Jane Fonda:
“I loved campaigning with Harvey Milk in the Castro District in San Francisco for Prop 6. He was the most joyous. He was like Allen Ginsberg. He was always smiling and laughing, and he was beloved and he was funny. The most lovable person. I was so happy when I was with him. And it was just so much fun going into those gay bars with him – oh my god!”
Fonda says she was the number-one beard for closeted actors during a time when homophobia in Hollywood was decidedly worse than today.
“When I was young, I was the female that gay guys wanted to try to become heterosexual with. A very famous actor who’s gay, and I will not name names, asked me to marry him. I was very flattered, but I said: ‘Why?’. This was 1964, and I mean, he wasn’t the only one. It’s very interesting. And I lived for two years with a guy who was trying to become straight. I’m intimately acquainted with that.”
Fonda has long been a Gay Rights advocate. In 2013, she said:
“I’ve lived a long time, 20 years of that time was in the south, and I have seen too many lives destroyed and distorted by homophobia. I pray with all my heart that I live to see the day when people can come out freely, safely and be accepted by every strata of society.”
Fonda and her friend Lily Tomlin have gave us seven seasons of the Netflix series Grace And Frankie. I was slow in appreciating this show, even though I hold the two leads in the very highest esteem. For the first five episodes, I found it forced its comedy; Sam Waterson and Martin Sheen as the husbands that leave their wives for each other, seemed to be acting gay, instead of being gay. I originally thought the show would be a laugh fest, considering the pedigree; Marta Kauffman was the creator, and she had brought us Friends (1994-2004). I melted and fell in love with the series eventually, yet I still think the two leading women should have switched roles and the whole thing could have been presented as a Ingmar Bergman-style Scenes From A Marriage for the new millennium.
Grace And Frankie received 12 Emmy Award nominations, including six for both Fonda and Tomlin, plus SAG Award and Golden Globe nominations.
Fonda has spoken out to our gay youth, urging them not give up hope as they come out to their parents, whatever the reaction to the news might be:
“Do not despair, no matter what your parents say. You’ve got to understand it can be very hard for parents to hear that their son or daughter is gay. But it’s their problem. It’s not your problem. Don’t despair.”
Fonda has had many personas: two time Tony Award nominee; Emmy, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Academy Award-winning Actor, Sex Symbol, Film Producer, Political Activist, Fitness Guru, Trophy Wife, and Gay Icon.
In honor of her birthday (her 85th!), this writer chooses his Top 10 Jane Fonda Performances:
Cat Ballou (1965)
Fonda found major stardom with this comic feminist riff on the Western genre. She portrays the titular outlaw, who has come to her career of crime to avenge her father’s death. Lee Marvin plays a drunken, bumbling gunslinger that Ballou hires to protect her father and her father’s assassin. A Greek chorus of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye bring even more laughs, but the best thing about this flick is watching Fonda come into her own as a comic actor.
Barefoot In The Park (1967)
Opposite Robert Redford (reprising his Broadway role, Fonda proves herself a comic force of nature in this film adaptation of Neil Simon‘s hit play. Fonda brings her famous free-spirit to her portrayal of a feisty newlywed whose marriage descends into chaos because of the wacky discord sparked by the nutty residents of the couple’s apartment building. Fonda glows when paired with Redford, and their comic energy sparkles. She proves she could infuse the rom-coms that defined her early career with more sexual bite than she’d ever been permitted to play before.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)
This drama from director Sydney Pollack was a major turning point in Fonda’s career. It brought her first Academy Award nomination. Based on a 1935 novel of the same name, it follows a group of desperate individuals who will stop at nothing to win a grueling Depression-era dance marathon. Fonda shuns her sunny, sexy image to play the cynical, misanthropic young woman. Fonda felt she finally had some real input on a character, plus it opened the door to work in more serious films that took on some of of social issues she was passionate about in her personal life as an activist. Fonda is heartbreaking and utterly unglamorous in this brutal film.
Klute (1971)
For this neo-noir directed and produced by Alan J. Pakula, Fonda earned her first Oscar for playing call girl Bree in this tense psychological thriller. Donald Sutherland stars as detective John Klute, hired to investigate the disappearance of an executive, he shadows Bree, following her through her life as a call girl and aspiring actor/model. But when two other women disappear, she becomes part of the mystery. Fonda later wrote that she was initially reluctant to take the role after hanging out with real prostitutes in New York City. With the 1970s pervading sense of paranoia, plus Fonda’s passion for exploring gender dynamics, Klute is probably her all-time best performance.
Fun With Dick And Jane (1977)
With Fonda’s focus on activism in the 1970s, this socially conscious comedy was a sort of comeback after a string of box-office duds. This film takes aim at American materialism with Dick (the late George Segal) and Jane (Fonda) playing an upper-middle class couple who go on a crime spree to maintain their lifestyle. For Fonda, it was a return to the type of comedy that helped establish her career. She reminds me of Myrna Loy in The Thin Man movies with her charming, smart-alecky tone.
Julia (1977)
Fonda received her third Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of playwright Lillian Hellman in this Holocaust thriller. Based on a chapter from Hellman’s own memoir, Pentimento: A Book Of Portraits (1973), it follows Hellman’s friendship with the Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), an anti-fascist activist in Nazi Germany. Fonda brings Hellman authenticity, particularly in taut scenes where she tries to smuggle money to Julia for her cause. The film gives Fonda an especially stellar set of scenes with Hellman’s longtime lover Dashiell Hammett, played to perfection by Jason Robards who did win an Oscar for his work in Julia.
Hellman claimed the story was based on true events that occurred early in her life, but the filmmakers came to believe that most of it was fictionalized. Director Fred Zinnemann:
“Lillian Hellman in her own mind owned half the Spanish Civil War, while Ernest Hemingway owned the other half. She would portray herself in situations that were not true. An extremely talented, brilliant writer, but she was a phony character, I’m sorry to say. My relations with her were very guarded and ended in pure hatred.”
I love it nonetheless. Julia was also my first glimpse at Meryl Streep and John Glover onscreen.
Coming Home (1978)
Coming Home was another turning point in Fonda’s career. It is the first film produced by her own production company, IPC Films. She had promised to only make films about important issues and Coming Home certainly filled the bill. Inspired by her own friendship with activist and Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic, Fonda and director Hal Ashby made this film about the impact of the war on veterans returning homes and the people who loved them. She won her second Oscar for playing the wife of a Marine who has an affair with a paraplegic veteran, played by a pre-insane Jon Voight, who she meets while volunteering at the V.A. hospital while her husband is in Vietnam. It has an emotionally raw performance from Fonda, that gave a chance to delve deep into issues that consumed her: ending the war in Vietnam and the struggle of veterans when they returned home.
The China Syndrome (1979)
Fonda owned the 1970s. She received another Oscar nomination for her work in this thriller about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. She plays a the television reporter who accidently witnesses a near meltdown at a nuclear power plant alongside her cameraman (Michael Douglas). The two of them become obsessed with exposing the truth to the public. With help from a plant supervisor (Jack Lemmon, never better), they race against time and the plant’s operatives to get to the truth. Fonda’s character moves between integrity and her own ambition, looking at the era of America’s first cultural reckoning that television news is also entertainment. At time of release, the film was eerily prescient, opening only 12 days before the infamous nuclear incident at Three Mile Island. It still remains a taut thrill with stellar performances, especially Fonda’s.
9 to 5 (1980)
Fonda really figured out how to match her activism with commercially bankable projects with this feminist comedy about three women living out their fantasies of revenge against their sexist boss (Dabney Coleman). With a central dream cast of Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Elizabeth Wilson, direction from gay filmmaker Colin Higgins, plus Parton’s iconic title song, the film became the second-highest grossing film of the year (over $104 million, that’s $450 million in 2021 dollars). It is based on an original idea by Fonda and it still remains a classic pro-labor, feminist look at the radical idea of making the workplace a more equitable space for all. Fonda intentionally wanted to focus on women who might’ve entered the workforce later in life, as reflected in her character’s need to find work after her husband leaves her for his secretary. It reestablished Fonda as an iconic comic force.
The Newsroom (2012-2014)
This Aaron Sorkin project centers on the behind-the-scenes events of a fictional cable news network, ACN, and boasted a dazzling ensemble cast. Fonda brought her significant star power in the recurring role of the CEO of the media company that owned the network. The character can easily be seen as the female version of Fonda’s ex-husband, CNN founder, Ted Turner. Fonda received two Emmy nominations for her agile way with Sorkin’s notoriously rat-tat-tat dialogue and her pitiless portrait of a powerful woman caught between profit, political practicality, and moral responsibility.
