Page:
«Prev
1
2
Next»

Henry Fonda Biography

in full Henry Jaynes Fonda

(1905 - 1982)

Related Works

Films
1935 The Farmer Takes a Wife
1936 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

1937 You Only Live Once
1938 Spawn of the North
1939 Jesse James
1938 Jezebel
1939 Young Mr Lincoln
1940 The Grapes of Wrath
1941 The Lady Eve
1942 The Male Animal
1943 The Oxbow Incident
1946 My Darling Clementine
1948 Fort Apache
1955 Mister Roberts
1957 The Wrong Man
1957 Twelve Angry Men
1959 Warlock
1962 Advise and Consent
1964 The Best Man
1965 The Rounders
1966 A Big Hand for the Little Lady
1968 Madigan
1968 Yours, Mine and Ours
1968 The Boston Strangler
1969 Once Upon A Time in the West
1969 Too Late the Hero
1970 There Was a Crooked Man
1970 The Cheyenne Social Club
1971 Sometimes A Great Notion
1973 Ash Wednesday
1973 My Name is Nobody
1974 The Serpent
1976 Midway (UK The Battle of Midway)
1977 Rollercoaster
1978 Fedora
1978 The Swarm
1979 Meteor
1979 City on Fire
1981 On Golden Pond

» More

Related People

Jane Fonda

(born May 16, 1905, Grand Island, Nebraska, U.S.—died August 12, 1982, Los Angeles, California) American stage and motion-picture actor who appeared in more than 90 films over six decades and created quintessentially American heroes.

Reared in Omaha, Nebraska, Fonda began acting at the Omaha Community Playhouse at the behest of Marlon Brando's mother, Dorothy, a Playhouse cofounder. After briefly studying journalism at the University of Minnesota and working as an office clerk, Fonda moved to the East Coast in 1928 to pursue his acting career. He soon joined the University Players Guild, a small summer-stock theatre troupe in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where he met, among others, Joshua Logan, Jimmy Stewart, and Margaret Sullavan, who became the first of his five wives. In 1934 Fonda played his first leading role on Broadway in The Farmer Takes a Wife and repeated the role in his movie debut the next year.

Trained on the stage to project his voice, Fonda quickly adapted to film by underplaying his roles, which gave him a quietly intense screen persona. This reserved approach prevented him from becoming a romantic screen idol, although his good looks and adaptable presence made him a successful leading man in the period drama Jezebel (1938), with Bette Davis, and the romantic comedies The Lady Eve (1941), with Barbara Stanwyck, and The Big Street (1942), with Lucille Ball. Fonda's frequent collaborations with director John Ford produced a gallery of populist American icons, including the gentle, modest Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), the dispossessed farmer and ex-convict Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the legendary sheriff Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946), and the inflexible Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday in Fort Apache (1948). Although the typical Fonda character frequently moves in a world of men—the American West, the army, the navy—he is less a man of action than one of quiet thought. In films such as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and 12 Angry Men (1957), his characters embody the voice of conscience and reason. Their integrity and decency, rather than physical strength or athletic grace and exuberance, provide the impetus for their heroism.