Henry Fonda always regretted turning down one legendary role: “I could have had it!”
Henry Fonda had one of the longest careers of any of his Old Hollywood peers, which meant that he had to evolve with a rapidly changing industry.
When he started out in the business, he was playing earnest young men in wholesome 1930s fare, and from there, he branched out into heroic roles where decency was the single personality trait, playing Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr Lincoln, Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, and Juror #8 in 12 Angry Men.
By the time the ‘60s rolled around, Fonda could either retire with his contemporaries and let the younger generation take over (his children, Peter and Jane, were leading the charge of the New Hollywood movement) or evolve with the times. He chose the latter, for the most part, including taking on a few darker roles. His turn as a murderous gang leader in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is still chilling.
It was around this time that Fonda was approached to play another character who was about as far from Abe Lincoln and Tom Joad as it’s possible to get. To his eternal regret, he turned it down. In a 1981 interview, the icon was asked whether there were any roles he wished he had been able to play. “Dammit yes,” he said, “it was the part of the professor in the stage version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and I could have had it!”
Written by Edward Albee, the play is an exhausting drama about a middle-aged couple who air their marital grievances while hosting a young couple at their home. As they hurl abuse and contempt at each other, their younger counterparts watch in horror before getting drawn into the hideous death match themselves.
It is one of the most harrowing depictions of marriage ever written, and, despite having a runtime of over three hours, was a huge hit. The original 1962 production starred Uta Hagen as Martha and Canadian actor Arthur Hill as George, but to many people, the definitive pairing will always be Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who starred in Mike Nichols’ Oscar winning 1966 film adaptation.
They were a real-life couple at the time who were famous for the volatility of their relationship. Like Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the sense that the public was getting to watch a real-life marital train wreck was part of the appeal.
It’s hard to imagine Fonda showing the same level of messiness and gleeful cruelty that Burton did, but it’s also enticing to contemplate what he might have done with the part. By all accounts (especially his family’s) Fonda was a real bastard sometimes and had a knack for devastating those nearest to him. His version of George could have been formidable. In some parallel reality, there is a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which he and Katharine Hepburn star as George and Martha. Instead, they made On Golden Pond.
Interestingly, Fonda did try to shoehorn his way into the play in 1970 when he and Burton proposed an all-male production co-starring Warren Beatty and Jon Voight. The fact that this never happened is very hard to accept. Albee was adamant that his original vision remain intact, and thereby robbed the world of the theatrical event of the century.
