Henry Fonda   1905  1982 ….an uncommonly common man!

Arabella’s Notes

The Farmer Takes A Wife   1935  Directed by Victor Fleming Fox                      B/W

Dan and Molly

The studio wanted Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea for the role of young Dan Harrow but Walter Wanger convinced producer Winston Sheehan to use the same fella that wowed Broadway in the part. Sheehan agreed even though screen unknowns were almost never given the lead in feature films in 1935!

The story focuses on New York State along the Erie Canal when the farmers and the riverboat crews were often at odds. Janet Gaynor played Molly Larkin, a cook who worked on a riverboat partly owned by Harrow. Dan  won his share in a lottery. The heavy is played by Charles Bickford who wants Molly who wants Dan who wants a farm. Eventually boy gets farm, girl gets boy and Bickford gets the boot.

Note: Fonda knew how to play to the balcony but had no idea how to play to the camera. He got the point every time Fleming yelled “Hank, you’re hamming again!”

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine  1936  Directed by Henry Hathaway Paramount/Wanger      Color

...with Spanky McFarland

Henry gets the new 3-strip Technicolor in his 4th film…the first American film ever to be done in that process in an outdoor setting. It was also the first time Walter ever used him in a Wanger production. However, Henry had to be satisfied with 3rd billing after Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray. 

The story is located in the mountains of Kentucky where “old woods, old ways and old codes live unchanged” but the picture was filmed in Big Bear Valley, San Bernardino and on the Iverson ranch in Los Angeles,, California.  The plot tells how the Falins and the Tolkins continue to carry on a feud that has lasted for generations.

By now Fonda was beginning to tire of the homespun heroes and longed for something more sophisticated.

Note: “Melody from the Sky” sung by Tater (Fuzzy Knight)won and Oscar for Best Original Song.

The Moon’s My Home  Directed by William A. Seiter Paramount/Wanger       B/W

Hank and Maggie on the set

Fonda’s 5th film was just what he asked for…a more sophisticated role although he still had to learn to trust his comedic abilities. Fonda also got his ex-wife Margaret Sullavan for a co-star and their chemistry on screen and off was apparent to everyone. It has been said that their fascination for each other ended only with her death in 1960. It is this writer’s opinion along with some others that this strong attraction kept them both unhappily married for 3 decades.

The storyline deals with two celebrities, a movie star and an author who keep their real names and private lives incognito. Cherry Chester/Sarah Brown (Maggie) and Anthony Atherton/John Smith (Fonda) meet, fall in love and marry without ever revealing their famous alter egos. Walter Brennan, Beulah Bondi and Charles Butterworth add to the fun.

Jezebel   Directed by William Wyler Warner/First National       B/W

Fonda, Davis and Brent in "Jezebel"

This was Fonda’s 12th picture and, while he made his mark with audiences, it was definitely a Bette Davis movie. Bette “won” it from Jack Warner as consolation for losing Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With The Wind”. Bette also wanted Henry Fonda and as Warner’s top female star, what Bette wanted, Bette got. And, to assuage Bette’s feelings even more, Warner released this film months ahead of GWTW.

The story was set in 1852 New Orleans and revolved around the self-centered, strong-willed and beautiful Julie Marston (Davis), her fiancé banker Pres Dillard (Fonda) and another ardent admirer Buck Catlett (Brent).  Julie’s willful ways cause her to lose her fiancé to another woman and the plague before she mends her ways.

Bette won her second best Actress Oscar for this film while Fay Bainter picked up a supporting statuette as Aunt Belle.

Note:  The film ran weeks over schedule and Bette had to finish up without Fonda who left for New York and the birth of daughter Jane.
For more gossip on Bette, Wyler and “Jezebel” see Arabella’s Notes, Issue #17

Young Mr. Lincoln  1939  Directed by John Ford 20th Century Fox          B/W

....with Pauline Moore as Ann Rutledge

Fonda idolized Lincoln and didn’t believe anyone, least of all Henry Fonda, could play him effectively on the screen. His wife Frances begged him, the writer and producer begged him but to no avail. Then director John Ford called him into his office. It was the first time Fonda met the cigar-smoking Irishman with the black patch over his eye. “You think Lincoln’s the great Emancipator? He’s just a jack-legged lawyer from Springfield, for God’s sake!” Henry took the role and later admitted “Ford shamed me into it”. When the makeup department finished with him, Fonda looked so much like young Lincoln it was awesome.

Both Fonda and Ford were shocked at the way Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck  (who hired Ford to direct “The Grapes of Wrath) forced Fonda to sign an exclusive multi-picture contract for the chance to play Tom Joad.

Drums Along the Mohawk  1939  Directed by John Ford 20th Century Fox     Color

...with Claudette Colbert

This was the next trip into the annals of history for John Ford and Henry Fonda. It was a more commercial film possibly because it had it all…Technicolor, a huge cast and a big budget!

This was an epic tale of frontier life in the Mohawk Valley in New York State, named for the Indians that were Britain’s strongest ally. But the colonies were now revolting against the Crown. Farmer Gil Martin (Fonda) and his city-bred bride Lana (Claudette Colbert) were starting out their married life when they lost everything in an Indian attack. Hardship followed hardship until the British and their Indian pals finally surrender and Gill and Lana return to their valley.

This was role made for Fonda and the kind of story that Ford loved to direct!

The Grapes of Wrath  1940  Directed by John Ford 20th Century Fox       B/W

Fonda with Jane Darwell

No one could have played the role of Tom Joad except Henry Fonda. And once John Ford was signed to direct, there was no doubt about it. Even the author of this bestseller, John Steinbeck, said it had to be Fonda and no one else.

It was the story of the displaced and desperate tenant farmers forced from their lands by drought and greedy landowners now armed with tractors to do the work. Since most of them were from Oklahoma, they were called “Okies”. They headed for California where they were promised work but the California reality was thousands of people huddled in shabby camps hungry and begging for work even at the going rate of 5 cents an hour. Tom Joad  becomes a hunted man and in parting from his family possibly delivered his most poignant lines.

Note: John Steinbeck said that many years later he was beginning to feel that the film was outdated and took another look at it. “Then a lean, stringy dark-faced piece of electricity walks out on the screen, and he had me. I believed in my story again.”

The Lady Eve  1941  Directed by Preston Sturges Paramount     B /W

...with Barbara Stanwyck

Fonda did a great job with his deadpan comedy performance in this film backed up by a successful teaming of Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn as a daughter /father team of con artists trying to snare him and his millions.
 Preston Sturges not only directed it but wrote the script. He may have been a bit eccentric but no one could top him as a writer/director. Many believe this was his best comedy. True or not, the picture made the box office hum happily.

At  home Frances Fonda was undergoing subtle changes in her personality. Her doctors attributed it to just a slow recovery after her second child, Peter. No one realized she was slipping into darkness.

Note: Just before making this film, Fonda bought 9 acres in Bel Air where he built a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse. He named the place “Tigertail”. He tilled the grounds himself, kept chickens and even an apple tree. Jane said later that it was years before she knew he was an actor and not a farmer.

The Big Street  1942  Directed by Irving Reis RKO                    B/W

Fonda and Lucille Ball

I am very biased about this Fonda film. I remember every scene, every nuance because I probably saw it every night for the week it ran at the theater where I was working. It was a four-hanky movie and very Runyonesque for those of you who are Damon Runyon fans.

Fonda was Runyon’s choice as “Little Pinks” the meek, naïve waiter at Mindy’s who secretly idolizes Gloria (Ball) a gangster’s moll who fancies herself a great entertainer. When she becomes crippled from a fall, Pinks becomes her devoted slave. Only Runyon could have told this story and only Fonda and Ball (in a rare dramatic role) could have pulled it off.

The Ox-Bow Incident  1943  Directed by William Wellman 20th Century Fox     B/W

Fonda and Morgan at the bar

This was the film Fonda was really proud of and quite possibly it took him back to that dark night in his father’s print shop when he watched a man lynched.

It was a Western with none of the usual ingredients but instead exposed the darker side of the Old West. The story opens with two cowboys riding into town off the range. They are in a bar when they hear that a rancher has been murdered and his cattle stolen. Before long a posse is formed and ride off to catch the culprits. When they find the cattle, they mistakenly conclude that the men that have them are the ones that did the foul deed. While Gill (Fonda) and Art (Henry Morgan) want the men taken to town, the mob decides to lynch them on the spot. Back in town, they find there has been no murder or rustling and the dead men were innocent.

The picture did poorly at the box office but gained in value over time to become an American classic.

Note: This film was done before Fonda joined the Navy but released later.

My Darling Clementine  1946  Directed by John Ford 20th Century Fox  B/W

....with Linda Darnell

Henry Fonda was one of the Hollywood veterans lucky enough to come back and find a picture waiting for him…and a classic Ford western to boot! After “Stagecoach” Ford was considered to be a master of the western genre.

This film was based on Stuart Lake’s novel “Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal” and already done in 1939 as “Frontier Marshall” with Randolph Scott. This time Ford sent his camera crews to the area around Moab, Utah for locations that would stand in for Tombstone, Arizona (see “Starring My Town” this issue). Fonda plays Earp with Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, Linda Darnell as Chihuahua and Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. It was during this film that Ford invented the “porch post ballet” a bit of acting business picked up later in lot of westerns.
Note: Fonda now looked much more mature thanks to four years of military service.

            
          "The porch post ballet"

Fort Apache  1948  Directed by John Ford RKO                 B/W

...with Shirley Temple who plays his daughter

Fonda plays his first really unsympathetic role as Lt. Col. Owen Thursday, a ramrod , by-the-book military man who alienates his daughter(Shirley Temple), his men and the neighboring Indians.  Of course, they have already sent in the cavalry so….they send in John Wayne to make peace.

John Ford took the story “Massacre” by James Warner Bellah to begin his trilogy starring the U.S. Cavalry in the years following the Civil War. This was the first entry to be followed by “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” a year later (in color and also starring John Wayne) and “Rio Grande” a year after that ( also in color and also starring John Wayne).

Note: By the time this film was released, Henry Fonda was back on the stage in “Mr. Roberts” directed by Joshua Logan and produced by Leland Hayward.

Mister Roberts  1955  Directed by John Ford/Mervyn LeRoy Warner/Orange            Color

....on the set of Mr. Roberts

Fonda had been doing theater work and away from films for 7 years so when Warner was ready to film the film version of “Mister Roberts” they felt Henry was too old to reprise the role. They wanted William Holden who refused on the grounds Fonda should get it. Marlon Brando agreed to do it but Ford insisted on Fonda. The other important role of the captain went to veteran actor James Cagney.

But the reunion of old pals Ford and Fonda was not a happy one. Ford was ill and also drinking during work time, something he had never done before. So when Fonda, unhappy over the way things were going, went to him with his complaints, Ford socked him. Never one to brawl, Henry just walked away. Ford later apologized but things were never the same between them. When the director collapsed on the set with a severe bladder attack and had to be hospitalized, Mervyn LeRoy took over with Joshua Logan coming in to work on some of the critical scenes.

Most of this film was shot on location in Spain but Leone came to Utah to shoot some of the sequences to honor his idol, John Ford. It was the second film in which Fonda played a villain but in this picture the role was totally without redemption, light years away from anything he had ever done. The character he played was so heartless and cold-blooded he even deliberately shot an 8 year old boy.

While the Europeans loved it. American audiences wanted their symbol of decency and fair play back again…the Fonda they knew and loved. But since Fonda had his choice of many parts, the selection of Frank was entirely his own. He finally meets his end at the hands of The Man (Charles Bronson) who kills him slowly and leaves him with a harmonica in his mouth. 

The Cheyenne Social Club 1970  Directed by Gene Kelly National General            Color

....on the set with James Stewart and director   Gene Kelly

This is the second feature film and the second western starring Fonda and his pal Jimmy Stewart. The first was “Firecreek” in 1968 when Fonda did his first villain role and was shot down by ….Inger Stevens. This is a funny albeit a bit raunchy western and the last time Hank and Jimmy would be together in a film. It was a fitting showcase for the old boys thanks to the light directing skills of Gene Kelly who let these veterans do it their way.

The story: Two scruffy cowpokes Harley(Fonda) and John (Stewart) are headed for Cheyenne to claim John’s inheritance….his late brother’s social club. But “social club” in Cheyenne means “bordello” anywhere else!

The finale: they can’t change it, they can’t keep it and they can’t sell it so they turn it over to the girls and go off into the sunset. This one is a keeper you will enjoy over and over again.

On Golden Pond  1981 Directed by Mark Rydell Universal/ITC/IFC    Color

The Fondas, Kate Hepburn and Spence's old hat!.

The film was based on a ‘nice little play” by Ernest Thompson that ran on Broadway for 126 performances. The script for the screenplay was sent to Fonda at his request and he knew he had to do it. Kate Hepburn was also interested and when Jane Fonda realized they would both love to do it, she encouraged producer Bruce Gilbert to “get the money!” Of course, she also promised to play the daughter role.

The beauty of the story was in its very simplicity…an aging couple Norman and Ethel Thayer become increasingly aware of their frailties but approach them in different ways. Ethel is hoping irascible Norman will ease the tensions with their daughter.

Kate Hepburn gave Henry Spencer’s Tracy battered old hat for luck. The Academy went her one better…they gave him an Oscar!

This was Henry Fonda’s final gift to the American audiences who loved him for so many years.