The movie Henry Fonda was blackmailed into making: “Of course, it was a lot of shit”
Henry Fonda first rose to superstardom in the 1930s and 1940s and was privy to an era of the film industry that is now firmly ingrained in myth.
While studios still hold a lot of power, several decades ago, during the Golden Age, they controlled everything. Actors and directors were retained on contract, meaning they had to make pretty much whatever their corporate bosses commanded them. The money was guaranteed, yes, but studios could (and would) work their stars to the bone to maximise profit. Fonda held out from signing a contract for a long time, until one offer from a business tycoon came along that changed everything.
In his book Who the Hell’s in It, director and critic Peter Bogdanovich spoke to him about his role as Tom Joad in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, which came about thanks to his frosty relationship with Darryl F Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox.
“I was happy being a freelance until The Grapes of Wrath,” Fonda said, “He held that out as bait. I remember having scenes with Zanuck in his office where he’d pace up and down and hit himself with a small mallet that he carried around. He’d whack his leg with it and curse and say, ‘I don’t want to put you in a big fuckin’ part like this and then have you go over to MGM and play something with Joan Crawford’. He had to protect his investment… He said, ‘You know, I can’t put you in this picture if I can’t control you. I’ve got big plans for you’. And, of course, it was a lot of shit because once I signed, I did a whole mess of them and the only good picture that I like to remember was [The] Ox-Bow Incident, which Zanuck had nothing to do with.”
Fonda’s recounting of Zanuck shows that he was himself an interesting work of human. A wildly successful producer and studio head, he was also extremely lecherous. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, many publications pointed to Zanuck as the one who began the so-called ‘casting couch’ culture within the film industry.
The John Ford-helmed The Grapes of Wrath is based on John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel set during the Great Depression, following the Joad family as they struggle to get by as humble farmers in Oklahoma. Fonda’s character of Tom Joad is the star of the show as the family’s second son, who ends up becoming the primary bearer of the hardships brought by the economic downturn. It’s a great role with lots to get stuck into, so you can see why he was so keen to play it, regardless of the cost.
He might have had to swallow his pride to get his hands on it, but the role ended up playing a key part in Fonda’s story. The Grapes of Wrath is widely regarded a classic and was well represented at that year’s Oscars and, in 1989, became one of the first 25 films preserved by the US Library of Congress. The leading man would eventually call the film one of his greatest achievements; nice to know he eventually got over it.
