He attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism, but did not graduate. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope." By his senior year in high school, Fonda had grown to more than 6 feet (180 cm) tall, but remained shy. My hands were wet, there were tears in my eyes. Remarking on the incident in a 1975 BBC interview, he said: "It was the most horrendous sight I'd ever seen. This enraged the young Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. When he was 14, he and his father witnessed the brutal lynching of Will Brown from a nearby building during the Omaha race riot of 1919. However, this is not supported elsewhere. Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America Howard Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout. Later, he worked after school for the phone company. He worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist. Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. Despite having a religious background, he later became an agnostic. They were a close family and highly supportive, especially in health matters, as they avoided doctors due to their religion. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Grand Island. įonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist, though he was baptized an Episcopalian at St. By 1888, many of their descendants had relocated to Nebraska. They were among the first Dutch population to settle in what is now upstate New York, establishing the town of Fonda, New York. In 1642, a branch of the Fonda family immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland on the East Coast of North America. įonda's patriline originates with an ancestor from Genoa, Italy, who migrated to the Netherlands in the 15th century. The family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906. In 1999, he was named the sixth- Greatest Male Screen Legends of the Classic Hollywood Era (stars with a film debut by 1950) by the American Film Institute.įamily history and early life Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, and Peter Fonda in July 1955īorn in Grand Island, Nebraska, on May 16, 1905, Henry Jaynes Fonda was the son of printer William Brace Fonda, and his wife, Herberta (Jaynes). He was too ill to attend the ceremony and died from heart disease five months later.įonda was the patriarch of a family of actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda and grandson Troy Garity. He also portrayed military figures, such as a colonel in Battle of the Bulge (1965) and Admiral Nimitz in Midway (1976).įonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond (1981), which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda. Later in his career, Fonda played a range of characters, including a villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and the lead in the romantic comedy Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball. In 1957, Fonda starred as Juror 8, the hold-out juror, in 12 Angry Men, a film he co-produced and that earned him a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor. In 1956, at the age of 51, Fonda played the title role of 38-year-old Manny Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Wrong Man. During a seven-year break from films, Fonda focused on stage productions, returning to star in the war-boat ensemble movie Mister Roberts in 1955, a role he championed on Broadway. He also starred in Ford's Western Fort Apache (1948). After his service in World War II, he starred in two highly regarded Westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), the latter directed by John Ford. In 1941, Fonda starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). He rose to film stardom with performances in films like Jezebel (1938), Jesse James (1939) and Young Mr. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters that embodied an everyman image.īorn and raised in Nebraska, Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. Henry Jaynes Fonda (– August 12, 1982) was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood.
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