Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American film and stage actor who had a career that spanned five decades in Hollywood. Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in several films now considered to be classics. Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. He rose to film stardom with performances in such films as; Jezebel (1938), Jesse James (1939), and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). His career further progressed with his portrayal of Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1941 he starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve. Book-ending his service in WWII were his starring roles in two highly regarded Westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), the latter directed by John Ford, and he also starred in Ford's Western Fort Apache (1948). After a seven-year break from films, during which Fonda focused on stage productions, he returned with the WWII war-boat ensemble Mister Roberts (1955). In 1956, at the age of fifty-one, he played the title role as the thirty-eight-year-old Manny Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Wrong Man. In 1957, he starred as Juror #8, the hold-out juror, in 12 Angry Men. Fonda, who was also the co-producer of this film, won the BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor. Later in his career, Fonda moved into darker roles, such as the villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), a box office disappointment at its time of release, but now regarded as one of the best Westerns of all time. He also played in lighter-hearted fare such as Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and My Name is Nobody with Terence Hill, but also often played imp

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