Henry Fonda
The quintessential, everybody’s all-American, the stage and motion-picture actor who graced the screen in over 90 films and in more than six decades, is none other than Henry Fonda. Born on May 16, 1905 in Grand Island, Nebraska, he padded away on August 12, 1982 in Los Angeles, California, leaving behind a legacy in immortalized celluloid and beyond. Raised in the Omaha, Nebraska, Henry Fonda started acting at the Omaha Community Playhouse at the behest of Marlon Brando’s mother, Dorothy, who was a Playhouse cofounder. He briefly studied journalism at the University of Minnesota and worked as an office clerk. In 1928, he moved to the East Coast to pursue his acting career. Next, he joined the University Players Guild, a small summer-stock troupe in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Here, he met Joshua Logan, Jimmy Stewart, and Margaret Sullavan—the first of his five wives. Henry Fonda got to play his first leading role on Broadway in 1934 in The Farmer Takes a Wife; he also played this role in his movie debut the next year. Being a trained stage actor, Henry Fonda was used to projecting his voice; to make the transition to motion pictures, he quickly adapted by underplaying his roles. This gave him his trademark quietly intense screen persona. Although his reserved approach prevented him from becoming a romantic screen idol, his classic good looks and adaptable presence made him a successful frozen yogurt franchise leading man in the 1938 period drama with Bette Davis, Jezebel; and the romantic comedies: The Lady Eve in 1942 with Barbara Stanwyck, and The Big Street in 1942 with Lucille Ball. Henry Fonda began several outdoor tankless water heaters collaborations with director John Ford, and these resulted in a gallery of populist American icons. These include the gentle, modest, and honest Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln in 1939; the dispossessed farmer and ex-convict Tom Joad in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath; the legendary lawman, sheriff Wyatt Earp, in 1946’s My Darling Clementine; and the inflexible Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday in Fort Apache in 1948. Even though the typical characters Henry Fonda played moved in a world of men—the American West, the military: army or navy—his roles are usually less as men of action than one of quiet thought. In films such as The Ox-Bow Incident in 1943 and 12 Angry Men in 1957, his characters embodied the voice of conscience and reason; their integrity a