by Jane Fonda
“Oh yeah, what about?” he says dismissively.
“I think maybe you and I should have the kind of relationship we’re supposed to have.”
“What kind of relationship is that?” Norman snaps.
“You know, like a father and daughter. . . .”
“Worried about the will, are you? Well, I’m leaving everything to you except what I’m taking with me.”
Chelsea begins to choke up. She fears her attempt at contact will end just like all the others. “I don’t want anything. . . . It’s just . . . it seems you and I have been mad at each other for so long.”
“I didn’t think we were mad. I just didn’t think we liked each other.”
Chelsea is stunned by this cruelty but persists. “I want to be your friend.” And she places her hand on his arm.
From the first, every time I read the script I would come to that scene and tears would pour down my cheeks. In rehearsals I was so emotional that it was hard to speak the lines. Finally the day of reckoning came. I woke up and ran to the bathroom to vomit, more scared than I had ever been before a scene and knowing it was because I had to say intimate words to my father that I had never been able to say in real life. We blocked the scene for the camera and lighting crew, he in the boat, me waist-deep in the water. Even then I was nearly overcome with emotion.
We began with the wide shot that included the two of us, the boat, and the pier. Though I knew a scene like this was ultimately going to play in close-up, I was unable to hold back my emotions. Next we shot over my shoulder onto Dad, and still I gave it my all, partly because I couldn’t help myself and partly because I wanted him to be emotional, too. As I have written in an earlier chapter, I waited until his last shot to touch his arm as I tell him I want to be his friend—I wanted to take him by surprise. It worked. Tears welled in his eyes and he ducked his head, not wanting it to show. But it did. I was so happy.
Then the camera swung around for my close-up. We did a rehearsal for the camera and . . . oh, no, the actor’s ultimate nightmare: I was bone dry, spent, unable to call up any emotions. No one knew it, of course, because this was just a rehearsal, but I panicked. What to do? It wasn’t that I had to be overtly emotional in the scene, but I needed to feel emotional and then stifle it. I tried to relax, as Strasberg would have wanted. I tried all the sense-memories I had, sang my old song that always made me cry, everything. But nothing seemed to work. As I was pacing around onshore waiting for the camera to be ready (dreading that the camera would be ready), up came Ms. Hepburn. She wasn’t even supposed to be on set that day, but there she was. She looked at me.
“How are you?” she asked, sensing something.
“I’m in trouble. I’ve gone dry. Please don’t tell Dad,” I answered weakly, and then I was called to the set. The time of reckoning had come.
Hoping that some last-minute miracle would unleash my heart, I said to Mark, “I’m going to turn my back to the camera while I prepare, and when I turn around, it means that I’m ready for you to roll.” He understood.
I turned away to prepare, though I had no idea what to do, and as I was staring at the shore, trying to relax and bring myself into the scene, there was Hepburn, crouching in the bushes just within my line of vision. Nobody could see her but me. She fixed me intensely with her eyes, and slowly she raised her clenched fists and shook them as if to say “Do it! Go ahead. You can do this!” She was willing me into the scene: Katharine Hepburn to Jane Fonda; mother to daughter; older actress, who’d been there and knew about drying up, to younger actress. It was all those layers of things and more. Do it! Do it! You can! I know it. With her energy she literally gave me the scene, gave it to me with her fists, her eyes, and her generosity, and I will never, ever forget it.
Ethel telling Chelsea to talk to her father.
(© Steve Schapiro)
I’ve just brought Dad his Academy Award. Left to right: Bridget Fonda, Amy Fonda, Tom, me, Vanessa, Shirlee, and Troy with his back to the camera.
(© John Bryson, 1982)
That night I asked Dad and Shirlee if I could come over to dinner. The scene had been so utterly personal for me, so intimate in a way that he and I had never been. I was raw and felt so close to him, and I needed to acknowledge it and see if he felt the same. I wanted to tell him how terrifying it had been to dry up like I did, and to ask if this had ever happened to him—at least, you know, share some actor’s talk. But mostly I wanted to know if he had changed in any way as a result of the intimacy.
I told him about drying up and asked if such a thing had ever happened to him.
“Nope.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Never? Not once in your whole career?”
“Nope.”
My heart sank. That was it, just “Nope.” Why did these things happen to me and not to him? What was I doing wrong? Moreover it was all too clear that he was no more open or forthcoming now than he’d been before the scene. I was so sad. I felt like a dope for getting all soft and fuzzy over what to him was obviously just a scene.
Katharine Hepburn told Scott Berg, “Hank Fonda was the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. But I didn’t know any more about him after we had made the picture than I did at the beginning. Cold. Cold. Cold.”
Yup.
On the set one day, Ms. Hepburn told our unit publicist that she thought it was the duty of a star to be fascinating. There is no denying that the lady worked hard to do her duty and as a result was one of the two most fascinating people I have known (the other being Ted Turner). But despite this and despite my father’s coldness, in the genetic scheme of things I am glad I am my father’s daughter. I never loved him more than when I watched him, day after day, as he sat on the set between takes in his canvas chair with his name printed on the back panel, waiting to be called before the cameras: quiet, demanding little, not looking to fascinate. He was what he was.
On Golden Pond was the largest-grossing film of 1981. The studios were wrong: People did want to see this movie about old folks . . . because it spoke of universal issues with pathos and humor. Never has a movie of mine had such a profound personal impact on people; never have people crossed the street just to hug me and tell me that seeing it, and then bringing their fathers to see it, had altered their relationships forever. This has moved me and gladdened me greatly over the years.
The film received ten Academy Award nominations, among them Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay. Dad was too ill to attend the ceremony, and given his lifelong antipathy for awards and competition, I’m not sure he would have gone even if he had been well enough. But he intended to watch the proceedings with Shirlee from his bed. Ms. Hepburn did not attend, either. The first one of us to win (for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium) was Ernest Thompson, who actually leapt with joy as he crossed the stage. I did not win Best Supporting Actress (losing to the remarkable Maureen Stapleton playing the radical Emma Goldman in Reds). Eight-year-old Troy was sitting next to me, and as the names of the nominees for Best Actress were being read, I saw him drop his head and squeeze his eyes tight. When Katharine Hepburn’s name was announced as the winner (for an unprecedented fourth time), Troy tugged excitedly on my arm and whispered, “Mom, I prayed she’d win and my prayer was answered.”
Then Sissy Spacek came out to present the award for Best Actor. For all his great performances, Dad had been nominated only once before, for Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. This time he had stiff competition: Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Dudley Moore, and Paul Newman. There was nothing I wanted more in life than for him to finally win. This was my fervent prayer. When Sissy opened the envelope and announced his name, the theater erupted in applause and cheering; I went up onstage to claim the Oscar on his behalf, as he had asked me to in the event he won. It was the happiest moment of my life.
Tom, Troy, Vanessa, and I left the ceremony immediately, along with Amy (the daughter Susan and Dad had adopted at birth) and my niece, Bridget Fon
da, to carry the statue to him. He was sitting in his wheelchair next to the bed when we arrived.
Shirlee was right next to him, as always.
Watching his face closely, I could see he was pleased. When I asked him how he felt, all he said was, “I’m so happy for Kate.”
The next morning I called Ms. Hepburn to congratulate her and her first words to me were, “You’ll never catch me now!”
It took a moment for me to understand what she was talking about, and then it hit me. Of course—if she hadn’t won and I had, we’d be tied with three Oscars each. Now she had four, and I had only two. No way I’d catch up. I had to laugh. We were still operating on different wavelengths, but how could I not love her spunk?
Dad died five months later.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CLOSURE
Maybe a fella hasn’t got a soul of his own, just a piece of a big soul— the one big soul that belongs to everybody.
—TOM JOAD IN JOHN STEINBECK’S
The Grapes of Wrath
THE END CAME SLOWLY. Following the filming of On Golden Pond and before its release, I visited Dad’s home in Bel-Air as often as I could. There he’d be, sitting in the kitchen in his wheelchair or, more and more frequently, in his bed. Shirlee worked hard to make him look dignified for these visits, dressing him in natty cashmere cardigans. He would be awake but remote, already gone from us on some level. At such times I would sit with Shirlee and make small talk, glancing over at him occasionally, hoping that the inner world into which he seemed to have retreated was filled with curtain calls, tumultuous applause, and visions of the kites that he and Jimmy Stewart had flown as youths.
During this time I enjoyed being able to please him in little ways. I would cook him pork roast and bring him crisp, tart pears from an old pear tree we had at the ranch, things I knew he loved. It’s a strange pleasure—when a parent you have always feared, who has never seemed to need you, becomes old and weak and you are finally able to do for him. Being able to give him the nurture he had not given me filled me with an almost spiritual satisfaction. I wished he were poor and needed me more.
Dad blowing out his seventy-seventh-birthday candles at home. Left to right: me, Tom, Shirlee, Troy, and Vanessa.
(© Suzanne Tenner)
Dad loved me to rub his feet.
(© Suzanne Tenner)
One day I was allowed into the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he had been rushed during a close call. It was the first time I had seen him like that, all hooked up to IVs and monitors, sunken and pale, with dark bruising on his arms and hands from the needles. He seemed to be asleep, so I pulled up a chair, sat at the end of his bed, lifted the ends of the sheets, and began rubbing his feet. Dad had suffered with painful gout in his feet for as long as I could remember, and I knew gentle massage helped relieve it. I loved being able to touch him like that, even though he was unaware. It created an intimacy, albeit one-way, we’d never had. I must have sat there massaging his beautiful, long, pale feet for twenty minutes; then, fearing I’d overstayed my time, I stood up and got halfway to the door when a weak voice that seemed to come from far away said: “Don’t stop.” He had been awake all along!
There were the times I’d sit by his bedside looking at him, his eyes closed, wondering if he was asleep or just avoiding talking to me. I wanted to ask him if he was in pain, if he’d seen any angels yet, if he could see to the other side, if he was scared. I never did. Shirlee hadn’t allowed any of us to admit he wasn’t going to get better, so we all went around pretending he’d be up and about in no time. I hated it. It all rang so false, but I felt I had to honor her wishes; it was she, after all, who was living through this with him night and day, being the loving caretaker. But I often wondered if it was Dad who needed to believe this or Shirlee. Personally I’d rather know when the jig is almost up so as to be intentional about that last kiss, that final “I love you.” But that’s just me.
Perhaps it didn’t matter and my desire to communicate with him was futile. After all, how could I expect him to do something he’d never done, be someone he’d never been, now at the end? How could I talk to him about feelings now, when it was almost over? Yet I knew he had feelings. I’d seen him laugh hard when he was with his men friends or when he’d had a drink or two. I saw him cry, once—the day Roosevelt died. He was standing in his vegetable garden, and I was very little, and he never saw me there watching.
Another day I went to his home and found him sitting in a chair in his room with a lap rug over his knees. He had been moved into the same downstairs back room where I had lived during the time when I was morphing from Barbarella into an activist, causing him so much angst. From the window he could look out onto his beloved vegetable garden. Shirlee was away on an errand, and I realized that I might not get another chance to tell him how I felt.
I sat at his feet and told him that I loved him very much; that although things had not always been good or easy between us, I knew he had done his best to be a good father; that I loved him for it and was sorry for things I had done that had hurt him. I also told him how much I appreciated the way Shirlee looked after him—above and beyond the call of duty; all the nurses said they’d never seen a wife like her—and that no matter what, we would always consider her a part of our family and would keep her close. I don’t remember him saying anything, but he began to cry. I didn’t know if it meant he was moved because I had spoken of love and forgiveness or if my words showed him that I knew he was dying and that perhaps this was the first time anyone had said these closure words to him.
There is a saying that we all repeat often to explain our family members’ readiness to tear up over silly things: “Fondas cry at a good steak.” It’s one thing to get teary over a good steak and another to weep from the depths of your heart—that display of emotion was what my father always hated, because he felt it showed weakness. Except for when Roosevelt died, I had not seen him cry from that deep place, and I hurt for him and was scared of this display of his pain and sadness. I stayed for a while in an effort to comfort him but then had to leave because I could sense that he hated to be crying in front of me. Shirlee told me that when she got home a little later she found him still in the chair, sobbing.
Then one morning Shirlee called me to come quickly to the hospital. I prayed I would get there while he was still alive, but he had died three minutes before. It doesn’t matter how long a loved one has been near death, when it finally comes you never feel prepared. I wanted to sit by his bed and look at him for a long time. I needed to look at what there was, now that his soul had left, and to think about that. I needed closure. But the nurse officiously asked us all to leave the room so they could clean him up.
I went home and picked up Tom and the kids and we all drove to Dad’s house to be with Shirlee. The press was already gathered outside their Bel-Air driveway, interviewing friends as they came to pay their respects. Slowly they gathered: Jimmy Stewart, Eva Marie Saint, Mel Ferrer, Dad’s very first leading lady from Omaha, Dorothy McGuire, Joel Grey, James Garner, Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck. My brother and his wife, Becky, came, with his daughter, Bridget, and son, Justin.
That first afternoon, when the house was crowded and everyone was in deep shock trying to wrap their minds around the reality that he was gone from us, I remember sitting in the study across from Jimmy Stewart. On his way in he had told the press, “I’ve just lost my best friend.” He had been sitting across from me with his head hanging down for several hours, without saying a word, when a movement from his direction caught my attention. Jimmy was lifting his arms up over his head and it dawned on me that he was remembering the kite that he and my dad had once made together, and he was trying to describe its enormity. I remembered Dad telling us the story of this kite when he and Jimmy were in their late twenties in California. Jimmy didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in particular; he wasn’t even paying attention to see if anyone was listening. He was just totally wrapped up in hi
s memory: “It was so big . . . this big”—his arms went higher and his hands wider—“and . . . and”—Jimmy was always a stammerer—“when it caught the wind, it pulled me off the ground.” He smiled. Then his arms came down and he was again silent. Those of us in the room looked at one another, understanding what a unique and deep loss this was for Jimmy. He seemed to enjoy it when I got him to reminisce about the days in New York during the Depression when the two of them had lived on rice.
The faces of my father that I loved: center is Norman Thayer, clockwise from bottom left: Abraham Lincoln, Tom Joad, Gil Carter (Ox-Bow Incident), Mr. Roberts, Juror #8 (12 Angry Men), Clarence Darrow.
(Photofest)
I sat for a while next to the man who had been Dad’s makeup artist for many years. He told me how much Dad talked about me, worried about me. “You can’t imagine how much he talked about you.”
Funny, I thought, how Dad talked to others about me but never directly to me, unless there was a problem. And I wondered if maybe I wasn’t guilty of this with regard to my own children.
Not having been able to mourn my mother’s death, and never again wanting to have internal tears that can’t come out, I made a conscious decision that I would allow myself to experience fully Dad’s passing. I moved into the house with Shirlee and did not leave for a week. For days people kept coming by to pay their respects. We’d sit together and watch his eulogies on television—all week they went on. It hit me that this wasn’t just my loss, the family’s loss. It was a national loss. Dad was a public figure, a hero, who didn’t belong just to us. Dad lived out these quintessential American values. He represented things that we all want to be and that the country wanted to be. He often said he was attracted to certain kinds of roles—the working poor, powerless people, and the men who helped them get some power for themselves—because somehow their characters might rub off on him and he would become a better person. But now I saw that there had been a dialectic; he did have many of those qualities.