The Full Biography
Henry Fonda. Actor. The Nebraska kid who made plainspoken decency a fifty-year job, then spent the remaining years winning the statue for playing a dying man — and remaining, to his children, a harder house than the stills.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Tom Joad against a sky, or a juror who will not raise his hand with the rest, or an old man on a pond with Katharine Hepburn. What the still cannot show is Henry Jaynes Fonda of Grand Island, Nebraska, a quiet midwesterner the Group Theatre sanded into an instrument, and a remaining life of Jane and Peter, a wife’s suicide, and an Oscar that arrived in 1982 when the body was already finishing.
He was born on May 16, 1905, in Grand Island and raised in Omaha. His father, William Brace Fonda, ran a printing plant. His mother was Herberta Jaynes. He was not a natural show-off. A boyhood shock stayed with him: he watched a mob’s lynching from a second-story window, a fact he would not turn into a speech and would, years on, put to work in The Ox-Bow Incident. Dorothy Brando, Marlon’s mother, pushed him toward the Omaha Community Playhouse in 1925. He went east. He roomed with Joshua Logan and Jimmy Stewart. The University Players, then Broadway. Hollywood found a face that photographed as American weather. The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935) was the film debut, from a play he had already done. He was thirty. The face already looked like a conscience.
William Wyler’s Jezebel (1938) put him opposite Bette Davis. John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) made him a rail-splitter who has not yet become a monument. Then Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), from Steinbeck: Tom Joad, dust, a family on a truck, a last speech about being there wherever people are beaten. He was nominated for Best Actor. The statue stayed home. He had already, in that picture, written the public man the country would keep. The Lady Eve (1941), for Preston Sturges, opposite Barbara Stanwyck, proved the conscience could also be a straight man in a screwball. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) put him in a posse that becomes a hanging, a western that is also the Omaha window. Then the war.
He enlisted in the Navy in 1942. He served as a quartermaster and air combat intelligence officer, including time on the destroyer USS Satterlee. He came back older. The town still wanted the dust. Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946) made him Wyatt Earp in a Tombstone that is also a church and a haircut. Fort Apache (1948) put him opposite John Wayne as a rigid colonel. He kept a foot on the stage. Mister Roberts, which he had created on Broadway in 1948, came to film in 1955; he fought for the part and played a cargo officer who wants a transfer the war will not give him. The Navy years are in that performance whether the stills say so or not.
The 1940s and 1950s were not only dust and a badge. Daisy Kenyon (1947), for Otto Preminger, opposite Joan Crawford, put him in a modern triangle the stills skip. Fort Apache had already shown he could play a man the audience is not asked to love. Mister Roberts on stage had been a long Broadway occupation before the film; he fought Warner and John Ford to keep the part when the picture came. The 1960s used the granite as a president, a candidate, a man in a bunker. The Longest Day (1962) put him back in a uniform. Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) with Lucille Ball is a household comedy the conscience did not refuse. Leone’s Frank, the same year, is the one the film students name when they want to say the decent face could do the other thing.
12 Angry Men (1957), which he also produced, is the second monument the juror still hides. Sidney Lumet’s first feature. A New York jury room. Eleven guilty. One not. Fonda is Juror 8, a man who will not raise his hand with the rest because he is not sure. He put his own money and clout into a picture the studios did not want. It lost money at first and then became a civic object. He was, for a stretch, the man the town sent when it wanted a conscience that did not speechify. The Wrong Man (1956), for Hitchcock, made him a musician the system had already decided was guilty. Advise & Consent (1962). The Best Man (1964). Fail-Safe (1964) put him in the White House as a president who has to finish a mistake. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), for Sergio Leone, is the correction: Frank, a hired killer who shoots a child in the first reel. The decent man played the man the decent man had always been aimed at. The town noticed. The kitchen at home had already noticed a harder weather.
He married five times. Margaret Sullavan first, a University Players marriage that did not hold. Frances Ford Seymour, mother of Jane (1937) and Peter (1940), died by suicide on April 14, 1950, in a sanitarium. The children have written and spoken about a father who could be a monument in a frame and a silence in a kitchen. He married Susan Blanchard, then Afdera Franchetti, then Shirlee Mae Adams, who stayed. He did not become a talk-show dad. He became, late, the dying Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981), opposite Katharine Hepburn and Jane, a picture that is a public therapy the family did and did not ask for. Mark Rydell directed. The pond, the fishing, a daughter who wants a word the old man cannot quite say. He won the Oscar. He was too ill to attend. Jane accepted. He died on August 12, 1982, in Los Angeles. He was seventy-seven. The pond is the clip. The kitchen is the record.
I don’t think I was a good father. I think I was a good actor who happened to have children.Henry Fonda, late, on the house
The turn is the house, not the dust. A complete life of America’s decent man has to hold Frances, Jane’s politics he did not always love, Peter’s pictures, and a silence the stills cannot light. He played decency. He did not always deliver it at breakfast. Both are the biography. Jane has been, in public, fairer than many children of monuments. Peter, who died in 2019, wrote his own westerns and his own distance. The children are a second filmography he did not direct.
Six things most people never knew
- Omaha’s playhouse, not a Hollywood childhood, is the first floor. Grand Island, then a midwestern quiet that became the instrument.
- He produced 12 Angry Men. 1957. The juror is also a shop owner. The civics sit on that will.
- The Navy years are service, not a publicity still only. He came back older. The dust pictures had to make room.
- Frances’s death in 1950 is the private plot. A wife. A suicide. Jane and Peter’s books do not invent the weather.
- The 1982 Oscar is a last-reel statue. On Golden Pond. He could not walk in to take it. Jane did the public part.
- The children are a second filmography he did not direct. Jane, Peter. The American family is their file as much as his.
Shirlee, his last wife, was with him at the end. Friends from the sets describe a professional who was prepared, shy, and finished with nonsense — “One-Take Fonda,” the crews called him, which was praise and a warning. Fonda at home was the same shyness without the preparation. The children have been, in public, fairer than many children of monuments. That fairness is part of his remaining life whether he earned it daily or not.
The later years
Jane’s politics in the Vietnam years were a public weather he did not always love and did not always know how to answer. Peter’s Easy Rider (1969) was a son’s filmography he had not directed. The house had already been a harder room than the stills. The remaining professional years had to share space with that room. He kept working anyway, because the shop was the one language he trusted.
The last decade of the work was not a farewell tour so much as a man still taking the jobs a conscience could stand. There Was a Crooked Man... (1970) with Kirk Douglas. Sometimes a Great Notion (1971), from Kesey, a logging family. The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) with Stewart, a western that is also a joke between two old friends. Midway (1976) put him back in a uniform. Rollercoaster (1977). The Swarm (1978) and Meteor (1979) are disaster pictures that used the granite the way disaster pictures use granite. He did not pretend they were Joad. He also did not retire. The stage still had him. First Monday in October on Broadway, a Supreme Court comedy, showed a body that was already arguing with the calendar.
He also did the television and the packed pictures the 1970s offered a granite face: Roots: The Next Generations in a small key, disaster ensembles that wanted the conscience in the credit block, a man who would still learn the lines. Jane was already a second public life he had to share a name with. Peter was already a third. The remaining years were a professional still working and a father still not quite speaking the kitchen language. Both ran until the pond.
Illness arrived as heart disease and cancer, a ledger he did not tour. In 1981 the Academy gave him an Honorary Award, the town’s way of saying it had waited too long. He was too sick to make a night of it. Then On Golden Pond opened, and the competitive statue followed at the 1982 ceremony. Jane stood in. The public treated the picture as a reconciliation. The family has been more careful than the public. Jane has said the work of the pond was real and that the kitchen had been real too. Peter kept his own distance and his own pictures — Easy Rider is his file, not his father’s, and the two files do not cancel. Shirlee kept the house. The Omaha quiet, at the end, was a hospital quiet.
He died on August 12, 1982. He was seventy-seven. The obituaries led with Joad and the juror and the pond. The better ones remembered Frances and the five marriages and a man who could play decency for fifty years without learning how to say the ordinary sentences at breakfast. Jane has spent the decades since writing and speaking about that gap without turning it into a demolition. Peter, before his own death, did the same in a different key. The Fonda name became a dynasty the patriarch had not designed. He had designed a close-up. The close-up lasted. The house is the books.
What the remaining years actually were, on the ground, was a professional who still showed up, a husband on a fifth marriage that held, a father who could share a frame with his daughter and still not quite share a kitchen, and a dying man who finally received the envelope the dust pictures had earned in 1940. He had already, in the juror and the Joad, written the public man. The private man is Jane’s and Peter’s sentences. Both should run. Omaha still claims the quiet. The pond claims the Sunday broadcast. The Navy years claim a stretch the stills skip. The suicide is in the biographies whether the fan sites print it or not.
He did not have a long twilight of honorary dinners. He had a last picture that happened to be the right last picture, a statue he could not walk in to take, and a death that came while the pond was still in theaters. That compression is the remaining chapter. It is not a long chapter. It is a complete one if you let the kitchen in. If you keep only the dust, you have the still the country wanted. If you keep the juror, Frances, Jane in the aisle with the statue, and a man who said he had been a good actor who happened to have children, you have the life.
After he was gone
Every decent American on film still pays him a tax. Every Hollywood child of a monument still walks through Jane’s and Peter’s sentences. 12 Angry Men still teaches a room. The suicide is in the biographies whether the fan sites print it or not. Jane’s own statues and Peter’s own westerns are a second filmography the father did not direct and could not stop.
Joad still ends a unit on the Depression. The juror still ends a unit on a room. Frank in Leone’s western still ends a unit on what a decent face can do when it decides not to be decent. The pond still ends a Sunday. Shirlee outlived him. The children wrote. The playhouse in Omaha still claims the first floor.
He came out of Nebraska, put on Joad, produced a jury, went to sea, failed a kitchen, played a dying man with his daughter, and died after the statue had finally arrived. If you only remember the dust, you have the still. If you remember the juror, Frances, and the pond, you have him.
Portrait: 20th Century Fox studio publicity still · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons