Actor Henry Fonda built his 50-year career playing passionate, principled men, from Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath to Lt. Douglas A. Roberts in the stage and film versions of Mister Roberts, and Juror No. 8 in 12 Angry Men. But the man behind the persona was very different, leading to complicated relationships with his children and a tumultuous marriage history. Fonda was married five times, but rarely spoke about his relationships.
Henry Jaynes Fonda was born in 1905 in Grand Island, Nebraska. He improbably launched his acting career in Omaha at age 20 at the Omaha Community Playhouse, at the recommendation of family friend Dodie Brando, according to The New York Times. (As the mother of Marlon Brando, she probably knew potential acting talent when she saw it.) Fonda was quickly hooked and journeyed to Massachusetts with a friend to join a summer stock theater group. There he met his future first wife, Margaret Sullavan.
A stage and screen actress nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Three Comrades in 1938, Sullavan was known to be blunt and temperamental. An oft-told story about a disagreement on set between Fonda and Sullavan, recorded in Margaret Sullavan: Child of Fate by Lawrence J. Quick, ends with her jumping up and emptying a pitcher of water on Fonda. As Fonda left, presumably to change clothes, Sullavan calmly returned to her seat. It's no wonder the couple separated after they had been married for only two months and divorced two years later in 1933. But they remained on friendly terms and even acted together in 1936's The Moon's Our Home.
Fonda met his second wife, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, on the set of the film Wings of the Morning in England in 1936. Their daughter Jane was born in 1937 and son Peter in 1940. During the marriage, Fonda served in the U.S. Navy for three years in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, noted the Times.
Between Fonda's acting career and his Navy service, the couple spent much time apart. But other factors played a role in their unhappy union. In a profile about Jane Fonda, the Daily Mail explained, "Jane Fonda's father was cold and a bully, not to mention a shameless womaniser, but—too young to understand mental illness—his daughter always blamed the alarming behavior of her manic depressive mother for the break-up of her parents' marriage."
In 1949, when Fonda told Brokaw he wanted a divorce so he could marry his 20-year-old mistress, the devastated Brokaw spiraled into increasing mental instability and entered a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Four months later, at age 42, she committed suicide by slitting her throat with a stolen razor. Fonda refused to discuss her suicide with his children, who didn't learn the truth for years.
The following year, at the age of 45, Fonda married Susan Blanchard, stepdaughter of theatrical producer Oscar Hammerstein II, who later became a producer herself. They adopted a daughter named Amy in 1953. But five years of marriage was enough for Blanchard. As Peter Fonda told the Daily Express in 2014, "We were living in Rome and she came down to breakfast and told us. I was devastated and cried and she said, 'I'm young, I want to dance and tell jokes. I need to cut loose.' And I knew exactly what she meant."
Italian baroness Afdera Franchetti became Fonda's fourth wife two years after his divorce from Blanchard. Audrey Hepburn introduced the two while she and Fonda were in Italy filming War and Peace. Franchetti and Fonda married in 1957 and divorced four years later in 1961.
Fonda's final and most enduring marriage was to Shirlee Adams, a former flight attendant and model whom he married in 1965. She was at his side when he died of heart disease in 1982 at age 77. It seems Fonda had finally met his match and mellowed in the process.
Jane Fonda got to know both Adams and her father better while the two actors were filming 1981's On Golden Pond. As she told People magazine in April 1982, just a few months before her father died that August, "The extent to which my father has become more open to affection and less angry has to do with Shirlee…This is the relationship I wish he'd had earlier on. One day I saw Shirlee standing behind his chair, and it suddenly struck me why they love each other. They're basically both simple, frugal Midwestern people."
