JUNE 2021 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 75
REAR VIEW
HENRY FONDA BEHIND THE MASK
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
Say the word “actor” and what often
comes to mind is someone who is a
glutton for attention, hams it up, and
hogs the stage, just to stand out as the
star.
But Henry Fonda didn’t fit that mold.
With his lanky frame and easy stride,
he became an esteemed legend, despite
his understated behavior. He was honored
with Academy Awards, Golden
Globes, and American Film Institute
awards and more for his frequent portrayals
of the passionate, principled
everyman in more than 90 films.
In his early career, he was so poor he
couldn’t scrape up Manhattan subway
fare, but later, success led to Atlantic
Ocean vacations with other creative
artists on Long Island’s Fire Island.
He embodied what The New York
Times called “the rock-solid, quiet
American,” creating what Britannica.
com called “quintessential American
heroes known for their integrity.”
But what happens to that integrity
when the curtain comes down?
THE BACKSTORY
A person’s true nature can hide until
after accolades are lavished and audiences
leave. Offstage, Henry Fonda
played the antihero. His children have
described how he wasn’t available to
them, calling him notoriously cold. An
article by TV critic Mark Zoller Seitz
for RogerEbert.com said the star was
“controlling, emotionally abusive, and
disapproving.”
The Daily Mail went further, describing
the elder Fonda as “a bully, not to
mention a shameless womanizer.”
In a People magazine article, his daughter,
actress Jane Fonda, explained her
father’s behavior on his being raised as
a simple, frugal Midwesterner.
HANK GETS HOOKED
Born in Grand Island, Neb. in 1905,
Henry Jaynes Fonda showed an early
interest in the literary arts by winning
a story contest at the age of 10. After his
1923 high school graduation he studied
journalism at the University of Minnesota;
by that time, he was nearly
6 feet 2 inches tall. After deciding
Shirlee Fonda, widow of the late actor Henry Fonda, looks at a design of the new Henry Fonda U.S. commemorative
postage stamp during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly
Hills, Calif., May 20, 2005. (REUTERS/Chris Pizzello)
against a journalism career, in 1925, at
the suggestion of his mother’s friend
Dodie Brando (actor Marlon Brando’s
mother), he auditioned for a play at the
Omaha Playhouse.
“Hank” fell in love with the stage;
although he was self-conscious of his
performing ability, he realized that
by acting he could hide behind a mask,
drawing attention away from his
shyness. After he accepted the role,
his father wouldn’t speak to him for a
month.
In 1928, he headed east and performed
with the Massachusetts summer stock
University Players through the end of
the 1932 season, then moved to Manhattan
and roomed with fellow actor
James Stewart. Those were the Great
Depression years, and the two were
so poor they couldn’t afford subway
tokens; they subsisted mostly on rice
while honing their skills on Broadway.
Fonda never attended drama school,
believing that acting could best be
learned onstage. His major break came
with his 1935 film debut and then his
career blossomed, leading to what many
consider his finest performance, in
John Steinbeck’s 1940 film masterpiece
The Grapes of Wrath.
But his personal life soured his backstory;
he would be married five times,
including a 1936 union with socialite
Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, the
mother of their children Jane and Peter.
Brokaw’s long history of depression led
to her killing herself in 1950 by slitting
her throat while in a psychiatric
hospital. Her psychiatrist, Margaret
Gibson, described Fonda as “a cold,
self-absorbed person, a complete narcissist,”
writes Patricia Bosworth in her
biography of Jane Fonda.
LOUNGING ON LI
After many successful motion pictures
and a Tony Award-winning run
from 1948 to 1951 in the stage hit Mister
Roberts, Fonda headed Out East
with his family. In the early 1950s, he
rented quarters at Broadway producer
Frank Carrington’s guest house in
the Fire Island Pines on Long Island’s
South Shore. Guests included author
Truman Capote, actress Katharine
Hepburn, and other creative artists.
Henry Fonda’s daughter Jane, at age
15, taught dance lessons while there.
His acting success continued but
several more marriages failed. Then,
at age 60, in 1965, while starring in
the Broadway play Generation, he
wed 33-year-old Shirlee May Adams
in Mineola — at last, a union that
endured. He performed at Long Island’s
Mineola Theater in 1968 with
a nonprofit repertory group in the
plays The Front Page and Our Town;
New York Times critic Clive Barnes’
review called him “one of our few
great actors.” The production costs of
$120,000 were raised by the Theater
Society of Long Island.
In 1981, he won the Best Actor Oscar
for his final film On Golden Pond,
in which he starred with Katherine
Hepburn and his daughter Jane, who
accepted the award because he was
too ill to attend. Five months later,
on August 12, 1982, he died of heart
disease.
“Offstage, Henry Fonda played the antihero.”
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
/RogerEbert.com
