80 Facts About Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood.

Henry Fonda cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.

Henry Fonda rose to film stardom with performances in films like Jezebel, Jesse James, and Young Mr Lincoln.

In 1941, Henry Fonda starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve.

Henry Fonda, who was the co-producer of this film, won the BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor.

Later in his career, Henry Fonda moved into darker roles, such as the villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West, a box office success in Europe, now regarded as one of the best Westerns of all time.

Henry Fonda played in lighter-hearted fare such as Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and My Name Is Nobody with Terence Hill, but often played important military figures, such as a colonel in Battle of the Bulge, and Admiral Nimitz in Midway.

Henry Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond, which starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda, but was too ill to attend the ceremony.

Henry Fonda died from heart disease a few months later.

In 1642, a branch of the Henry Fonda family immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland on the East Coast of North America.

Henry Fonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist, though he was baptized an Episcopalian at St Stephen's Episcopal Church in Grand Island.

Henry Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner.

Henry Fonda worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist.

Henry Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America; Howard Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout.

Henry Fonda attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism, but did not graduate.

Henry Fonda took a job with the Retail Credit Company.

At age 20, Henry Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother's friend Dodie Brando recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in You and I, in which he was cast as Ricky.

Henry Fonda was fascinated by the stage, learning everything from set construction to stage production, and embarrassed by his acting ability.

Henry Fonda decided to quit his job and go east in 1928 to seek his fortune.

Henry Fonda arrived on Cape Cod and played a minor role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts.

James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Henry Fonda left, though they were soon to become lifelong friends.

Henry Fonda got his first break in films when he was hired in 1935 as Janet Gaynor's leading man in 20th Century Fox's screen adaptation of The Farmer Takes a Wife; he reprised his role from the Broadway production of the same name, which had gained him recognition.

Suddenly, Henry Fonda was making $3,000 a week and dining with Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard.

In 1935 Henry Fonda starred in the RKO film I Dream Too Much with the opera star Lily Pons.

Henry Fonda starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, and a short rekindling of their relationship led to a brief but temporary consideration of remarriage.

Henry Fonda got the nod for the lead role in You Only Live Once, costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang.

Henry Fonda starred opposite Bette Davis, who had chosen him, in the film Jezebel.

Henry Fonda agreed and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the film, which many consider to be his finest role.

Henry Fonda starred in Fritz Lang's The Return of Frank James with Gene Tierney.

Henry Fonda then played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve, and again teamed with Tierney in the successful screwball comedy Rings on Her Fingers.

Henry Fonda was one of Fonda's favorite co-stars, and they appeared in three films together.

Henry Fonda was acclaimed for his role in The Ox-Bow Incident.

Henry Fonda was later commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Navy Presidential Unit Citation.

Stewart and Henry Fonda would listen to records and invite Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Dinah Shore, and Nat King Cole over for music, with the latter giving the family piano lessons.

Henry Fonda played Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine, which was directed by John Ford.

Henry Fonda did seven postwar films until his contract with Fox expired, the last being Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon, opposite Joan Crawford.

Henry Fonda starred in The Fugitive, which was the first film of Ford's new production company, Argosy Pictures.

Henry Fonda followed that by reprising his performance in the national tour and with successful stage runs in Point of No Return and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.

Henry Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of robbery in The Wrong Man; the unusual semidocumentary work of Hitchcock was based on an actual incident and partly filmed on location.

In 1957, Henry Fonda made his first foray into producing with 12 Angry Men, in which he starred.

Henry Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose, and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as Juror 8.

In spite of the outcome, Henry Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie again, fearing that failing as a producer might derail his acting career.

Henry Fonda returned to more light-hearted cinema in Spencer's Mountain, which was the inspiration for the 1970s TV series, The Waltons, based on the Great Depression of the 1930s memories of Earl Hamner Jr.

Henry Fonda appeared against type as the villain 'Frank' in 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West.

In 1970, Henry Fonda appeared in three films; the most successful was The Cheyenne Social Club.

The other two films were Too Late the Hero, in which Henry Fonda played a secondary role, and There Was a Crooked Man, about Paris Pitman Jr.

Henry Fonda returned to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers.

Henry Fonda starred in the ABC television series The Smith Family between 1971 and 1972.

Henry Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays.

Henry Fonda returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, Clarence Darrow, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.

Henry Fonda's health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion.

Also in 1976, Henry Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster Midway.

Henry Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films.

The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacles and Rollercoaster, in which Henry Fonda appeared with George Segal, Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt.

Henry Fonda performed again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and Jose Ferrer in the killer bee action film The Swarm.

Henry Fonda acted in the global disaster film Meteor, with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden, and the Canadian production City on Fire, which featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner.

Henry Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in Wanda Nevada, with Brooke Shields.

Henry Fonda continued to act into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions in which he was featured before his death were for television.

The elder Henry Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life.

Jane Henry Fonda has said that elements of the story mimicked their real-life relationship and helped them resolve certain issues.

Henry Fonda was by that point too ill to attend the ceremony, and his daughter Jane accepted on his behalf.

Henry Fonda was married five times and had three children, one of them adopted.

Reports notwithstanding, both parties evidently reconsidered and in January 1936 it was reported that Henry Fonda was now seeing actress Virginia Bruce.

Later that year Henry Fonda married Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, widow of a wealthy industrialist, George Tuttle Brokaw.

Henry Fonda had met Frances at Denham Studios in England on the set of Wings of the Morning, the first picture in Europe to be filmed in three-strip Technicolor.

Henry Fonda quickly arranged a private funeral with only himself and his mother-in-law, Sophie Seymour, in attendance.

Henry Fonda was 21 years old, the daughter of Australian-born interior designer Dorothy Hammerstein, and the step-daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II.

Henry Fonda loathed displays of feeling in himself or others, and this was a consistent part of his character.

Jane Henry Fonda reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting days.

Jane Henry Fonda began studying acting with Strasberg, learning the techniques of "The Method" of which Strasberg was a renowned proponent.

In 1960 Fonda appeared in a campaign commercial for presidential candidate John F Kennedy.

Henry Fonda supported Lyndon B Johnson in the 1964 United States presidential election, and Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic Party primaries.

Henry Fonda was initially a registered Republican, but switched parties.

Henry Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12,1982, from heart disease.

Henry Fonda suffered from prostate cancer, but this did not directly cause his death and was noted only as a concurrent ailment on his death certificate.

Henry Fonda requested that no funeral be held, and his body was cremated.

Henry Fonda graced the screen with a sincerity and accuracy which made him a legend.

The home where Henry Fonda was born in 1905 is preserved at The Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Henry Fonda is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era.

Henry Fonda made his mark in Westerns and war films, and made frequent appearances in both television and foreign productions late in his career.