roberts) with James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon. On the set of Mister Roberts, Fonda came to blows with director John Ford and swore he would never work for the director again. While he kept that promise for years, Fonda raved about Ford in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford and in a documentary about Ford's career alongside Ford and James Stewart. Fonda refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of Mr. Roberts.

After Stopover in Hawaii, Fonda was part of the great cast of the Paramount Pictures production to bring to the screen the Leo Tolstoy classic War and Peace (1956) that takes us is to Russia in 1812 during the Napoleonic invasion. Fonda plays Pierre Bezukhov in a shoot that lasted almost two years. That same year, Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956 in The Wrong Man, playing a man who is falsely accused of a robbery.

Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Fonda in television production The petrified forest

In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into production with 12 Angry Men, in a film in which he starred. The film is based on a Reginald Rose television production directed by Sidney Lumet. The low cost of production meant that the shoot was done in 17 days. It was a hard cast that included Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam and E. G. Marshall. The intense story about twelve jurors who decide the fate of a young man accused of murder was well received by critics around the world. Fonda earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. At first, the film did not have the desired public acceptance, but after gaining recognition and awards, it turned out to be a success. Despite the result, Fonda vowed that he would never produce a film again, fearing that failing as a producer could derail his acting career. After acting in different westerns Outlaw Hunter (The Tin Star) (1957) and The Man with the Golden Guns (Warlock) (1959), Fonda returned to production for an NBC television series with The Deputy (1959–1961), in which he plays Marshal Simon Fry.

Fonda en The Conquest of the West

During the 1960s, Fonda was part of a series of war films, beginning with The Longest Day and the Cinerama production The Conquest of the West (How the West Was Won) in 1962 and First Victory (In Harm's Way) (1965) and The Battle of the Bulge (Battle of the Bulge). In the Cold War thriller Fail-Safe (1964), Fonda plays the President of the United States who tries to prevent a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets. after American bombers are mistakenly ordered to attack the USSR.

In 1968, Fonda played 'Frank' in Until her time came (Once Upon a Time in the West) , by Sergio Leone, the only villainous role she played in her entire career. After initially turning down the role, he was talked into taking it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone (who had previously tried to cast him to play the Man With No Name in their Dollar Trilogy, a role later taken on by Clint Eastwood), who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to accept the role. Fonda had planned to wear a pair of brown contacts, but Leone preferred the paradox of contrasting close-ups of Fonda's innocent blue eyes with the vicious personality of the character Fonda played.

Fonda's relationship with Jimmy Stewart survived political disagreements. Fonda was a liberal Democrat while Stewart was a conservative Republican. After a heated discussion, they decided to never talk about politics with each other again in order to preserve their friendship. Both led the cast of Los malvados de Firecreek (Firecreek). Two years later, the couple met again in another western The Cheyenne Social Club (The Cheyenne Social Club) , this one with a more comic tone. The first time Fonda and Stewart worked together was on A Survey Called a Miracle (On Our Merry Way) (1948) with William Demarest and Fred MacMurray in the cast.

Last years of his career

In the 1970s, Fonda continued to work on stage, film, and television. In 1970, Fonda appeared in three films The Cheyenne Social Club, Too Late the Hero and There Was a Crooked Man, where he shares the spotlight with Kirk Douglas.

Fonda and Guy Madison in a TV show scene The Smith Family 1972.

Fonda returned to work in foreign productions and on television, which provided professional sustenance during a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. She starred in the ABC series The Smith Family between 1971 and 1972. She also worked on a telefilm of John Steinbeck's classic The Red Pony in 1973, and which gave her Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the box office failure of the film, Ash Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) , he embarked on three Italian productions between 1973 and 1974. The best known of them was My name is... None (Il mio nome è Nessuno), featured Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are clouded by some sort of "fan". Fonda continued to be linked to acting in his last years, including different roles in the theater. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, Clarence Darrow, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.

Fonda appeared in the revival of The Time of Your Life which opened on March 17, 1972, at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles, where Fonda co-stars with Richard Dreyfuss, Gloria Grahame, Ron Thompson, Strother Martin, Jane Alexander, Lewis J. Stadlen, Richard X. Slattery, and Pepper Martin directed by Edwin Sherin.

But Fonda's health was deteriorating. The first symptoms of her came after a performance in April 1974, when she collapsed from exhaustion. After the onset of a cardiac arrhythmia caused by prostate cancer, she was fitted with a pacemaker after cancer surgery. Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After her work on a 1978 play, "The First Monday in October," she followed her doctors' advice and left the play, though she continued to work in films. and television.

Fonda ended the 1970s in a series of disaster movies. The first of these would be the 1977 Italian thriller Tentacles and Rollercoaster, in which Fonda appears with George Segal, Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. She reappeared alongside an all-star group of actors including Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray and José Ferrer in the action film The Swarm. He could also be seen in the big production Meteor (Meteor) (for the second time in his career that he has played the President of the United States), with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden, and in the Canadian production Emergencia (City on Fire), alongside Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Finally, Fonda had a small role alongside his son, Peter, in Wanda Nevada (1979), with Brooke Shields.

As Fonda's health worsened, she began to space out her jobs. On the other hand, critics began to recognize Fonda's legacy to the industry. In 1979, she received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. An award that was given to him with a member of the Academy, his eternal friend Jimmy Stewart. In 1979, he also received the Kennedy Center Honor by the American Theater Hall of Fame for his interpretive mark left on Broadway. But the big prizes, the Golden Globe and the Oscar would arrive in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

Fonda continued acting into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions she appeared in before her death were made for television. For the small screen, he adapted Preston Jones' plays The Oldest Living Graduate and Gideon's Trumpet (with Fay Wray in his last performance) for the one who won his last Emmy nomination.

On Golden Pond in 1981, an adaptation of the Ernest Thompson play, would mark the end of Fonda's successful career. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, along with Fonda and her daughter, Jane. The elderly Fonda played an emotionally fragile and distant father who becomes more accessible towards the end of his life. Jane Fonda commented that elements of the story mimicked his real-life relationship with his father and helped them solve certain problems with him. The actress bought the film rights in the hope that her father would play the role, later describing it as "a gift to my father who was such an incredible success."

Premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics. With 10 Academy nominations, the film grossed more than $120 million at the box office, making it the surprise of the year. In addition, this work finally gave him the Oscar for best actor that he had been denied in his entire life. Fonda was too ill to attend the ceremony and his daughter Jane accepted on his behalf. She said that when he accepted the award, his father would probably quip, "Well, I'm out of luck." Years later, Fonda's performance would be remembered as a "brutally honest portrait of a frightened old age." to the best actor with 76 years.

His posthumous performance was in the 1981 television drama Summer Solstice with Myrna Loy. It was filmed after "At the Golden Pool" end and Fonda's health rapidly deteriorating.

Private life

Married couples and children

Fonda was married five times and had three children, one of whom was adopted. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 was short-lived, ending in their separation and subsequent divorce in 1933. Two years later, Fonda became engaged to actress and singer Shirley Ross. By the end of the year, it had been widely reported, among others, by then-syndicated columnist Ed Sullivan, that the couple were engaged, with wedding plans underway. Despite the news, the couple reconsidered, and by January 1936, it was reported that Fonda was now he was seeing actress Virginia Bruce.

A little less than a year ago, Fonda married Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, widow of wealthy businessman George Tuttle Brokaw. The Brokaws had a daughter born in 1931. Fonda met his future wife at Denham Studios in England in the shooting of Wings of the Morning, the first film in Europe filmed in Technicolor. From this union came two children, Jane (1937) and Peter (1940-2019), who also became reputable actors.

Fonda with her sons Jane and Peter in the '50s.

In August 1949, Fonda announced that she had filed for divorce from Frances in order to remarry. She commented that the 13 years of her marriage had not been happy.Fonda's harsh confession caused Frances serious psychological problems and for this reason she was admitted to Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in January 1950 for treatment. In fact, she committed suicide on April 14 of that same year. Before her death, she wrote six notes to various close friends, but left none for Fonda. Fonda quickly arranged a private funeral with only her and her mother-in-law, Sophie Seymour, in attendance. Years later, Dr. Margaret Gibson, the psychiatrist who had treated Frances at Austen Riggs, described Henry Fonda as "a cold and self-absorbed person, a complete narcissist."

In 1950, Fonda married Susan Blanchard. She was 21 years old and the daughter of famed interior designer Dorothy Hammerstein and stepsister of Oscar Hammerstein II. The couple adopted a girl, Amy Fishman (1953). They divorced three years later. Blanchard lived captivated by the figure of Fonda, and described her role in the marriage as "a geisha", doing everything possible to please him, dealing with and solving problems that the actor would not recognize.

In 1957 Fonda married Italian Baroness Adera Franchetti. They divorced in 1961. Shortly thereafter, in 1965, Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams for the fifth time and they were together until the actor's death in 1982.

Fonda and her son at the father's wedding with Susan Brewer in 1961

Fonda's relationship with her children was described as "emotionally distant." Fonda hated displays of feeling both to himself and to others, and this was a constant part of his character. Whenever he felt his emotional wall was breaking down, he would have angry outbursts, exhibiting a furious temper that terrified his family. In Peter Fonda's 1998 autobiography Don't Tell Dad (1998), describes how he was never sure of his father's affection for him. He never told his father that he loved him until he was old, and Peter finally heard, "I love you, son. " His daughter Jane rejected her father's friendships with Republican actors like John Wayne and James Stewart. Their relationship became extremely strained when Jane Fonda became a left-wing activist.

Jane Fonda said she felt separated from her father, especially during her early days as an actress. In 1958 she met Lee Strasberg while visiting her father in Malibu. The Fonda and Strasberg families were neighbors, and she had developed a friendship with Strasberg's daughter, Susan. Jane Fonda began studying acting with Strasberg, learning the techniques of "The Method," of which Strasberg was a renowned proponent. This turned out to be a turning point in her career. As Jane Fonda developed her ability as an actress, she became frustrated with her father's talent which, to her, seemed like an effortless display of skill.

Political convictions

Although initially a registered Republican, Fonda switched parties and was an ardent supporter of Democratic Party ideas and an admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1960 Fonda appeared in a commercial campaign supporting Democratic candidate John F.Kennedy. The ad focused on the candidate's service in the Navy during World War II, specifically the infamous PT-109 incident.He also supported Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election.

Death and legacy

Romanian seal commemorating the actor

Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982 of a heart attack. Fonda's wife Shirlee and her children Jane and Peter were by his side He had prostate cancer but that was not the cause of death as the death certificate.

Fonda had requested that no funeral be held and her body was cremated. President Ronald Reagan, formerly, praised Fonda as "a true professional dedicated to excellence in his craft." He graced the screen with a sincerity and precision that made him a legend.

The house where Fonda was born in 1905 is preserved at the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. The Fonda Theater in Hollywood, originally known as the Carter DeHaven Music Box, was named after the actor in 1985 by the Nederlander Organization.

Complete filmography

Promotional cartel The grapes of wrath

Promotional cartel Eva's three nights

Theater

Broadway Productions

• The Game of Love and Death (November 1929 – January 1930)
• I Loved You, Wednesday (October – December 1932)
• New Faces of 1934 (March – July 1934)
• The Farmer Takes a Wife (October 1934 – January 1935)
• Blow Ye Winds (September – October 1937)
• Blockade (June 1938)
• Mister Roberts (February 1948 – January 1951)
• Point of No Return (December 1951 – November 1952)
• The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (January 1954 – January 1955)
• Two for the Seesaw (January 1958 – October 1959)
• Silent Night, Lonely Night (December 1959 – March 1960)
• Critic's Choice (December 1960 – May 1961)
• A Gift of Time (February - May 1962)
• Generation (October 1965 – June 1966)
• Our Town (November – December 1969)
• Clarence Darrow (March – April 1974 – March 1975)
• First Monday in October (October – December 1978)

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Golden Globe Awards

BAFTA Awards