My Life So Far (with Bonus Content)

by Jane Fonda

  All hell broke loose. Shots were fired into the production wagons, and threatening phone calls were made to the production office about what would happen to us “nigger lovers” if we didn’t get out of town—which we did. I was shocked. I hadn’t realized what little progress toward desegregation had been made. I’d been to an SNCC fund-raiser and had seen Watts in flames, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I was still using the term Negro while the African-Americans in the cast were calling themselves “black.” I listened to conversations between Robert Hooks, Beah Richards, and others following the shooting incident: about a burgeoning “black nationalism”; about Stokely Carmichael calling for “black power”; about a growing sense that blacks had only themselves to depend on. I kept my mouth shut but was disturbed and hurt—poor little me, a white do-gooder, just beginning to feel I could get involved and now being told I wouldn’t be wanted by the new black movement they were describing.

  For answers, I turned to a white cast member, Madeleine Sherwood. She was a close friend from the Actors Studio, and she’d been in Invitation to a March with me. Her longtime partner was black, and she had tried to get me involved in supporting the Freedom Rides. I’d gone to Big Sur instead. Madeleine helped me understand that in the years since I’d been living outside the United States, there had been a sea change in the civil rights movement. The nonviolent strategy that had been its foundation was based on the assumption that there was a latent conscience in America that, when appealed to, would step up and put an end to segregation. What had become apparent to blacks and to white civil rights workers alike was that neither the segregationist South nor the northern white liberal establishment was ready to integrate. Yes, laws had changed. But the new laws did little to alter the segregationists’ pathological hatred of integration. The liberal establishment, with some exceptions, seemed to support the movement but refrained from taking strong enough action either to protect civil rights workers from violence or to uphold the law. Apparently the Democratic Party had been too dependent on racist Dixiecrats to dare to rock the boat seriously. But too much had happened and too much blood had been shed for the activists to settle for liberal tokenism. What was the good of new laws if the dismal reality of black lives didn’t change? Blacks read the lack of decisive action as a signal that they had to go it alone. Hope had turned to cynicism. Peaceful protest was starting to look less viable than violent action.

  I realized that I, who had sat out these turbulent years, never coming close to experiencing what black Americans endured, was in no position to judge the rise of black nationalism, though it was hard for me to comprehend how any group could achieve anything positive through separatism and violence. I thought of my father and his childhood story of the Omaha lynching, and of his hero, Abraham Lincoln—and I wondered how, in this democratic country of ours, we could have made so little real progress.

  Vadim was able to visit only for a week or so during the shooting, because he was involved in preparations for Barbarella. But during his brief stay, while sitting around the motel pool, he saw the lean, tanned, blue-eyed John Phillip Law emerge from the water like a piece of sculpture—and he decided then and there that he was the one to play Barbarella’s Pygar, the blind angel who recovers his will to fly after he and Barbarella make love.

  From Hurry Sundown I went almost immediately into Barefoot in the Park, which would turn out to be my first genuine hit—finally. How I ever survived so many bad films, I’ll never know! Charles Bluhdorn, chairman and CEO of Gulf + Western, had just purchased Paramount Pictures, starting what became a wave of corporate buy-ups that would take American moviemaking out of the hands of impassioned, visionary individuals like Irving Thalberg, Jack Warner, Samuel Goldwyn, Harry Cohn, and Louis B. Mayer and turn the studios into corporate subsidiaries. I was informed that Bluhdorn had threatened to throw himself out of his New York skyscraper if I was cast in the female lead. I don’t know why or what changed his mind, but once filming started we got along fine. I was very happy to be working with Bob Redford again and looking forward to our cuddling-in-the-cold-apartment scenes, something I hadn’t gotten a chance to do in The Chase.

  There’s something about Bob that’s impossible not to fall in love with. We’ve made three films together, and each time I was smitten, utterly twitter-pated, couldn’t wait to get to work, wouldn’t even get mad when he was his habitual one to two hours late. He never knew it, of course. Nothing ever happened between us except that we always had a good time working together. I remember the first day he and I showed up in the Paramount administration building. As we walked down the corridors, secretaries stuck their heads out their office doors to watch him go by. Ah, I thought, he’s going to be a star. But one of the things I love about him is that instead of puffing up his ego, this made him uncomfortable. I have never seen women react to a man the way they do to Bob: In Las Vegas once, when we were filming The Electric Horseman, a woman threw herself on the ground at his feet. He seems to want to disappear at times like this.

  Of all the male stars I’ve worked with in my fifty films, Bob is the only one about whom women ask me, “What’s it like to kiss him?” The answer I always give is, “Fabulous.” The reality is a little different: fabulous for me, not so fabulous for him. He hates filming love scenes. He seems to want to get them over with as soon as possible. Damn it! Fortunately he has a sense of humor about this, and about most everything. Actually, he’s a stitch. Besides his male attractiveness, I find a Hepburnesque quality about Bob: You feel that he is somehow better than most other mortals. You want Bob to like you, so you are loath to do or say anything that might make him think less of you. This is not someone you would want to gossip about. Maybe this is why, in a town known for gossip, no one tries to get into his business.

  In between scenes on Barefoot in the Park, we shared stories about growing up in West Los Angeles in the forties, about living in Europe—where he’d also gone to study painting in the fifties (only he actually painted)—and about our shared love of horses. But mostly I remember Bob describing with great passion a piece of property he had bought outside of Provo, Utah, the home state of his then wife, Lola. They had designed an A-frame house that they had just built on the property, and Bob was full of excitement about the construction. Little did either of us imagine then that this property with its little A-frame would become first the Sundance ski resort (where my son, Troy, learned to ski) and later the Sundance Institute, which has made such significant contributions to independent filmmaking.

  Goofing off with Bob Redford between takes on Barefoot in the Park.

  (Photofest)

  A scene in Barefoot in the Park.

  (Photofest)

  Making Barefoot was a joy. First there was Bob; then we had that flawless script by Neil Simon; and Gene Saks was the perfect comedy director. Everyone in the cast was talented, nice, and fun to work with, especially Mildred Natwick, who’d been in children’s theater and then the University Players with my dad.

  It’s not often that a comedy survives the passage of time, but I have seen Barefoot in the Park countless times and I find its appeal to be timeless. Bob’s, too.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BARBARELLA

  Hey! Nothing is what it seems.

  —MADONNA

  WHEN FILMING ON Barefoot wrapped, Vadim and I moved to Rome, where Barbarella was to be shot at the De Laurentiis studio. We rented a house on the outskirts of the city—part castle, part dungeon. There was a tower next to our bedroom that dated from the second century before Christ. At night we regularly heard scuffling and mewing coming from there. One evening during a dinner party in the cavernous living room below, there was a loud noise, some plaster fell from the ceiling, and an owl fell onto Gore Vidal’s plate. It turns out that a family of large owls had been making the racket in the tower.

  None of the special effects and optical techniques we take for granted today existed in 1967. Vadim and his collaborators had to invent everything,
and sometimes the ideas worked and sometimes they didn’t. The opening title sequence shows Barbarella peeling off her “astronaut” suit as she floats topsy-turvy in her fur-lined space cabin. Much was made of this unusual scene, the first weightless striptease in movie history (and perhaps the last!). Claude Renoir, brilliant cinematographer and nephew of French film director Jean Renoir, came up with a way to film it while playing around in his hotel bathroom one evening. Here’s how it worked: The set of the space cabin, instead of sitting like a normal room that you could walk in and out of, was turned upward so that it faced the ceiling of the enormous sound stage. A pane of thick glass was laid across the opening of the set, and the camera was hung from the rafters directly above it. I would have to climb up a ladder and onto the glass, so that from the camera’s point of view the space cabin was behind me and I appeared to be suspended in space. Then I would begin slowly to remove my space outfit while a wind machine blew my hair and the discarded articles of clothing around as though they were floating with me in space. I was terrified that the glass would break; terrified of rolling around like that in the altogether; terrified of not being perfect. Once again, I just didn’t think I could say no. But Vadim promised that the letters in the film credits would be placed judiciously to cover what needed to be covered—and they were.

  The biggest challenge for us was figuring out how to film the sequences where Pygar, the blind angel, flies through space carrying Barbarella in his arms. A remote control specialist devised a scheme: A huge rotating steel pole stuck out horizontally from a cycloramic gray screen. The pole had large hooks and screws at the end, on which two metal corsets were attached. One corset had been made to fit John Phillip Law and one was for me, and they were skintight because our costumes had to fit over the metal and not look bulky.

  We got all suited up, first the cold metal corsets, then the costumes, and then John’s wings were strapped onto his back with wires running from the wings to a remote-control machine. Then a crane hoisted us up and we stood on the platform while John was hooked up to the end of the pole. Then my metal corset was screwed to the front of his, putting me into a position that made it look as though he were carrying me. After we had been suited up, hoisted up, and screwed up, the moment of truth arrived. The crane, which until then had been supporting us, was moved away, leaving us suspended in air, with the weight of our bodies jamming our hipbones and crotches into the metal corsets.

  It was sheer, utter agony. And with all that, we had to remember our dialogue, look dreamy, and occasionally be funny. The muted sounds of misery I could hear from John (who was bearing the added weight of his wings) told me that his pain was worse than mine, and mine was nearly unbearable. No one had taken our poor crotches into consideration! John was convinced his sex life would be brought to a premature demise.

  There we’d hang, while somewhere out in the darkened sound stage the technician worked the remote controls, making the pole rotate this way and that and making John’s wings flap up and down. While we hung there, rotating, a film of the sky with clouds moving past (shot from an airplane) was projected onto the gray screen behind us. Nothing of the sky and clouds could be seen on our faces or costumes, and you couldn’t even see what was being projected on the screen until the film had been developed. John and I weren’t actually moving forward through space, but the film was to make it appear that way. That was the intention. This type of front projection is common today, but back then it had never been done before—we were the guinea pigs. Lots of things had to work properly at the same time: The steel pole had to rotate in sync with the moving sky, the remote-control specialist had to make Pygar’s wings flap in the same way, and the projection onto the gray screen had to function properly. This all took days and days to rig up, while John and I hung there, our private parts growing progressively numb.

  John Phillip Law as the blind angel Pygar carrying Barbarella. The agony doesn’t show.

  (Carlo Bavagnoli/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

  Vadim making sure all the rips are in the right places.

  (© David Hurn/Magnum Photos)

  Pygar approaching his nest, where we will make love and he will get back his will to fly.

  (© David Hurn/Magnum Photos)

  I will never forget the first day we finally had rushes to look at. Everyone was excited and anxious, since flying without the help of wires had never been done before and so much depended on the believability of the flying scenes. There was an entire aerial battle that was critical to the story. The lights in the screening room dimmed, the film began to roll and . . . Oh my God . . . we were flying backward! It was too funny not to laugh: The one most obvious thing, what direction the clouds and landscape were moving, had been overlooked. But what was also apparent was that once they got us in sync with the background, it would work. It really did look like we were flying, like he was carrying me, like we weren’t in pain, like the clouds and mountains were passing by—just going the wrong way.

  It was a tough shoot, lots of scrapes and bruises. I was attacked by little mechanical dolls. I was shut into a tiny plastic box with hundreds of birds, flying, pecking, and pooping on my hair, arms, and face. I was constantly being asked to slide down clear plastic tubes or stand inside a cloud of noxious fumes. When I see what actors in action films have to do these days, however, I think I got off pretty light.

  By today’s standards Barbarella seems slow (it seemed slow to many critics back then as well). But I think the jerry-built quality of the effects and the offbeat, camp humor give it a unique charm. Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker, wrote about my performance: “Her American-good-girl innocence makes her a marvellously apt heroine for pornographic comedy. . . . She is playfully and deliciously aware of the naughtiness of what she’s doing, and that innocent’s sense of naughtiness, of being a tarnished lady, keeps her from being just another naked actress.”

  “Just another naked actress” indeed! I can laugh about it now, but the tensions and insecurities that haunted me during the making of that film almost did me in. There I was, a young woman who hated her body and suffered from terrible bulimia, playing a scantily clad—sometimes naked—sexual heroine. Every morning I was sure that Vadim would wake up and realize he had made a terrible mistake—“Oh my God! She’s not Bardot!”

  At the same time, unwilling to let anyone know my real feelings and wanting, Girl Scoutishly, to do my best, I would pop a Dexedrine and plow onward. The “American-good-girl-innocence” that Pauline Kael described was really the Lone Ranger trying to “make it better.”

  Vadim’s drinking had gotten much worse. He was a binge drinker: He would go for weeks and months without a drop (unfortunate, because it allowed him to feel he had the disease under control), but then things would seem to disintegrate. Partway through the shooting of Barbarella he started drinking at lunch, and we’d never know what to expect after that. He wasn’t falling down, but his words would slur and his decisions about how to shoot scenes often seemed ill-considered. When I watch certain scenes from the movie now, I remember all too well how vulnerable I felt at the time. And more and more angry!

  I was also growing more remote, feeling as if I were out on a limb (or a steel pole) by myself, that no one else seemed to care about what I cared about—like showing up to work sober and on time, getting a good night’s sleep so you’d be prepared and creative the next day. But I still lacked the confidence to try to take charge when Vadim seemed particularly out of control.

  Today Barbarella’s production costs would seem penny-ante, but for the time they were considerable. The cast and crew were large and multilingual, the technical challenges awesome, and too many things, including the script, hadn’t been worked out sufficiently in advance. Often I would have to pretend to be sick so that the film’s insurance would cover the cost of a shutdown for a day or two while Vadim, Terry Southern, and the others figured out script problems. One thing for sure, I never dreamed the film would become a cult classic
and, in some circles, the picture Vadim and I would be best known for. It has taken me many decades to arrive at a place where I can understand why this is so and even share the enjoyment of the film’s unique charms.

  There was another feeling that began to nudge me. It was just a hint of something I could not yet name—the old feeling of being in the wrong place. But this time it wasn’t the feeling there was a party going on that left me out. No. Now my life was the party—one long, unending party that I didn’t especially want to be at. Rather, it was a feeling that something more important was going on out there and my life was being frittered away with whatnots and doodads. There were the struggles of blacks in the United States that I’d only just started to learn about. There was a growing anti–Vietnam War movement. But I hadn’t followed the war news closely, and when Vadim’s French friends criticized the U.S. involvement there, my reaction was usually defensive. I simply couldn’t believe that America could be involved in a wrong cause, and I hated having foreigners criticize us. I was totally clueless about the nascent women’s movement and would have felt deeply threatened by it had I been exposed to feminism.

  It wasn’t any specific alternative life I longed for, it was just a sense of growing malaise. I was a go-alonger, a passive participant, living “as if”: as if I had a good marriage, as if I were happy and fully present. I was also trying not to be too serious about anything, because if you took things too seriously, it meant you were bourgeois and didn’t have a sense of humor. There was a certain tyranny about Vadim’s “don’t take things too seriously” mandate, especially when it came to women.