Henry Fonda - Definition and Overview

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 - August 12, 1982) was an acclaimed American film actor beloved for his roles as plain-speaking men of humane decency.

He was born in Grand Island, Nebraska to William Brace Fonda and Herberta Krueger Jaynes, and started his acting career at age twenty at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother's friend Dodie Brando needed a young man to play the lead in You and I.

Fonda, an Academy and Tony Award-winning film and stage actor who appeared in nearly 90 films, finally won the Oscar for his performance in On Golden Pond - in which his daughter Jane co-starred. His son Peter is also an actor, as is his grand-daughter Bridget. Henry Fonda died of cancer and heart disease at his home in Los Angeles just months after his Oscar win, with wife Shirlee and daughter Jane at his side.

Marriages

• 1965-1982 Shirlee Mae Adams
• 1957-1961 Afdera Franchetti
• 1950-1956 Susan Blanchard
• 1936-1950 Frances Ford Seymour committed suicide in 1950
• 1931-1932 Margaret Brooke Sullavan - committed suicide by drug overdose in 1960

Some notable roles

• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in the title role
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940), as migrant Tom Joad, the iconic migrant Okie
• The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), as a cowboy trying to prevent a lynching
• My Darling Clementine, as Wyatt Earp
• Fort Apache (1948), as a Custer-like cavalry commander
• Mister Roberts (1955), in the title role of a battle-eager officer on a WWII supply ship
• 12 Angry Men (1957), as the lone doubter in a jury convinced of the defendant's guilt
• Warlock (1959), as a gunman hired to calm the town of Warlock
• Fail-Safe (1964), as the U.S. President facing a nuclear crisis
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), in an atypical role as a brutal gunman
• Midway (1976), as Adm. Chester Nimitz
• On Golden Pond (1981), as a retired professor approaching his 80th birthday

External links

• Henry Fonda (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000020/) at the Internet Movie Database