 |
NEW YORK -- Peter Fonda is putting the final touches on an autobiography he calls Don't Tell Dad.
Among other things, it is a look at his troubled relationship with his father, acting icon Henry Fonda.
"People are expecting it to be a Daddy Dearest but I'm not tearing my father's memory to shreds. I don't have to. We made our peace before he died (in 1981)," says Fonda.
"My father was a very shy man. He didn't know how to communicate with anyone, but particularly with his children."
Fonda, 58, and his sister Jane Fonda, 59, were raised by their father after their mother, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw Fonda, committed suicide in 1950 in a rest home where she was recovering from a complete nervous breakdown.
"My father never told Jane and I that mother had taken her own life. We had to learn that from magazine and newspaper stories.
"I know now he didn't do that to be cruel. He just didn't know how to find the words to tell us," says Fonda.
Their father eventually remarried three times. With each marriage he became further estranged from his two children.
"His silence was always a factor in our relationship.
"When I was 19, I had the lead role in a university production of Harvey. My father flew in to catch a performance without ever telling me," recalls Fonda.
"He had his agent phone several days later to tell me how much he liked my performance. He mailed me acting notes.
"We communicated a lot through letters for the rest of our lives."
In 1979, Fonda was preparing to direct a low-budget film called Wanda Nevada. There was a small role perfectly suited for his father.
"I literally had to cajole him into taking the role and he was miserable the whole time on the set. But then he sent me another of his famous letters to tell me it had been one of the best experiences of his 41 years in the business."
The son could take the silence no longer.
"I started calling him at his home just to tell him I loved him. There'd be a silence and then he'd tell me he loved me.
"I said it would mean nothing unless he said it first."
Fonda never thought he'd hear those words because he father became so ill. In actuality, he was to have his dream come true.
"Every time I visited the hospital, the first and last thing my father would say to me was that he loved me.
"The last words my father said before he died were: 'I love you very much, son,' and I taught him those words, so we definitely made our reconciliation."
Writing his ode to his father, Fonda realized that "Henry considered me a grenade with the pin pulled. My hippie look, my anti-establishment films, my open use of drugs and my condemnation of the U.S. government were a constant sore spot for him."
The rebellious image that Fonda cultivated with the 1966 exploitation film The Wild Angels culminated in the phenomenally successful 1969 cult film Easy Rider.
While a whole American subculture embraced Fonda's credo of anarchy, the Hollywood establishment rejected it and Fonda.
"I became an outsider.
"I moved to (a ranch in) Montana and did the few films that were offered to me. I never thought I'd have a chance to come back to the fold."
That chance has come.
In the lyrical family drama Ulee's Gold that opens next week, Fonda plays a man who has rejected society to tend his bees.
Then a tragedy forces him to stand up for the son he has rejected.
"I can see why (director) Victor Nunez thought of me but I still have to credit him the courage of actually hiring me," admits Fonda.
To play this role that would have been a natural for his father, Peter Fonda cut his waist-length ponytail, left his ranch and became an actor for hire.
"There were moments when I was directing Peter that I'd look into the camera and see the ghost of Henry Fonda," says Nunez.
Fonda says he wishes his father could have seen his performance.
"I think it would have amused him greatly that I have, even in some small way, become him.
"The wonderful thing about having had Henry Fonda for a father is that he is always within reach.
"I just have to turn on the TV and he's there.
"It's a great legacy he's left me and the world."