Why Henry Fonda and James Stewart tried digging an underground tunnel to Greta Garbo’s house
‘Boys will be boys’ is a catch-all phrase that still applies even when those boys become men, and even when those men become movie stars. James Stewart and Henry Fonda sit comfortably among ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s most prominent legends, but they still decided it would be a good idea to neck a few drinks and try digging a tunnel to Greta Garbo’s house.
It sounds like a scene from a sitcom, and it’s not too far from the truth. Having already lived together in New York while trying to make a name for themselves as aspiring thespians, Stewart and Fonda resumed the arrangement in Los Angeles when they started breaking into cinema, which left them residing in close proximity to some of the industry’s biggest names.
As fate would have it, Stewart was completely enamoured with Garbo, who happened to be their next-door neighbour. Even though they were both under contract with MGM and were regular visitors to the studio lot, they’d never so much as passed each other in a corridor, something Fonda was keen to rectify.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the biggest fan of the guys over the fence. “Garbo didn’t like Hank’s cats,” Stewart explained of his flatmate’s fondness for feline friends. “At least, Hank thought of them as his cats. They were just wild beasts that looked all cute and cuddly. And Hank kinda liked cats, so he was always putting food out for them.”
That meant countless strays from the area would gather at Fonda and Stewart’s door seeking sustenance, and Garbo responded by building a huge fence between their properties. “And it was there also, maybe, to keep us out,” the It’s a Wonderful Life star pondered. Well, it wasn’t so much a pondering, considering they literally tried to dig under the fence to meet the icon next door.
“We agreed we should meet her,” Fonda recalled. “But she had this high fence separating our properties, so we decided to dig a tunnel under the fence. It was thirsty work, so we made sure we had plenty of booze on hand, and we ended up consuming quite a bit of alcohol. And we didn’t finish the damn tunnel because we hit a gas main several feet down.”
Instead of, for instance, knocking on her door to see if she’d answer so they could say they’d finally met Garbo face-to-face, the bumbling duo opted to get pissed and try tunnelling underneath the fence she’d constructed to keep their cats – and possibly Stewart and Fonda – away from her property, only to give up when they threatened to cause a gaseous disaster.
He did get around to meeting her eventually, and it was almost fitting that when he did, he walked right into Garbo, “knocked the poor woman down” and left her lying “flat on her ass.”
