The wholesome TV star who tried to buy weed from Henry Fonda: “I don’t know why I did that”
Every bit as stoic and steadfast as many of the characters he memorably brought to the screen, Henry Fonda wasn’t an actor associated with the hard-partying, booze-soaked, drug-addled, and generally excessive lifestyle enjoyed by many of his ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood peers.
That’s not to say he was a saint, though, with the legendary actor a well-known womaniser and ladies’ man who was married five times and regularly found himself in the headlines whenever one of his marriages would dissolve before he inevitably tied the know once again very soon after.
He enjoyed an alcoholic beverage as much as the next guy and smoked cigarettes, but anything harder or more illicit wasn’t really his bag. The same can’t be said of his family, something Fonda acknowledged when he was cornered by the wholesome star of a popular TV series and asked if he had any weed.
Whereas Henry epitomised the ‘Golden Age’ with his powerful performances and reputation among his contemporaries for being one of his generation’s finest talents, his son Peter was ‘New Hollywood’ all over. Instrumental in the success of the counterculture classic Easy Rider, the second-generation performer was part of the film’s unholy trinity alongside Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, three fast-rising stars who revelled in the debauchery of the time.
Charlotte Stewart definitely didn’t fall into that category, having spent four seasons playing schoolteacher Eva Beadle Simms on Little House on the Prairie, the quaint rural historical drama. It was hardly a project anyone would associate with the hedonism of 1970s Hollywood, even if the actor was a regular presence at parties around town. On one occasion, she made the faux pas of asking her Cheyenne Social Club co-star if he happened to have any pre-rolled herbal remedies to hand, which he did not.
“Oh, god! I don’t know why I did that,” she recalled to Pop Culture Classics. “I thought maybe it would be a hip thing to do. ‘Hey, Henry’. Although I didn’t call him Henry. I called him Mr Fonda. I said, ‘Can I speak to you for a minute?’ He said, ‘Sure’. So we stepped outside for a minute, and I said, ‘Do you have a joint?'”
Taken aback by her request, the Academy Award-winning icon hit the nail on the head with his response: “He said, ‘You have the wrong Fonda.'” Everyone in Tinseltown knew that if there was a member of the family guaranteed to be carrying some form of narcotic on them at any given moment, it wasn’t going to be Henry or even Jane.
Realising she’d made a terrible mistake and embarrassed herself in front of one of the most respected figures in the business, Stewart realised immediately, pun potentially intended, “What a dope I had made of myself.” Confessing that asking Henry Fonda for a joint was “quite a rude thing to do,” it remains unknown if Peter happened to be at the same party. If he was, she probably got the chance to blaze one eventually.
