The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (145 page)

He had not made a good film in ten years. One hoped that someone might give him a chance as, say, a bogus-priest, rapist confidence trickster who picks his nose. That wicked prospect never dawned. Fonda was in poor health near the end, grim-looking and slow, but capable of being very touching: as a man recovering from a stroke in
Home to Stay
(78, Delbert Mann) for TV; briefly in
Fedora
(78, Billy Wilder);
Wanda Nevada
(79, Peter Fonda);
City on Fire
(79, Alvin Rakoff);
Meteor
(79, Ronald Neame);
Gideon’s Trumpet
(80, Robert Collins);
The Oldest Living Graduate
(80, Jack Hofsiss); with Myrna Loy in
Summer Solstice
(81, Ralph Rosenblum) for TV; and finally winning the best actor Oscar, with Katharine Hepburn and his daughter, in the entirely autumnal
On Golden Pond
(81, Mark Rydell).

Jane Fonda
, b. New York, 1937
Jane Fonda assures us that she is retired. But she has a history of firm stands that come to be rewritten. Her emphatic quality as an actress is the secret entrance to her insecurity: that’s what made her Bree Daniels in
Klute
so compelling. The retired businesswoman has given up Ted Turner and fitness tapes. But what is she thinking about? Worrying about?

Otherwise, her final screen appearances were limited to glimpses of her and her new husband, Ted Turner, dozing at Atlanta Braves games. And so, maybe, the fiercest opinionist in American show business has revealed yet another aspect of herself in terms of the men in her life—that severe father, Henry, with a temper never disclosed onscreen; director Roger Vadim, the sophisticated voyeur who made Jane sexy; the politician and liberal activist, Tom Hayden, with whom she recognized issues; and then Turner, mogul, macho, conservative, and old-fashioned.

Jane Fonda was the child of her father’s second marriage, to Frances Seymour Brokaw (it was her second marriage, too). Peter Fonda was the younger child of this marriage. Frances Fonda suffered from poor health and anxiety. Henry was away on war service. Then, in 1950, as Henry sought a divorce so that he might marry a younger woman, Frances cut her throat. Henry told Jane that her mother had died from a heart attack. Jane only learned the truth in a movie magazine.

Educated at Vassar and the Actors’ Studio, she modeled and worked in the theatre in the late 1950s. She made her film debut in Joshua Logan’s charming
Tall Story
(60) and then played supporting parts in Dmytryk’s
Walk on the Wild Side
(62), Cukor’s
The Chapman Report
(62), and in George Roy Hill’s
Period of Adjustment
(62). In addition to the promise of
Tall Story
and her hints of blooming with Cukor, the Drew-Leacock essay
Jane
(63) was perhaps the clearest glimpse of her talent. After
Sunday in New York
(63) for Peter Tewksbury, she went to France, made
Les Félins
(64, René Clément), married Roger Vadim, and necessarily revealed all in
La Ronde
(64) and
La Curée
(66).

It remained an uncoordinated career, torn between the personalities of her father and her husband. She was wasted in
Cat Ballou
(65, Elliot Silverstein) but, at last, in Penn’s
The Chase
(66) she showed a real maturity. Toward the end of the 1960s she became articulate and insistent about many political issues, about the difficulty of living with Henry Fonda and Vadim, and these films added to her range: Preminger’s
Hurry Sundown
(66);
Barefoot in the Park
(67, Gene Saks); with her brother in the “Metzengerstein” episode of
Histoires Extraordinaires
(68, Vadim); and
Barbarella
(68), in which she is as vacantly sexy as Vadim’s listless prurience.

Seemingly independent (and remarried to Tom Hayden), she became much more resolute and aggressive; it helped make her one of the best young actresses anywhere.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
(69, Sydney Pollack) is an ordinary film made riveting by her unblinkingly fierce nihilism. While Alan Pakula’s
Klute
(71) is a fascinating exploration of the art and life of acting. Far from a nostalgic thriller, or a Kafkaesque study, it is as much an investigation of Jane Fonda as the Drew-Leacock film. It is a frightening movie because of the feeling of self-destruction at its heart. The role won her the Oscar and it remains her most complex work.

After that, she seemed intent on drawing together her public and professional performances. An energetic opponent of America in Vietnam and of woman in bondage, she made two films intent on their propaganda value:
Tout Va Bien
(72, Jean-Luc Godard) and
A Doll’s House
(73, Joseph Losey). In addition, she has been the subject of two further documentary essays:
Letter to Jane: Investigation of a Still
(72, Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin); and a second
Jane
(73, Midge Mackenzie), made for TV. However, she was refreshingly funny in
Steelyard Blues
(72, Alan Myerson).

In 1974, with Hayden and Haskell Wexler, she directed a documentary,
Vietnam Journey
. One grew used to seeing her in battle dress; then, suddenly, she was helping give out the 1977 Oscars in gown and created hair. She also reverted to middle-class comedy in
Fun With Dick and Jane
(76, Ted Kotcheff). In
Julia
(77, Fred Zinnemann) she pretended to be Lillian Hellman and was a firm, anxious center for a flimsy film.
Coming Home
(78, Hal Ashby) was a testament of a kind, all but produced by the actress. Yet its political awareness is half-baked, and the movie wraps national hurt in romance. The look in Fonda’s eyes was always too determined and convinced for the very conventional, unenlightened wife she was trying to play.

Nevertheless, she won a second Oscar for
Coming Home
, appeared in
Comes a Horseman
(78, Pakula), and rode the boxoffice swarm of Three Mile Island with the wretched, lucky, and ultimately frivolous
The China Syndrome
(79, James Bridges).

She became a complete American heroine in the eighties, not just as actress and producer, but as the starring body in her own series of workout books and videotapes. Like so many of her films, the tapes were ardent, solemn, and modestly erotic—she was true to herself. Her body went to whiplash (which supposedly was the intent), yet some concerned observers noted that aging went on nevertheless.

Her last films were
9 to 5
(80, Colin Higgins);
On Golden Pond
(81, Mark Rydell), her gift to her father, and a suitably showy unification of their starry temperaments;
Rollover
(81, Pakula); on TV with
The Dollmaker
(84, Daniel Petrie), for which she won an Emmy;
Agnes of God
(85, Norman Jewison); a return to albeit fading glamour in
The Morning After
(86, Sidney Lumet), for which she got a best actress nomination;
Old Gringo
(89, Luis Penzo); and
Stanley and Iris
(90, Martin Ritt).

Her marriage to Tom Hayden ended in divorce—and so she became the friend of and then the wife to Ted Turner. There were stories that she had lost parts
—The Music Box
, for instance—because she looked too old. But she has seldom been irreversible; she is a good and maybe helpless actress; and she may have the basis of a great old lady. She and Turner were divorced in 2001. A substantial autobiography was published in 2005—clearly her own work. And then film began again:
Monster-in-Law
(05, Robert Luketic);
Georgia Rule
(07, Garry Marshall). I doubt she’s finished.

Peter Fonda
, b. New York, 1939
The son of Henry, younger brother of Jane, and father of Bridget, Peter still walks and moves like Henry: shoulders drooping, flat-footed, seeming to be propelled from the knee joints. And, like his father, Peter has that coltish, humorless idealism of a young Mr. Lincoln or Tom Joad. Jane alone seems anxious about life; Henry and Peter address it, as if it were a jury or a political meeting. Thus, even the supposed modernity of
Easy Rider
(69, Dennis Hopper) fits into the American legend of its own idealism that Henry had done so much to incarnate. It is as elaborate and artificial a piece of “realism” as all those films Henry made for John Ford, and as simplistic as
Twelve Angry Men. Easy Rider
was also part produced by Fonda, with great profit. That is another subtle compromise, for its apparent underground movie was as glossy and expensive as the streamlined motorbikes, and nearly as roadworthy. Nevertheless, Fonda is an interesting figure—an actor of handsome nobility, and a director of muddled plainness, for instance,
The Hired Hand
(71). His record as an actor is already very varied:
Tammy and the Doctor
(63, Harry Keller);
The Victors
(63, Carl Foreman); especially good as the neurotic admirer of
Lilith
(63, Robert Rossen);
The Young Lovers
(64, Samuel Goldwyn Jr.);
The Rounders
(65, Burt Kennedy);
The Wild Angels
(66, Roger Corman);
The Trip
(67, Corman); in the “Metzengerstein” episode from
Histoires Extraordinaires
(68, Roger Vadim);
The Last Movie
(71, Hopper);
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
(74, John Hough);
Race with the Devil
(75, Jack Starrett);
The Diamond Mercenaries
(75, Val Guest);
92 in the Shade
(75, Thomas McGuane);
Fighting Mad
(76, Jonathan Demme);
Futureworld
(76, Richard T. Heffron); and
Outlaw Blues
(77, Heffron).

He directed and acted in
Wanda Nevada
(78); and acted in
The Hostage Tower
(80, Claudio Guzman);
The Cannonball Run
(81, Hal Needham); as a cult leader in
Split Image
(82, Ted Kotcheff);
Dance of the Dwarfs
(82, Gus Trikonis);
Spasms
(83, William Fruet);
Peppermint Frieden
(84, Marianne Rosenbaum);
A Reason to Live
(84, Peter Levin);
Certain Fury
(85, Stephen Gyllenhaal);
Hawken’s Breed
(89, Charles B. Pierce); and
The Rose Garden
(89, Fons Rademakers).

The easygoing indifference of Fonda’s acting went on for a few more years—with
Fatal Mission
(90, George Rowe), which he cowrote;
South Beach
(92, Fred Williamson);
Deadfall
(93, Christopher Coppola);
Molly & Gina
(93, Paul Leder);
Nadja
(94, Michael Almereyda);
Love and a .45
(94, C. M. Talkington);
Escape from L.A
. (96, John Carpenter). Most of those got and deserved a limited release. But then Fonda delivered a very good (if overrated) performance in
Ulee’s Gold
(97, Victor Nunez), which got a nomination. Since then, he was good as the smooth heel in
The Limey
(99, Steven Soderbergh);
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(99, Christopher Menaul);
South of Heaven, West of Hell
(00, Dwight Yoakam);
Second Skin
(00, Darrell Roodt);
Wooly Boys
(01, Leszek Burzynski);
The Laramie Project
(02, Moises Kaufman).

It’s a career without pattern:
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
(04, Asia Argento);
Supernova
(05, John Harrison);
Ghost Rider
(07, Mark Steven Johnson);
Wild Hogs
(07, Walt Becker);
3:10 to Yuma
(07, James Mangold);
The Gathering
(07, Bill Eagles);
Japan
(08, Fabien Pruvot);
Journey to the Center of the Earth
(08, T. J. Scott);
The Perfect Age of Rock ’n’ Roll
(09, Scott Rosenbaum).

Joan Fontaine
(Joan Fontaine de Havilland), b. Tokyo, 1917
The younger sister of Olivia de Havilland, Fontaine was the daughter of English parents. The father, an eccentric, had elected to live in Japan where he maintained the role of a gentleman who had a Cambridge blue for rowing as well as an M.A., and who rejoiced in tales of aristocratic Norman ancestors on the island of Guernsey. So there is irony in Fontaine’s having her greatest success as an interloper at a swank English household. This lady is very conscious of her own classiness. She may be a natural Rebecca, which makes her acting all the more praiseworthy.

Rebecca
(40, Alfred Hitchcock) is an instance of film exploiting an audience’s kindness toward an anxious performer. Fontaine won the nameless central role against tough opposition: Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan, Anne Baxter, and Loretta Young. Several advisors to producer David Selznick were against Fontaine. Hitchcock was uncertain. But Selznick knew Fontaine; he had been smitten with her. He backed his hunch. And Hitchcock saw that the long-drawn-out casting procedure meant that she came to the part in the spirit that the character in Daphne du Maurier’s novel comes to Manderley—stricken with doubts, dowdy, hunch-shouldered, a willing victim for the oppressive psychological forces that Mrs. Danvers had preserved in the house. Fontaine’s ability to show that ordeal working on her is central to the film and a fine example of the concealed sadism Hitchcock brings to bear. It should also be said that
Rebecca
is a disguised horror film, with Fontaine at peril in an “old dark house.” That peril seriously threatens her sanity, and the way she is drawn so near to suicide in the window scene was a major, psychological intensification in Hitchcock’s work.

Suspicion
(41, Hitchcock) makes fewer demands on her, but of essentially the same sort. And if she won her Oscar for that, rather than for
Rebecca
, it may have been because Hollywood realized belatedly that a new female character had been introduced to the screen.