The one thing Henry Fonda hated most about Hollywood: “It ruined the whole thing”
Henry Fonda usually played towering figures of moral rectitude in his movies. After starting his career as a relatively bland leading man in drama-filled romances, he found his footing in the late 1930s when director John Ford cast him as Abraham Lincoln in 1939’s Young Mr Lincoln. He re-teamed with the filmmaker a year later to make The Grapes of Wrath, which earned him his first Oscar nomination.
Fonda never had the rakish good looks of Clark Gable or even the everyman charm of his pal Jimmy Stewart, but he did exude the type of humble integrity that America wanted to believe was at its core. He reinforced this sentiment by enlisting in the army early during World War II and becoming a hero off-screen as well as on. When he returned from military service in the late ‘40s, he went back to his roots in the theatre, winning a Tony Award in 1948 for his role in the wartime comedy Mister Roberts.
True to his on-screen persona, Fonda was a shy man who preferred to keep himself to himself. This proved to be increasingly difficult as his stature in Hollywood grew. By the mid-1950s, he was starring opposite Audrey Hepburn, leading an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and earning his second Oscar nomination for what would become his career-defining role in Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men.
These days, his other claim to fame is being Jane and Peter Fonda’s dad, though both children had tough relationships with him. Jane Fonda remembers him being cold, distant, and often cruel, which was exacerbated at time by his absolute horror about getting approached in public by fans.
During an interview on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Fonda remembered, “He spoiled more weekends with me and my brother when he would come and visit us because he and my mother were separated. He would take us to Rye, New York, and I’ll never forget, a woman came and asked for his autograph, and he ran.”
This is what we would now call a ‘dick move.’ It also leads to multiple follow-up questions. How fast did he run? What was he afraid of? And did he come back to get his small children, or did they have to catch up with him on their tiny legs? The unpleasantness was only just beginning, too. “He was in a bad mood all day; it ruined the whole thing for us,” his daughter remembered. “He hated it. I mean, I don’t know why, but he just hated it.”
Henry Fonda is no longer with us, which is probably best for his own sake. It’s a terrible thing to imagine the poor man sprinting through picturesque towns in the age of civilian paparazzi on every corner, brandishing smartphones and live-streaming his abject terror. He might have disintegrated on the spot, which would have been a strange way to go for a man who had managed to stand up to legendarily intimidating Hollywood legends like Ford, Katharine Hepburn, and Humphrey Bogart.
