Today Henry Fonda is featured on TCM and he’s an actor for whom I’ve never really had any particular affinity. The problem was never his talent. I recognized his greatness as an actor early on. The first movie I ever remember seeing him in was The Lady Eve and thought he was quite good in the part. Then I saw him in The Grapes of Wrath playing a completely different type of character and, again, I thought he was excellently cast and played the role very well. Still, I didn’t connect to him. Sometimes, with certain actors, it can take a long time to come around to them. Sometimes, it never happens.
Henry Fonda had a lot of talent, there’s no doubt about that. But what he lacked, in my eyes, was a warmth with his characters. He could play the same kind of salt of the earth folksy character as Jimmy Stewart but couldn’t convince me like Stewart that that’s who he really was. Of course, that’s just my perception. Maybe for someone else he projects warmth like a space heater in two by four foot room but for me, he was always stone cold. Until I finally figured out how to watch him. He still didn’t project warmth but I no longer expected it. It happened when I saw him in On Golden Pond and after an entire career, I felt like I was watching the real Henry Fonda. He seemed grouchy, cranky, stubborn but not without the ability to give and care for someone, it was just hidden behind a hardened shell. Fonda won Best Actor for On Golden Pond and I know it’s the kind of Oscar win that most people associate with a sympathy career win but I think he actually deserved it. I really do think it’s his best performance. And when I began looking back at his other movies, I started to see the Fonda I saw in On Golden Pond as a younger man. His Tom Joad honestly seems a lot like Norman Thayer. Other characters, like his presidential candidate in The Best Man or his morally just juror in Twelve Angry Men, don’t seem much like Norman but they’ve got a fire to them, an obstinate nature, that bespeaks the same kind of rigidity. Many later roles, as in from the 1960′s onward, were the kind of by the numbers roles that relied on Fonda’s respectable solemn stature, from The Boston Strangler to Meteor. Except for one…
Once Upon a Time in the West has been called Fonda’s best work and one of his best films. Even though I just sang the praises of his work in On Golden Pond, it’s hard to argue he was ever better. And, again, there are threads visible within this performance that can be seen in others. Tom Joad, meaner, angrier, grittier, could be Frank, the hired gunman. Frank has the same intensity as the other roles only with his moral compass reversed. Drums Along the Mohawk, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Wrong Man, and others, all have that Henry Fonda intensity and it’s that intensity that put me off until Once Upon a Time in the West helped me find it and appreciate it. Disappointingly, after Once Upon a Time in the West, Fonda didn’t do many more, or any more, movies like that. It’s like he had found a role he could use that intensity in better than any other and then abandoned it, going back to by the numbers roles until that Oscar winning role 13 years later.
The more I look over Henry Fonda’s career, the more I see an actor who felt like he had to project a certain persona and struggled against that natural intensity he had inside him. Certain actors fall prey to that and Fonda was one of them. Fonda, it was decided early on, by the studios or an agent or somebody, was a leading man, a romantic lead and then, later, a stoic lead and, by gum, that’s what he stuck with. Personally, I think he could have had a great career (which he did, in fact, so I should say “greater”) playing ornery and mean. A whole career of Normans and Franks.
It takes time to come around to certain actors. Other actors, like Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy, feel absolutely comfortable the first time you see them. There’s no need to acquire a taste or get a feel for them. With others, maybe after a few performances, you’ve figured out their quirks, their mannerisms, the tics, and you’ve come to appreciate them. And with Henry Fonda, it was finally accepting that no matter what role he was playing, there was a seething intensity just below the surface. The performances were always great but he was suppressing that intensity that was screaming to get out. He let it out a few times and when he did, it was and is a powerful experience. Other times, you have to look for it. Look for it today, hiding just below the surface and see Henry Fonda in a whole new light.