Henry Fonda first studied acting with Marlon Brando's mother, Dorothy Brando.1)
He obtained the title of Life Scout as an adult. He eventually became a scout master.2)
Henry Fonda is best known as the father of two prominent Hollywood actors, Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda. Both went on to become well-known artists.3)
Henry Fonda's pastime was building model airplanes. He also liked to make kites.4)
When Henry Fonda won an Oscar at the age of 76, he was the oldest person to do so.5)
During his heyday in Hollywood, he was known as a “ladies man.” He had a reputation for having multiple affairs with several different actresses.6)
For many years, he collaborated with filmmaker John Ford. However, their camaraderie was short-lived after Ford struck him in the face while filming “Mister Roberts” in 1955.7)
Henry Fonda and James Stewart were close friends. They even shared a room twice.8)
The oddest interest Henry Fonda was reported to have was beekeeping. He was so taken with the pastime that he included it into his character in the film “Ulee's God”.9)
During an interview with Barbara Walters, Jane Fonda stated that her father was profoundly in love with Lucille Ball and that the two were “extremely close” while filming Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968).10)
His distant ancestors migrated to the Netherlands in 1400 from Genoa, Italy. In the early 1600s, among the early Dutch settlers in America, they founded Fonda, a still-thriving tiny town in upstate New York, named after patriarch Douw Fonda, who was subsequently slain by Indians. He was also of English, Scottish, and, to a lesser extent, Norwegian origin. In the 1800s, his paternal grandparents relocated to Nebraska.11)
Despite his gentle, courageous, and honest on-screen image, he was usually regarded as cold, distant, and frequently furious off-screen.12)
According to Entertainment Weekly, he ranks as the 29th greatest movie star of all time.13)
According to his son Peter Fonda's memoirs Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir, although Fonda spent the majority of his life as a Democrat, he briefly had a Republican registration (1999). Peter thinks Henry's liberalism during the early 1950s, when he endured a six-year hiatus from movies, led to him being gray-listed.14)
He and his daughter Jane Fonda were the first father-daughter pair to be nominated for an Oscar in the same year (1982).15)