What Do Henry Fonda’s Favorite Films Say About Him?
Despite being one of the most recognizable and beloved screen faces of his time, Henry Fonda only earned an Academy Award in his final film role. He played Norman in Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond, a screenplay drama adaptation of Ernest Thomson’s play of the same name. Norman is a retired professor grappling with the effects of aging and estranged from his daughter (played by Fonda’s real-life daughter, Jane Fonda). The film mirrored Fonda’s own life, as he was grappling with his health, and could not make it to his crowning at the Academy Awards ceremony the following year, passing on five months after the Best Actor Oscar award for the role.
It would be interesting to know whether he thought On Golden Pond surpassed any of his earlier picks for favorites (the film was made much later after Fonda’s interview). Nonetheless, Fonda did not pick his blockbuster films as favorites, preferring instead films that show the actor cared about justice and the ordinary person’s struggle. The three films are a representation of the intricate messages of Henry Fonda’s values and artistic vision.
What Is ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ About?
John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the earliest of Fonda’s “favorite three,” is based on John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It follows the Joads, a family of Oklahoma farmers displaced by mechanization during the Great Depression. Henry Fonda stars as Tom Joad, a pardoned ex-convict who returns home to find his family dispossessed and preparing for a grueling journey to California. Facing the same hardships as other migrants, the Joads endure loss, fight to stay united, and confront the harsh realities of a rigged system.
Unlike the typical hero in films, Fonda’s Tom is an ordinary man struggling to navigate injustice. Initially reluctant to overtly challenge the system, unlike his preacher-turned-activist friend Jim Casey (John Carradine), Tom’s past run-in with the law — a self-defense homicide that landed him in prison — makes him cautious. But when he faces a similar situation, he chooses to fight for change and social justice, albeit late, igniting a lifelong commitment. In 1939, during the anti-Communism era, such themes were considered communist, and producer Darryl Zanuck feared the film’s censorship. Sending detectives to Oklahoma confirmed the depicted poverty and bolstered his defense against accusations of communist connections. The Grapes of Wrath earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Fonda, and won two: Best Director for John Ford and Best Supporting Actress for Jane Darwell.
What Is ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ About?
Still pursuing justice for ordinary people three years later, Henry Fonda stars as rancher Gil Carter in another book adaptation, William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident. With a fellow cowboy beside him, Carter arrives in Nevada to find a mob forming to hunt down three men accused of murdering a rancher. Helplessly, Carter watches as the mob, refusing a fair trial, hastily executes the alleged culprits by hanging. Though he votes for a trial, the mob’s bloodlust overwhelms him. While Carter finds vindication at the film’s end, his victory feels hollow. His only consolation lies in forcing the offenders to confront their shame as he delivers a scathing rebuke and the promise of tough punishment by the town’s Sheriff.
’12 Angry Men’ Is Henry Fonda’s Favorite Movie He Made
As if reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, Fonda finally finds his voice and achieves justice in his most beloved film, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, another adaptation, considered one of the best legal dramas ever made. Here, he plays Juror 8, the lone dissenter in a jury deliberating the fate of an 18-year-old accused of murdering his father. The judge instructs them to reach a verdict beyond reasonable doubt. While the presented evidence seems airtight, Fonda’s meticulous arguments during the verdict recess poke holes in the witnesses’ stories, slowly swaying his fellow jurors.
Unlike his characters in his other favorites, who either give up early or join the fight too late, Henry Fonda’s Juror 8 single-handedly turns the tide of prejudice, saving an innocent life. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, 12 Angry Men represents Fonda’s acting actualization point, fulfilling his highest needs for justice and achievement. The Grapes of Wrath, where he feels the sting of unfulfilled purpose, sits at the base of the pyramid. The Ox-Bow Incident, meanwhile, depicts his journey towards actualization, where he fights for justice but falls short of complete success.
Henry Fonda’s Favorite Films Reflect On His Life’s Experiences
To further undercut how much Henry Fonda appreciated these films, he was largely unhappy about the roles he was getting with movies produced by 20th Century Fox, yet The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-Bow Incident are the only two from the studio that he was happy with. As a teenager, Henry Fonda, alongside his father, witnessed the public lynching of a 14-year-old Black boy Will Brown in Omaha. He was shaken by the hateful mob frenzy and the defenselessness of the teenager. In the films that he lists as his favorite, the fight for fairness in trial persists, and in his most favorite 12 Angry Men, he finally gets justice. In The Dick Cavett Show interview, he said of the film, “That’s my easy rider, I produced it. I am proud of that on more than one level.” It might be of interest that his role in his other favorite was not always meant for him. Fonda’s role in The Ox-Bow Incident, like Jimmy Stewart’s in his collaboration with John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and Jimmy Stewart in How the West Was Won, was initially offered to Gary Cooper, who turned it down. The film’s sobering theme in a Western movie at the time was also a marketing headache for Fox, and its executives kept the film on the shelf for months before releasing it.
Throughout his works, Henry Fonda represented the everyday American, a testament to his Nebraska roots and a subtle consciousness of the ordinary American’s plight and needs. He begins his pursuit of justice in John Ford’s 1939 biopic Young Mr. Lincoln, where, as the young future president, he stands up against a lynch mob accusing two brothers of murder. He brings law and order to Tombstone in his other collaboration with Ford in My Darling Clementine and is the estranged father fighting for a harmonious relationship with his family in his sunset days in On Golden Pond.
What Is Henry Fonda’s Worst Film?
For decades, Henry Fonda graced the screens. Picking his worst film might seem like a difficult task. But, as with his favorites, the choice was easy for him. In the Dick Cavett Show interview, Fonda stated his hatred for the 1955 John Ford and Mervyn Leroy comedy-drama, Mister Roberts. Adapted from a 1946 novel and a 1948 Broadway play in which he had starred, Fonda felt the film betrayed the play’s essence. “When you have done a play like I did Mister Roberts, and I did it for four years, you become a purist of that play,” he said. “Everybody that was part of that play, we hated the picture because it took liberties, the wrong kind of liberties.” He even called the film an “insult” to the stage version.
With his high-ranking films such as his against-lovable-type in Sergio Leone’s seminal Western, Once Upon a Time in the West, which inspired the likes of Quentin Tarantino, to collaborating with Alfred Hitchcock in his 1956 docu-drama film noir The Wrong Man, in which Fonda’s search for justice sends him to test the waters as the wrongly accused victim, to his culmination in finally getting the justice and accomplishment he was seeking in his 12 Angry Men favorite film, Henry Fonda’s work shall remain etched in the hearts of cinephiles. Fonda’s choices defy conventional wisdom. They shun flashier roles and box-office smashes for gritty portrayals of ordinary men grappling with extraordinary circumstances. In their struggles, we see his own mirrored, a reflection of the artist and the man united in a singular pursuit of justice. His choice of favorite films is a story of his heart and mind, and an intertwining between a childhood’s tragic experience that appears to influence the actor’s artistic side.
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