Henry Fonda

His father ran a print plant in Omaha and Fonda worked there after school, thinking he might be a journalist. He had been born in Grand Island in 1905, and the family moved the following year. On September 28, 1919, when he was 14, his father took him downtown and the two of them watched from a building above the square as a mob pulled Will Brown out of the courthouse and lynched him. Fonda described that night for the rest of his life — the wet hands, the tears, the body on the rope. He was 20, shy and working for a credit company when Dorothy Brando, a friend of his mother's with a small son named Marlon, told him to try out at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

He played the young Abraham Lincoln for John Ford in 1939 and Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath a year later. Then the man who cannot stop a hanging in The Ox-Bow Incident, Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine, Lieutenant Roberts on Broadway 1,157 times and again on film, and Juror 8 in 12 Angry Men, which he co-produced himself and which drew badly enough on release that he swore never to produce again. Underneath, the part was one part: plain, upright, slow to anger, and by the last scene the conscience of the room.

The men he played were patient. He was not, and he did not pretend otherwise. Fonda married five times. In August 1949 he told his second wife, Frances Ford Seymour, that he wanted a divorce so he could marry someone else. She entered a sanitarium in Beacon, New York, in January 1950 and died there by suicide on April 14, at 42. Their children, Jane and Peter, were told it had been a heart attack. Jane has said she found out about a year later from a movie magazine. Both of them have written about a father who could not say what he felt and who turned furious when anyone reached for it. He agreed with much of that. Peter waited until his father was old to tell him he loved him, and finally heard it back.

Jane had no use for his Republican friends, James Stewart above all — his roommate in New York and then Hollywood, his closest friend for half a century, a conservative Republican to Fonda's liberal Democrat, with whom he had agreed after one bad argument never to raise politics again. They went years barely speaking. She bought the screen rights to Ernest Thompson's play On Golden Pond and produced the 1981 film for them both, with Katharine Hepburn as his wife. On March 29, 1982, at 76, he won his first and only Academy Award for Best Actor. He was too ill to attend, so Jane carried it home. He died in Los Angeles on August 12, five months later.

Henry Fonda's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Young Mr. Lincoln film
  His first picture for John Ford 1939
• The Grapes of Wrath film
  Tom Joad, from the Steinbeck novel, and his first Academy Award nomination 1940
• The Ox-Bow Incident film
  A western about a lynching, made 24 years after he watched one 1943
• My Darling Clementine film
  Wyatt Earp, again for Ford 1946
• 12 Angry Men film
  Juror 8. He co-produced it, it drew poorly, and he vowed never to produce a movie again. 1957
• On Golden Pond film
  His last film role and his only competitive Academy Award 1981

• May 16, 1905 aged 0 Born in Grand Island, Nebraska Son of the printer William Brace Fonda. The family moved to Omaha the next year.
• September 28, 1919 aged 14 Watches the lynching of Will Brown during the Omaha race riot He was 14 and standing beside his father. He spoke about it for the rest of his life.
• 1925 aged ~20 Takes a juvenile part at the Omaha Community Playhouse at 20 Dorothy Brando, mother of Marlon, put him up for it.
• January 24, 1940 aged 34 The Grapes of Wrath opens with Fonda as Tom Joad Darryl Zanuck made him sign a seven-year contract to get the part.
• February 18, 1948 aged 42 Opens on Broadway in the title role of Mister Roberts It ran 1,157 performances and won him a Tony Award.
• April 14, 1950 aged 44 Frances Ford Seymour dies by suicide at a sanitarium in Beacon, New York Their children were told it had been a heart attack.
• April 10, 1957 aged 51 12 Angry Men opens, his first and last outing as a producer Shot in 17 days, mostly in one jury room. It found its audience years later.
• March 29, 1982 aged 76 Wins the Academy Award for Best Actor for On Golden Pond He was 76 and too ill to attend. Jane Fonda accepted it for him.
• August 12, 1982 aged 77 Dies of heart disease at his home in Los Angeles His wife Shirlee and both children were with him. He asked that there be no funeral.

• James Stewart 1908–1997
  The everyman of American movies, and a combat bomber pilot who rarely mentioned it. roommate and closest friend
• John Ford 1894–1973
  Director of Westerns and Depression dramas who won four directing Academy Awards. directed by
• Katharine Hepburn 1907–2003
  Four-time Oscar-winning actress whose independent spirit and wit made her a screen legend. co-starred with
• John Steinbeck 1902–1968
  Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men chronicled American hardship. adapted
• Marlon Brando 1924–2004
  Actor whose method acting revolutionized film performance and influenced generations of actors. started at the same playhouse