Jane Fonda names her most underrated movie: “It took me 12 years to get the script ready”
Any actor regarded as a legend is inevitably going to be known better for some roles than others, a sentiment that allowed the movie Jane Fonda called the most overlooked of her career to slip through the cracks, although the fact it didn’t play in a single cinema certainly didn’t help matters.
Just as famous for her offscreen activism as she is for her onscreen exploits, Fonda has amassed a trophy cabinet overflowing with the most prestigious prizes in the industry, a haul that includes two Academy Awards, a pair of Baftas, and eight Golden Globes.
In a sense, the first act of Fonda’s career concluded with On Golden Pond, which came at the end of a remarkable run that began with her star-making performance in Cat Ballou and carried through to Barbarella, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Klute, Julia, and Coming Home.
Co-starring with her father, Henry, in the final film before his death, which also won him his first Oscar, On Golden Pond was a hugely important picture for Fonda on a personal and professional level, after which she took a significant breather. The movie was released in December 1981, and she wouldn’t be seen on the big screen again until August 1985, when Norman Jewison’s mystery thriller Agnes of God arrived.
She wasn’t entirely inactive during that period, though, with Fonda’s one and only credit during those four years doubling as her first time taking centre stage in a made-for-TV movie. It was a passion project she’d been toying with for a dozen years at that point, and the star named it to the Minnesota Star Tribune as the one feature she wished more people had seen.
“Well, I did an ABC movie called The Dollmaker that I’m very, very fond of,” she said. “It took me 12 years to get the script ready. Interestingly enough, it took Hume Cronyn and a woman who writes children’s books to get it right.”
Adapted from the novel of the same name by Harriette Simpson Arnow, Fonda headlines the cast as a woodcarver who accompanies her husband from rural Kentucky to the hustle and bustle of Detroit after he abandons his life as a farmer out of necessity to take a factory job with a guaranteed income, with spouse Gertie Nevels crafting handmade dolls to supplement their earnings.
After holding onto the project for over a decade, Oscar-nominated actor and screenwriter Cronyn finally cracked the script, assisted by Susan Cooper, best known for penning the kid-friendly literary fantasy saga The Dark Is Rising. Airing in May 1984, it’s easy to see why Fonda views it as her most underrated effort.
It played exclusively on the small screen, and it wasn’t even made available on home video until more than 30 years after it aired, but with Fonda being the talent she is, she naturally won a Primetime Emmy for ‘Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie’.
