My Life So Far (with Bonus Content)

by Jane Fonda

  Whatever hardships were foisted on the Vietnamese people by the new Communist regime, the widespread publicity put out by the Pentagon that, should they take over, the Communists would murder hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people turned out to be propaganda to manipulate American public opinion—like Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” in 2003.

  There have been plenty of people who accused me of romanticizing the Vietnamese. Well, yes. They were easy to romanticize during the war, as they battled the mighty U.S. military power. The David and Goliath legend hasn’t survived the centuries for nothing. Do you know anyone who roots for Goliath (except maybe those who want something from him)? It’s the Davids who touch our hearts.

  A FINAL WORD

  There are still many Americans who believe the United States could have won the war had we “gone all out.” Because of this, I cannot conclude the Vietnam chapters of this book without addressing this question.

  The U.S. military did everything that General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and his successor, Creighton Abrams, asked for: bombing Laos and Cambodia to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, mining Haiphong harbor and imposing a naval blockade, dropping more bomb tonnage on Vietnam than we did on all of Europe during World War II, pummeling Hanoi and Haiphong with B-52 bombers, and waging an all-out air assault against the rest of North Vietnam.

  We could win battles, and did. Our soldiers fought bravely and well. But we couldn’t win the war, at least not by conventional means. Of course, we could have dropped a nuclear bomb on them, and Nixon was threatening to do so. In other words, if we couldn’t defeat them, we could at least have annihilated them. But if the mighty United States had had to annihilate a country of rice farmers and fishermen in order to win, wouldn’t that have cost us our national soul? I’m sure there are those men—Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney most likely among them—who think that mentioning “soul” shows we’re soft, unmanly. If you feel this way, then forget about soul and think more pragmatically about the issue of global capitalism—apparently not an invalid reason to send our boys to die. But from an investment point of view we never had to fight a war there at all: Since way back in the 1940s Ho Chi Minh had said he would turn Vietnam into a “fertile field for American capital and enterprise.” He even suggested he might offer the United States a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay if we helped his country stay independent from the French.

  Today—fifty-eight thousand American lives and millions of Indochinese lives later—even with the “enemy” running the country, the United States has more than $1 billion invested in Vietnam; trade between the two countries has reached $6 billion a year; the United States is Vietnam’s largest export market. In the fall of 2003 Vietnam’s defense minister, Pham Van Tra, was received in our nation’s capital with full honor guard at the Pentagon. All the dominoes are still standing. Vietnam is considered one of the safest havens for tourism and business.

  The real question isn’t how we prosecuted the war but whether the entire United States enterprise in Vietnam was wrong from the get-go. We sent our men to die there not to help the Vietnamese gain freedom, but to destroy an indigenous nationalist movement because it threatened U.S. influence and control over the country and because we needed to maintain our “credibility as an ally,” to quote the Pentagon Papers. This was a betrayal of what we stand for. In a battle that pits bamboo against B-52, the victory for bamboo symbolizes hope for the planet.

  The U.S. loss represented our nation’s chance for redemption. But we did not learn the lesson, and then we tried to rewrite history to blame it all on the very people who tried to stop it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’M BAAAAAACK!!

  The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way . . . people look at reality, then you can change it.

  —JAMES BALDWIN

  ONCE THE WAR WAS OVER, I returned to filmmaking and Tom began to investigate the pros and cons of running for the U.S. Senate. Although I did not see it at the time, in hindsight I realize that this marked the beginning of a less harmonious time in our marriage. For three years we had been joined together, at the heart and hip, in our effort to end the war. Now I was resuming a career that would have more impact on our lives than either of us anticipated—an impact that would both please and dismay Tom.

  Because of the profound changes I’d experienced over the previous five years, I had a new sense of the possibility of personal transformation, and I wanted to use films as a catalyst for this process. Movies like my brother and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, as well as Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy, show the revolutionary changes that were rocking American filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s. I, however, subscribe to what British playwright David Hare says: “The best place to be radical is at the center.” I wanted to make films that were stylistically mainstream, films Middle America could relate to: about ordinary people going through personal transformation. Though it was inchoate at the time, I was also beginning to view transformation from a perspective of gender: What is man? What is woman? What makes them do what they do the way they do it?

  I saw the fledgling film that Bruce Gilbert, Nancy Dowd, and I had been developing as a way to help redefine masculinity.

  Our story had a marine, my husband, with full use of his body (including his penis), who wanted above all to prove his manhood by being a “hero.” But because he was neither sensitive nor spontaneous, he was not a good lover. The paraplegic I met in the VA hospital, on the other hand, did not have a functioning penis, and all he wanted was to be human. His willingness to reexamine long held beliefs, along with his physical incapacity, made him sensitive to another’s needs. His pleasure came through giving pleasure—at least that was my intention, and thus the film could potentially illuminate a sexuality beyond genitalia.

  We needed to take the project to the next stage, where we could pitch it to a studio, and veteran screenwriter Waldo Salt, writer of Midnight Cowboy, was the one we wanted. My agent told us he would be impossible to get: “Forget it, there is no way. There’s no studio attached and it isn’t a commercial project.” Not to be discouraged, Bruce got Waldo’s phone number in Connecticut and called him cold. To our surprise Waldo said, “Sounds interesting. Send me what you have.”

  Waldo agreed to come onto the project but wanted to start from scratch and bring in the team with whom he had done Midnight Cowboy and The Day of the Locust: British director John Schlesinger and producer Jerry Hellman. I had great respect for Schlesinger, who had come from the world of documentaries and whose films had an unusual, gritty realism that would be perfect for us. Jerry Hellman’s experience, taste, and enthusiasm for the fragile project made me optimistic that we might actually get it made. Though it was not an easy pill for Bruce to swallow after the work he had put into it, he agreed to be associate producer. We both knew we needed all the experience and heft we could get (as well as a new script) if the film was to get made. Studios weren’t exactly clamoring for stories about Vietnam vets in wheelchairs, and the few Vietnam-based stories that had been released hadn’t done well.

  In a grand gesture of commitment and generosity, Waldo and Jerry did something very rare: They agreed to work on spec until we had something that would convince a studio to give us development money. Jerry got us an office at MGM (where United Artists was then headquartered). Bruce quit his job, and thus began the second phase of our project’s development.

  Waldo Salt was an old lefty, one of the Hollywood writers who had been blacklisted in the fifties. He had a heart of gold and a great talent for capturing the subtext of a scene. With Bruce and Jerry’s help he threw himself into his research with the gusto one would expect from a man with his history, visiting VA hospitals, talking with vets. (It was Waldo who encouraged Ron Kovic to write his memoir, Born on the Fourth of July.) Jerry financed the research from his own pocket and came up with the film’s title, Coming Home.

  Waldo’s sc
ript maintained the original triangular story, turning my husband into a marine officer and me into a traditional officer’s wife, waiting for her husband to come home from Vietnam in the late sixties. He had me getting my own apartment and volunteering (against my husband’s wishes) in the VA hospital, where I meet a man who has already come home from Vietnam and needs to heal—body and soul—from the physical and psychic wounds of the war.

  On the strength of Waldo’s lengthy treatment, the heads of United Artists agreed to finance the development of a full screenplay. We were off and running, but we would soon learn how much time goes into producing original material. I would have two other films under my belt—Julia and Fun with Dick and Jane—before Coming Home would be ready to shoot. Before that happened, only seven weeks before our intended start date, Waldo suffered a massive heart attack and was unable to continue working. Then John Schlesinger bowed out with these memorable words: “Jane, you don’t need a British fag on this one.” I loved him for his forthrightness but was beginning to wonder if, in the face of such setbacks, victory could be pulled from the jaws of defeat.

  Meanwhile Tom’s interest in running for office grew, stemming from the fact that in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, new political forces had been unleashed, which he labeled “progressive populism.” Jimmy Carter was running for president, Jerry Brown was the new governor of California, and a whole new class of congressmen and women like Bella Abzug, Tim Wirth, Andy Young, and Pat Schroeder were in office, making their strength felt.

  Tom had spent six months traveling the state, meeting with people, testing the waters, debating whether or not to run for the U.S. Senate. The meeting I remember most vividly during that time was with César Chávez, the internationally respected founder and leader of the United Farm Workers union. It was the first time I had met César, who like Martin Luther King Jr. was a devout follower of Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent resistance, not just as a tactic but as a governing philosophy. I was mesmerized by his soft eyes and quiet wisdom. The meeting was especially moving because my father’s film The Grapes of Wrath had so personalized for me the plight of migrant farmworkers, whether they were “Okie” refugees from the Dust Bowl or Mexicans.

  Speaking at a rally with César Chávez, founder and leader of the United Farm Workers union.

  (AP/Wide World Photos)

  When Tom asked César what he thought about the idea of his running for the U.S. Senate, César answered, “We’ve seen many candidates come and go. It would be a waste of time and money unless you build something lasting, like a machine. Not like Mayor Daley has, but a machine for people. That would interest us.”

  Meanwhile a woman came into my life who would become a pivotal friend. A year or two before the war ended I had received a call from film producer Hannah Weinstein in New York, asking if I would help her daughter, Paula, get a job in Hollywood. Back in 1971 Hannah had been the first person to give me a generous contribution for the GI office; I remembered well how warm and encouraging she had been to me at the time, and though I didn’t know Paula, I wanted to return Hannah’s favor.

  Paula was a tall brunette with sexy brown eyes and a dry sense of humor. A recent graduate from Columbia University, where she had been involved in student antiwar protests, she now wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a film producer. I was impressed with her guts and obvious intelligence. As soon as our lunch was over I walked across the street and asked my agent, Mike Medavoy, to hire Paula. He did—as a script reader. It didn’t take long for the agency to recognize talent, and soon thereafter, when Mike left to become an executive at United Artists Pictures, Paula became my agent—and to this day she remains one of my most cherished friends. Our lives are intertwined personally and professionally. I am godmother to her daughter Hannah, she was one of the producers of the most recent movie I made, Monster-in-Law (fifteen years after my retirement), and we always have each other’s backs.

  As my agent, Paula did something for me that no one had ever done: She fought a passionate and personal battle to win me the role of Lillian Hellman in Julia. Lillian, the author of such plays as The Little Foxes and Toys in the Attic, happened to also be Paula’s godmother.

  As Lillian Hellman in Julia.

  (Eva Sereny/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.)

  With Vanessa Redgrave in a scene from Julia.

  (Photofest)

  Julia takes place in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism in Europe and is the story of the relationship between Lillian and her childhood friend Julia. Julia goes off to Vienna and becomes involved in the anti-Fascist movement, trying to get help to Jews inside Nazi-occupied Austria and Poland. Though they have not seen each other for years, Julia seeks help from her friend Lillian, asking her to smuggle money (sewn into the lining of a fashionable fur hat) through customs into Poland, where she arranges to meet her. Their last, memorable, terribly moving scene together, which is both a reunion and farewell, takes place in a restaurant in Warsaw where Lillian surreptitiously passes the hat with the hidden money to Julia under the table. Years later Lillian learns that her friend has been murdered by Nazis.

  The film provided me with a multidimensional, dramatic role in what has become a film classic and brought me my third Oscar nomination for Best Actress. It also gave me the chance to work with the great director Fred Zinnemann—who had made From Here to Eternity, High Noon, and A Man for All Seasons—and my professional idol Vanessa Redgrave. There is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a netherworld of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolor images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark—but even then you know you haven’t come to the bottom of it.

  Vanessa was perfect as Julia, who Lillian knows is braver, stronger, and more committed than she is herself, and I benefited from the memory that I held in my bones of my own brave childhood friend Sue Sally, whose lead I had always been ready to follow, just as Lillian tried to follow Julia’s. When we worked together I recall never being sure where Vanessa was drawing her inspiration from, what choices she was working off of, and this invariably threw me slightly off balance—which worked in the film. The only other time I had experienced this with an actor was with Marlon Brando in The Chase (written, by the way, by Lillian Hellman). Like Vanessa, he always seemed to be in another reality, working off some secret, magnetic, inner rhythm that made me have to adjust to him rather than maintaining my own integrity in the scene. I suppose I didn’t have to; but maybe that’s just who I was back then.

  Among the members of the cast of Julia was a newcomer playing the role of the bitchy black-haired Anne Marie. I remember the first time I saw rushes in which she appeared; it was the scene where Lillian comes into Sardi’s restaurant following the smash opening of her Broadway play The Little Foxes. I am seen making my way through the crowd of well-wishers, and as I walk offscreen the camera lingers on Anne Marie’s face: With a slight hand gesture to her mouth and an indefinable look in her eyes, the young actress revealed an entire character. I think my own hand must have come to my mouth at that moment, and as soon as rushes were over I ran to a phone to call Bruce in California. “Bruce,” I said, quite out of breath, “listen carefully. There’s this young actress with a really strange name, Meryl Streep. Yes, M-e-r-y-l, with a ‘y.’ I haven’t seen an actress so amazing since Geraldine Page. I’m telling you, she’s going to become a huge star. We have to try right away to get her for the other woman’s part in Coming Home.” As it turned out, Meryl was committed to a play and unavailable. But I feel lucky to have had that early glimpse of her unique talent.

  Another wonderful thing about Julia was the chance to work again with Jason Robards. We had done a silly comedy back in the sixties, Any Wednesday. But in Julia he was perfect as Lillian’s gruff, leave-no-prisoners partner, Dashiell Hammett, author of The Th
in Man.

  Tom brought Troy to Europe twice, for ten days each, during the three-and-a-half-month shoot. Years later he told me how hard these long separations were for him. I accepted the fact that he had to remain in California to take care of organizational matters. I didn’t want to face the possibility that he was angry—or that I was angry that he and Troy didn’t visit more.

  Before leaving, I had hired a baby-sitter to help Tom out. She was a nice, attractive young woman; I thought she was sexy and told Tom so. One night in Paris during his visit, he told me he wanted to talk to me about something; it was about the baby-sitter, he said. He reminded me that I thought she was sexy, and from the way he then hesitated, I sensed what was coming and told him not to say any more. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. I assumed he was going to tell me he had slept with her. I was going to have to be by myself for another month once he was gone, and I didn’t want to be angry and do something I would regret. Since we didn’t even talk about far easier subjects, it should be no surprise that we never discussed the issue of monogamy or what I expected from him when I was away for so long. Because I hadn’t worked a lot during our first years together, it took him by surprise when I began to be absent for work. I’d done A Doll’s House in Norway and then another film in Leningrad, Blue Bird, directed by George Cukor, and now Julia. This was new for him. It was usually Tom who did the coming and going. Perhaps he was used to having a more “open relationship” with other women, but my experience with Vadim had taught me that it didn’t work, at least not for me. I take full responsibility for cutting Tom off from what might have been an important conversation for the good of our relationship. But neither one of us ever broached the subject of infidelity again. I never did find out what, if anything, had happened between Tom and the baby-sitter.