David Nezelek
Cibbuano
TyronneJane Fonda
February 17th 2008 05:02
Jane Fonda
She was born in New York City on December 21, 1937, the daughter of Henry Fonda, Hollywood Royalty. Her parents named her Lady Jane Seymour Fonda, because of her mother's distant ancestor,
Lady Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry the Eighth, King of England. Internetmoviedatabase
Her childhood, though priviledged, was not ideal. Her mother committed suicide when Jane was twelve. She did not learn how her mother died until a year later, when reading a magazine. Her father, Henry, was an actor of world renown, but distant. She has said she spent much of her early life wanting to be a boy, so that she could be like him. But, he was so distant, loving but distant.
In the February 16, 1970 issue of Time Magazine , in a cover story about Henry, Jane, and Peter (who had just broken all movie rules and roles with Easy Rider), the article states, in part,
“Peter may have been a hellion, but Jane was a well-behaved, red-haired stick figure at the Brentwood Town and Country School. Her class was filled with other kids as plain as Jane: Gary Cooper's and Claude Rains' daughters, Laurence Olivier's son. A classmate recalls a bit of the Fonda home life down on the farm. “We were all afraid of Jane's father in those days. We always felt he was a time bomb ready to explode. But it was years later when we actually saw him lose his temper over some forgotten trivia. He was booming, purple-faced, with veins sticking out on his temples. It was the only time I was ever privileded to see what may have been a constant for Lady Jane.”
In less than 12 months Henry re-married.
Peter, who was only ten years old at the time, took a gun, pointed it at himself, and fired. The bullet passed through his liver.
No, it was not an ideal childhood.
She began working in movies in 1960, in a cute, slight movie called “Tall Story”. She was adorable in “Cat Ballou”, five years later, with Lee Marvin (who won his only Oscar that year, 1965)
And then she began the rebellion that has characterized her life.
Barbarella
Jane subsequently said, “I did two things. I had a baby and I made Horses (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?). I went into pregnancy at 31. It felt like I could be destroyed. I was afraid. When Vanessa started growing in me, I got hooked. I'm a late starter. It has taken me a long time to get it together.”
After her divorce from Roger Vadim she married Tom Hayden, one of the co-founders of the Students for a Democratic Society and one of the members of the Chicago 7. Tom Hayden
Her activism against the Viet Nam war went far beyond peace protests, and she was called Hanoi Jane.
The controversy over Jane's form of protest continues today, though she has said she regretted her actions, though not her views.
“I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Viet Nam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their familes....I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.”(source:wikipedi a)
While married to Tom Hayden she became one of the most popular video personal trainers in the United States, and used much of the money to fund her husband's and her own political projects. However, Mr. Hayden apparently had an affair, and the marriage ended in divorce.
Ted Turner pursued her immediately after the end of her marriage, and she explained to him that she was not ready for another relationship so soon.
He continued to keep in contact, and they married, and divorced.
In September of 2007, the authors of “Freakonomics” talked about The Jane Fonda Effect. Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt wrote about the social effect of the movie she starred in, “The China Syndrome”, a movie made in 1979, where Jane portrayed a television reporter who just happens to be filming at a nuclear power plant when an “incident” occurrs. NYTimes FreakonomicsTwelve days after the movie opened there was the real life Three Mile Island incident.
“What it did produce, stoked by “The China Syndrome”, was a widespread panic. The nuclear industry,
already foundering as a result of economic, regulatory and public pressures, halted plans for further
expansion. And so, instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed
inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today
such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone
hunting for a global-warning villian can't help blaming those power plants – and can't help wondering
too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda.”
In 2005 she said, “People are suspicious because I change. God help me if I didn't!”
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