Watch this video to learn about the tragic real-life story of the Fonda family.
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00:00Though they've spent three generations in the spotlight, there's much more to the Fondas
00:04than their award-winning time in Hollywood. This is the true and tragic real-life story
00:08of the Fonda family.
00:10Patriarch Henry Fonda is known for his roles in westerns like My Darling Clementine as
00:14well as acclaimed classics such as 12 Angry Men and The Grapes of Wrath, and he won an
00:18Oscar for On Golden Pond later in his acting career. Henry was known for taking very social-justice-oriented
00:23roles, and his childhood may be a clue as to why. When Henry was 14 years old, he was
00:28taken by his father to witness the lynching and burning of a black man named Will Brown,
00:32according to the biography Hank and Jim, The Story of a Friendship.
00:35Fonda's father was a salesman, and he grew up in a liberal Democrat household in the
00:38middle of the American heartland in Omaha, Nebraska. The intense incident Henry's father
00:42exposed him to at such a young age influenced his disdain for violence, and instilled a
00:47sense of duty in him to assist in fighting social injustice.
00:50Henry's films reflect his values. In The Oxbow Incident, a film that came out in the midst
00:55of World War II, his character even witnesses a lynching. Fonda was also known for taking
00:59roles for admirable reasons, regardless of the likelihood of box office success. Sometimes,
01:04he would even have to front some of his own funds to get the films made, including for
01:0812 Angry Men. Fonda was known for being a rather serious person and not always easy
01:12to get along with, which is often reflected in his career.
01:15Frances Ford Seymour was a Canadian socialite from an aristocratic family. She was a distant
01:20relative of the third wife of King Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, whom daughter Jane Fonda was
01:24named after. Before she joined the Fonda family, Seymour was a widow, raising her own
01:28daughter, little Frances. After being married to Henry Fonda for 13 years, Frances found
01:32herself part of a fraught existence. She suffered from debilitating mental illness, and their
01:37marriage was on the rocks as Henry requested a divorce so he could marry a woman 23 years
01:42his junior.
01:43On Frances' 42nd birthday, she tragically took her own life while living in an institution.
01:48Jane was only 12, and her brother Peter was only 10. They were told that their mother
01:52died of a heart attack. It was only a year later that Jane found out the truth, thanks
01:56to a gossip rag.
01:57A year after my mother died, I was in study hall and a girlfriend passed me a movie magazine
02:03in which it said that my mother had cut her throat.
02:07Jane also disclosed that shortly before her death, her mother visited their house accompanied
02:10by a nurse. At the time, Jane and Peter were not even told that their mother was staying
02:14in an institution and was simply, quote, away. When Frances requested to visit with Jane,
02:18she refused to come downstairs. Jane would never see her mother again, and still struggles
02:23with feelings of guilt about that day.
02:25If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
02:29Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK 8255.
02:34It wasn't easy for Peter and Jane Fonda to grow up with father Henry, who became increasingly
02:39harder to get along with after their mother took her own life. The children were stuck
02:42relying on their stepmothers for warmth. In an interview with the Virginian pilot, Peter
02:46Fonda explained,
02:48Growing up with my father was not easy. Jane and I didn't look forward to having dinner
02:51with him. It's just that he was quiet and didn't talk much, and we felt he was judging
02:55us and we didn't do much that was right. The dinner table was a scary place."
02:59In a Q&A session with the British Film Institute, Peter explained that his father had difficulty
03:03understanding his own choices as an actor and wasn't shy about saying so. Peter also
03:07added that because Henry grew up in a Christian scientist's household, they were raised to
03:11believe that any pain could be fixed by prayer alone and that crying was, quote, not acceptable.
03:16According to his children, Henry was also very shy, and he was afraid to convey strong
03:19emotion off-screen.
03:20So they both went through what is recognized and called classic rebellion. And I like to
03:26think that I was smart enough to recognize it for what it was."
03:30Henry and Peter had a fraught father-son relationship, and Henry could be abusive. Peter was sent
03:35to boarding school when he was only six years old, so he didn't see his father often in
03:38his youth. One of Peter's first memories of his father is when Henry had just come back
03:42from serving in World War II. In his 1998 book Don't Tell Dad, a memoir, Peter recalls
03:47making his way to his father's dressing room, where he found a box of candies and took one.
03:51"'I made it into my bathroom, locking the door, but then Dad kicked the door in. He
03:55picked me up by my small, terrified neck and carried me into my bedroom, giving me the
03:59spanking of my life.'"
04:00Like Jane, Peter also recalls being lied to about his mother's cause of death, and he
04:04wouldn't learn the truth of her suicide until years later. After she passed, Peter wrote
04:09in his memoir that, quote, "'No one ever talked about Mom.'"
04:12Jane and Henry Fonda's relationship didn't fare much better and left her with long-lasting
04:16psychological damage. Jane revealed in an interview with Harper's Bazaar that her father
04:20embedded unhealthy beauty expectations in his daughter. As she put it,
04:24"...I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly. He was a good
04:27man and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send. Unless
04:32you look perfect, you're not going to be loved."
04:34She also revealed later in life that she had been molested as a child, raped in adulthood,
04:38and fired from a job because she wouldn't sleep with her boss. Jane admitted that, out
04:42of sheer insecurity and a lack of sense of self, she was too afraid to say no to anybody.
04:46She suffered from bulimia well into her 30s, saying that she mostly survived on cigarettes,
04:51coffee, and strawberry yogurt. In Jane's case, pain was beauty.
04:56Following in her father's rocky marital footsteps, Jane Fonda was married and divorced three
04:59times. Her relationships were dysfunctional, and Jane revealed later that they were at
05:03times abusive and unfaithful. Jane admitted that she was lost and didn't know who she
05:07was when she married her first husband, director Roger Vadim, in 1965. They divorced after
05:12eight years of marriage. Vadim didn't believe in monogamy, and Jane later admitted to feeling
05:17pressured into a threesome with a call girl and the French director. Vadim also had a
05:21gambling problem, which often left Jane picking up the financial pieces.
05:24In a drastic change of direction, Jane married Vietnam anti-war activist Tom Hayden within
05:29the same year as her divorce from Roger. His influence was somewhat responsible for amping
05:33up her activism work, which would later get her into legal trouble. They were married
05:36for 17 years, but Jane later admitted that Hayden was a womanizer and controlling. Her
05:40third and last marriage to billionaire and CNN founder Ted Turner didn't fare much better.
05:45According to The Telegraph, Jane got physically abusive with Ted, hitting him in the head
05:49with a telephone after finding out he cheated on her only a month after they were married.
05:53Peter Fonda's image became the polar opposite of his father's. Henry Fonda's movie star
05:57persona was the wholesome all-American with a conscience, but Peter wanted to be free
06:01of his father's shadow in the midst of the 60s beatnik movement. His starring role in
06:05Easy Rider was the turning point in his career, but reality and fiction had already become
06:09blurred for Peter as he leaned into the hippie counterculture. He would even be turned away
06:13for multiple roles because of his recreational drug use.
06:16Peter was arrested for marijuana possession in 1966, the same year he protested for the
06:21rights of young people in a riot on the Sunset Strip. After that incident, he became involved
06:25in politics and environmental issues, much like his sister Jane.
06:29Peter opened up later in life about having post-traumatic stress disorder from a very
06:32young age. As he told the Los Angeles Times,
06:35"...I knew I was nuts. I had no idea how to deal with it and it was getting in my way.
06:39In 2004, I found what was wrong. I had never heard the term PTSD. That's what I suffered
06:44since I was six years old."
06:47Jane Fonda is just as famous for her activism as she is for her film roles. Known for her
06:51work with the Black Panther Party and Native American rights organizations, she spent a
06:55night in jail in 1970 for protesting the Vietnam War, and was later nicknamed Hanoi Jane after
07:00the formation of the Free Army Tour, an anti-war military tour created to counter Bob Hope's
07:05USO tour. She was officially arrested on drug charges, but it was later revealed that President
07:09Nixon had manipulated the situation due to his discontent with her anti-war messaging.
07:14As it turns out, the FBI and CIA had been surveilling Jane, and the NSA was tapping
07:18her calls, according to The Washington Post.
07:21She received the infamous Hanoi Jane title in 1972 when Fonda toured North Vietnam, where
07:26she spoke against the U.S. military's policy in Vietnam and begged pilots to stop bombing
07:30non-military targets on numerous radio programs. During the trip, a photograph captured a moment
07:35of Jane sitting on an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi, which became quite a PR problem for
07:39the actress back home, and continues to haunt her through veterans' protests even today.
07:44Jane has since apologized for the photo.
07:46I will go to my grave regretting the fact that I was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft
07:52gun."
07:53Some American lawmakers, as well as the veterans of foreign wars, saw her actions as treasonous
07:57and sought retaliation against her. But many Americans agreed with her activism, and some
08:01veterans even respected her stance, even if they didn't agree with it.
08:05Jane Fonda's daughter Vanessa Vadim, with first husband Roger Vadim, came at a tough
08:09time in her adult life, and she struggled with postpartum depression. The two didn't
08:13have a very warm mother-daughter relationship until later in life, when they bonded over
08:17climate activism.
08:18I felt like I was the bad mother, and I was terrified."
08:24Jane was arrested again during the weekly 2020 environmental strikes outside the Capitol.
08:28Jane committed to showing up for the Washington, D.C. Fire Drill Friday protests, using her
08:32celebrity to call attention to the important issue and become a fixture of the effort.
08:36Vanessa met up with her mother after she was released from a night in jail. As Jane told
08:40the press,
08:41When I came out of jail, I didn't know she was going to be there, and we just looked
08:44at each other and burst into tears.
08:46Jane attributes much of her activist work to her father, as she explained in an interview
08:50with The Guardian,
08:51As I was growing up, he was making films like 12 Angry Men and The Grapes of Wrath, playing
08:55characters who spoke up for justice, who fought for the underdog. I knew he loved these characters,
09:00and I wanted him to love me. He used acting as a mask behind which to hide his emotions.
09:04He abhorred anything that showed his vulnerability."
09:07Peter Fonda was constantly asked if he would reprise his father's roles, such as in a 12
09:11Angry Men reboot, but Peter would always decline. Both actors struggled to break away from his
09:15legacy but found their own powerful voices in time. Despite multiple hardships within
09:20their family, the Fondas found support and camaraderie among one another as time passed
09:24and managed to heal some old wounds.