My Life So Far (with Bonus Content)

by Jane Fonda

  At the time, Donald and I were planning Steelyard Blues, to be directed by Alan Myerson, who also agreed to direct the FTA show. Howard Hesseman, Garry Goodrow, and Peter Boyle (all of whom were going to co-star in Steelyard Blues) joined the FTA cast as well. FTA was political vaudeville with an antiwar, pro-soldier theme. It was written mainly by Jules Feiffer, Carl Gottlieb, Herb Gardner, Fred Gardner (no relation), and Barbara Garson. The show was intended not only to support the soldiers’ antiwar sentiments but to call attention to the way soldiers were dehumanized in the military. Some may say that dehumanization is the only way the military can work, but if stripping young people of their rights and their feelings of empathy, and filling them with racist, sexist attitudes is the only way we can succeed in making them into good soldiers, then we have a problem.

  Some high-ranking military officers share this view as well. I heard U.S. Army (ret.) general Claudia Kennedy say, for instance, that the military should be prepared to deal with “soft” issues like ethics and integrity, not just technology and weapons systems.

  As Ken Cloke once said to me, “Defensive wars against oppressive regimes do not require dehumanization.” The problem was that in Vietnam dehumanization was necessary, because rather than being a defensive war, it was a war of outside aggression (ours) against the popular will of the Vietnamese.

  Dick Gregory and Barbara Dane joined Peter Boyle, Donald, and me for our first FTA performance on March 14, 1971, at the Haymarket Square coffeehouse near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

  JANE FONDA’S ANTIWAR SHOW SCORES HIT NEAR ARMY BASE, read next day’s headlines in the Los Angeles Times. The article went on to say, “The soldiers roared time and again their desire for an end to the war.”

  We performed three times to packed houses in Fayetteville, even though the police used long-range infrared cameras to take pictures of all the soldiers as they entered and even announced there had been a bomb scare, which we ignored, to the delight of the soldiers.

  We had assumed we’d be performing for the soldiers and sailors, but suddenly that spring, the air force erupted with antiwar sentiment—not surprising when you realize that Vietnamization was turning it into an air war.

  The air force’s desertion rate doubled; Travis Air Force Base in California, the primary embarkation point for flights to Vietnam, was in a state of siege for four days in May. The bachelor officers’ quarters was burned, one man was killed, dozens injured, and 135 were arrested.

  In June, Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas saw a revolt. In August, Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois saw a violent uprising, and that spring airmen and airwomen, with civilian support, turned an old theater into the first air force coffeehouse, the Covered Wagon. When we performed there, a local reporter asked me if we were urging servicemen to revolt. “No,” I said, “they’re ahead of us on that.”

  From the beginning, the intention had been to try to bring the FTA show to South Vietnam as an alternative to Bob Hope’s pro-war, testosterone-driven tour. I wrote to President Nixon asking for permission to go to South Vietnam for Christmas. I wasn’t holding my breath for a Dear-Jane-Sure- come-on-over- we’d-love- the-troops-to- see-you-Love- Dick letter, but I wanted to be able to say that I’d at least tried. The backup plan was to perform for GIs stationed in the Pacific en route to or from Vietnam. We also decided to make a documentary film of the tour, and a company called American International agreed to distribute it. By summer we had a new, more diverse cast. Besides Donald and me, there was singer Holly Near, poet Pamela Donegan, actor Michael Alaimo, singer Len Chandler, singer Rita Martinson, and comedian Paul Mooney. Francine Parker, a Hollywood producer, took over the directorial reins.

  When I watch the film we made, I am impressed by the extent to which we achieved a real ensemble. Everyone had his or her own solo bit; no one stood out more than the others. Donald, of course, was a mainstay. He played President Nixon to my Pat:

  [Pat Nixon runs in breathlessly] “Mr. President, Mr. President . . .”

  “What is it, Pat?” asks Richard Nixon.

  “Mr. President, there is a massive demonstration going on outside.”

  “There’s a massive demonstration every day, Pat.”

  “But this one is completely out of control!”

  “What are they asking for today?”

  “Free Angela Davis and all political prisoners, out of Vietnam now, and draft all federal employees.”

  “All right, we have people to take care of that, Pat. Let them do their job, you do yours and I’ll do mine.”

  [Hysterical] “Richard, I don’t think you understand. They’re about to storm the White House.”

  “Oh. Then I’d better call the army.”

  “You can’t, Richard.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is the army!” [or air force or navy or marines]

  We spent the fall touring the country performing for some fifteen thousand GIs near major U.S. military bases, and in November, after performing at Philharmonic Hall in New York, off we flew to Hawaii, where GIs were flooding in from Vietnam for R&R.

  All told, we did twenty-one performances during the overseas tour, for an estimated sixty-four thousand soldiers, sailors, marines, and men and women in the air force. It was made extremely difficult for the servicemen to attend. They were photographed and risked getting harassed; the military authorities would put out misinformation about the time and place of the show in an effort to prevent the soldiers from getting there in time (we’d always wait for them). Also, those sixty-four thousand spread the word to countless others. Ken Cloke told me that when he’d gone to the Philippines and Japan to visit GI coffeehouses right after FTA had been there, bootlegged audiotapes of the show were “selling like hotcakes” among soldiers and were even circulated in Vietnam. He also told me that attendance at the coffeehouses increased dramatically following our tour.

  One very important thing happened while the tour was in Japan. We filmed an interview with several men at Iwakuni Marine Base who told us that despite the agreement between Japan and the United States following World War II that stipulated nuclear weapons were never again to be brought onto the island, they themselves were moving nuclear weapons around the bases, all in secret, all illegal. They asked us to demand that a search be conducted to uncover the truth. We got nowhere.

  On July 14, 1972, the FTA film opened in Washington, D.C., distributed by American International.

  Some GIs were upset that I didn’t live up to their fantasies. One soldier told Holly Near that they’d torn down my Barbarella poster in anger. I wasn’t secure enough to let their disappointment roll off my back. So much of who I’d been had to do with what men wanted me to be; their admiring gaze was the “acknowledgment of my personhood.” What would happen now? Would I ever be able to work again? Would anyone ever want to see me onscreen again? Yet another part of me knew I couldn’t go back.

  In years to come, as I approached fifty, I would again revert to that woman who needed to fulfill her man’s fantasies. I was afraid that I’d never have the one, truly intimate relationship that I so wanted, and I thought it was only in that fantasy role that a man could love me.

  Why does it have to take so long to heal?

  I wish I could do the tour over again, as the person I am now. I would have gone onstage and said, “Hey, I know it must disappoint you to see me like this, not as sexy Barbarella, but as a regular person in jeans and no makeup. I could do the Barbarella bit, but then I’d be in the Bob Hope show. And hey, I understand about sexy fantasies, but let me tell you something: When it’s you having to live other people’s fantasies, it can be dehumanizing. ‘Sexy’ is great as long as it doesn’t require you to deny who you are—well, that’s what happened to me. I lost who I was. Now I’m trying to get real and I hope you understand—and I love you.”

  The FTA show. From left to right: Rita Martinson, me, Donald Sutherland, Michael Alaimo, Len Chandler.

  Receiving my Academy Award fo
r Klute.

  (Bettmann/Corbis)

  Perhaps I could have found ways to equate how the “Barbarella syndrome” affected me with how the military was dehumanizing them. It could have taken maybe four minutes at most; I could have said it with humor; and I know most of the guys would have gotten it and been there for me.

  When I hear people today saying that anti–Vietnam War activists were antisoldier, I wish I could rerelease that film. It wasn’t a great piece of art—it didn’t need to be. Just the fact that we showed up in support of the soldiers was important. What we did was raw, unprecedented, outrageous, and, in today’s environment, totally unthinkable. We succeeded because the soldiers were ready and ripe with passionate antiwar, antimilitary feelings.

  As soon as the FTA tour was over, I flew, on Christmas Day 1971, directly from Tokyo to Paris, where I was to begin filming Tout Va Bien with Yves Montand—a movie I didn’t want to make. I was homeless, structureless, loveless, and bulimic. Not a good combination. My gray drizzle of a life felt as though it was dissolving on some crucial level. There was the endlessly escalating war. Vanessa was having terrible, screaming nightmares every night; I was racked with guilt and didn’t know what to do. Whenever I had a day off, I would play with her in the swank apartment Vadim was renting on the rue Trocadero or take her to the Jardins des Tuileries, where there was a wondrous variety of children’s rides.

  The director of Tout Va Bien was Jean-Luc Godard, the French avant-garde filmmaker who had become internationally known in the sixties with his movie Breathless, starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Godard had offered me the role the previous summer without showing me a script, and I had accepted unquestioningly. After all, Godard was seen as a political filmmaker, and there weren’t too many of those around. But when I received the script, I found it incomprehensible. It read like one long polemic. Godard, I learned, was a Maoist. I berated myself for having accepted the role with so little knowledge of its content, and through my agent I got word to Godard that I was backing out. I didn’t want to be used by him to get financing for something with politics that seemed obscure and sectarian.

  Probably his financing depended on my being in the film, and he wasn’t about to take this lying down. All hell broke loose!

  While I was visiting Vanessa in Megève with her father, a man who was close to Jean-Luc Godard arrived at Vadim’s doorstep and threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t do the film. What was especially memorable about the encounter was how Vadim reacted. He shouted at this man: “Sortez! Calviniste, vous êtes un sale Calviniste!” (“Get out, you dirty Calvinist!”) Calvinist? This was a new one on me, and I wasn’t entirely certain what it meant to call this man, who was actually a Maoist, a Calvinist, but it sounded terrific and I loved Vadim for his lack of equivocation. Still, I went ahead and made the dreaded Tout Va Bien. I wasn’t even thrilled that Yves was co-starring in it, because by now it was no secret that he was playing around on Simone (I was perhaps the last to know), and she was very unhappy. I spent time with her and hated to see her so down.

  During the filming, I kept my head down, staying under the radar, showing up on time, and keeping to myself on the set to avert outright hostility between Godard and me.

  In late February 1972, just as I was returning to California from Paris, I learned I had been nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for my performance in Klute. For several weeks after my return I was a nomad, moving from place to place, sleeping on friends’ couches. Desperate for a place where Vanessa could be with me, I borrowed $40,000 from my father and bought a home on a hillside above Studio City in the San Fernando Valley. Dad must have seen that this would afford me some needed stability, and I insisted on signing a promissory note to pay him back (which I did within the year). Dad had his own nonintimate ways of letting me know he was there for me.

  As Oscar time drew near, everyone was telling me I would win, and this time I felt they were right. It was in the air. But what was I going to say when I accepted? Should I make a statement about the war? If I didn’t, would it be irresponsible of me? I decided to ask Dad for his advice—Dad, who didn’t believe in the whole awards business at all (“How can you pick between Laurence Olivier and Jack Lemmon? It’s apples and oranges!”). But he came through. His verbal parsimony paid off: “Tell ’em there’s a lot to say, but tonight isn’t the time,” was his recommendation—and the moment I heard it I knew he was right.

  I was sick with the flu on the night of the awards. Donald Sutherland was my escort, and I wore a stark black wool Yves Saint Laurent pants suit I had purchased in Paris in 1968 soon after Vanessa’s birth. My hair was still in the Klute shag, and I must have weighed all of one hundred pounds.

  The Best Actress category is always third to last, followed by Best Actor and Best Picture. When my name was announced as winner, I somehow managed to make the endless march to the stage without falling, and as I arrived in front of the microphone, I was stunned by a feeling of love and support that emanated from the audience. I remember the booming silence as they waited for me to speak. I remember my fear that I would black out. I felt so small all alone on the stage looking out into the cavernous theater, seeing the upturned faces in the first few rows fixed on me, everyone holding their breath, their energy pushing toward me. I heard myself thanking the people who had voted for me and then: “There’s a great deal to say, but I’m not going to say it tonight. Thank you”—just as Dad had suggested. There was an audible release of tension from the audience; they were grateful that I hadn’t given a diatribe. I walked off with my Oscar as the applause erupted and walked right into a corner and sobbed, overcome with gratitude. I am still a part of this industry! Then, with disbelief, How can this have happened to me when it hasn’t happened to my father? I skipped all the post-Oscar parties and got home to discover I had a raging fever.

  Winning the Academy Award was a huge event for me as an actress; whatever else happened, I would always have that. But nothing really changed in my life—not that I expected it to. Yet there’s always a vague hope that such acclaim will make everything else fall into place. It doesn’t.

  I was betwixt and between. Was I a celebrity? An actor? A mother? An activist? A “leader”? Who was I?

  The Entertainment Industry for Peace and Justice, which Donald and I had launched a year earlier, was all but defunct. So much for my leadership. I still felt an urgent need to end the war, but I was unsure how to continue working with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (which was splintering into factions) or the GI movement (since most of the ground troops were home by now).

  I managed to take Vanessa to school every morning, but basically I was functioning on automatic pilot.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TOM

  Just when I thought I’d had enough

  And all my tears were shed,

  No promise left unbroken,

  There were no painful words unsaid—

  You came along and showed me

  How to leave it all behind.

  You opened up my heart again

  And then much to my surprise,

  I found love—love in the nick of time.

  —BONNIE RAITT,

  “Nick of Time”

  HE APPEARED out of the darkness, an odd figure with a long braid, beaded headband, baggy khaki pants, and rubber sandals of the type I’d been told the Vietnamese made out of the tires of abandoned U.S. vehicles.

  “Hi, I’m Tom Hayden . . . remember?”

  I was dumbstruck. He didn’t resemble the Tom Hayden I’d met in Detroit the previous year at the Winter Soldier investigation.

  Thank God I hadn’t known Tom Hayden would be coming to see the slide show I’d just given on the escalating U.S. air war; I’d have been too nervous. Tom was a movement icon, intelligent, courageous, and charismatic; one of the principal founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an author of its remarkably coherent and compelling Port Huron Statement and of the Ramparts article that had so i
nfluenced me.

  The day after our meeting in Detroit, I had accompanied several people who were driving him to the airport. I was in the front seat, he was behind me. He said something that made me laugh, some irreverent remark. I was unused to laughter and turned to look at him. His eyes were sparkling and he was wearing an Irish wool cap that made him look rakish. Our eyes locked briefly, and he put his hat on my head. It felt nice, slightly flirtatious. I had not seen him since.

  Now, more than a year later, here he was, exuding purposeful energy and needing, he said, to talk to me. Tom Hayden came here to talk to me! We found a place to sit in the dim backstage area and I told him that I was sorry to have missed him the previous summer when I’d visited the Red Family in Berkeley while filming Steelyard Blues. I felt him tense at the mention of the Red Family (I didn’t know that he had been expelled from the collective). He was living in Venice now, teaching a class on Vietnam at Pitzer College in Claremont.

  “You don’t look like you did last year,” I said to Tom. “What’s with the braid and beads?”