smCOLUMN SIXTY-THREE, SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
SECTION ONE
PAGE EIGHT
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-THREE, SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
AMERICA'S
ANSWER TO BARDOT
THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
VIII.
Eight
months after the death of Jane's mother, her father married
"But
she was just great," Jane told me, "it was like having a family again.
When I arrived on her hands I was a girl with two dresses and I was quite heavy
and I was very uncomfortable and she gradually began to groom my hair for me,
and she'd bring me with her shop, and maybe we'd get the same dress and very
carefully she did the whole thing with me.
"And
I don't know how she did it. Because she was so young. How hard
it must have been for her, twenty-two years old, to be burdened with this
thing, plus all the difficulty that went before it. And nothing was easy
for her. For instance, she was on her honeymoon with my father, and my brother
shot himself in the stomach by accident, so their honeymoon had to be cut short.
"My
brother was playing with a Civil War rifle or something like that---we were
Ossining, New York at the time---and a bullet went in his stomach and out his
back. It went through his stomach,
kidney, liver, intestine. It went
through everything!
"It
nicked his spine and went out his back, and he was pronounced dead.
The only reason he lived was because he weighed about sixty pounds. He
was so undernourished he had no fat on him, absolutely none, and so they could
keep his from hemorrhaging. But I remember sitting in that hospital, he was
dying, and I walked into his room and I'd just had an examination in school.
"And
there he was this tiny ten-year-old boy, because he was so small and so skinny,
with tubes coming out of his nose and he said to me---I could hardly hear
him---he said, 'How did your test go? How is Michael?? And I died! And
I prayed. I don't know that I believed in anything but at a time like that you
just pray by instinct.
"I
said, 'Dear God, I will never be mean to him again if you let him live.'
Meantime, the moment he got out of the hospital, I was awful to him. But I
remember they pronounced him dead and then they discovered he was still alive.
He was on the operating table and everything stopped, and when my grandmother
arrived at the hospital they said he was dead.
But then they gave him whatever they give you to make your heart go
again.
"And
my father and Susan were in the Virgin Islands on their honeymoon, and there was
no telephone. And it wasn't until
about five days later that they got some kid who was playing with a
walkie-talkie set and they got a message through. So, even on her honeymoon, it
was with trauma."
Susan
Blanchard is Mrs. Michael Wager now. She
lives in New York with another daughter, Amy, who was adopted when Susan
Blanchard was still Mrs. Henry Fonda. Amy
is nine years old, sixteen years younger than Jane.
Jane is only ten years younger than Susan Blanchard. Often, they are
mistaken for sisters.
"Growing
close to Jane and Peter was a very happy time in my life," Mrs. Wager told
me. "Jane was a very sweet
child and a very understanding child, quite wise beyond her years and easy to
talk to, easy to reach. We used to
have long, long talks. Peter was
more difficult and very sensitive. He
was very different from Jane, very moody. His moods were very obvious and very
open. Jane's moods were much more
subtle. She was very unemotional on
the surface and accepted all the events that had taken place with a great
maturity. I was very impressed and
very moved by her attitude. I
thought it was extraordinary and almost a little frightening, too, this
calmness. I thought it was
unnatural for a child that young to be so emotionally controlled.
"I think because she lost her mother and everything I wanted terribly to make a special kind of close, old-fashioned home life. I have the feeling I wanted to make up for everything that ever happened. Jane talked very little about her mother. Although she
When
Jane was 14,
she broke
her back
was obviously involved with her mother, she was
not as close to her as Peter was. Peter
was very close to his mother. Peter,
you know, is very touchy on the whole subject, and he gets wildly upset about
what Jane says and yet he cares terribly about Jane. And I get upset if Jane's upset, I really do.
I'm terribly, terribly emotionally involved with her still, you know.
"When she was about thirteen or fourteen, I
remember, she broke her back and she had a cast. She broke three vertebrae and although she had a tiny little
waist, by the time they put the cast on she was shaped like this," and Mrs.
Wager held out her hands the way a fisherman might describe the length of his
catch.
"And
it was at that point that she started getting invitations for parties and she
started getting interested in boys. And
she was asked to a dance and she was so upset. She said, "I'm not going to go.
I look terrible. I can't go with
this cast.'
'there
was a great to-do, so I went to Lord and Taylor's and I went to the maternity
department. I got the prettiest dress I could find. It was tiny and dainty and
very feminine and I put flowers in her hair. She went to the dance and of course
it was a huge success because it was a great conversation piece.
"I
remember,
after a while, Peter asked me if he could call me mother, and Jane said she was
going to call me mother, too, and the other side of the family got very angry.
I said to Jane, 'I don't care what you call me, as long as the
relationship is good. You can call
me Boris Karloff, the name doesn't matter." And she got very stubborn. She
said, 'I AM going to call you mother, I don't care what they say." She
defied her mother's side of the family.
"And
now, you know, in this great sort of joy of liberation, she will let her tongue
wobble around her mouth and let anything come out. And it can be twisted around
in conversation and in the press so that it comes out in such a cruel way that
it devastates Hank. It breaks his heart. You know, Jane and her father are just
mad about each other, they really are. And everything that's printed and
sometimes gets misconstrued
just stabs him. When she makes remarks about him as a father, he dies, he dies.
In May of 1956, Susan Blanchard and Henry Fonda were
divorced.
Jane was very, sad," Mrs. Wager said.
"I had to tell Jane and Peter,
'I know you're
doing whatever is best.' And Peter cried, they both did. I miss them terribly. I
just die every Christmas. I just
die when they're not here, and now Jane calls me Sue, of course.
She doesn't call me mother any more.
I sort of miss it, but I suppose it's just as well.
Peter slips once in a while and calls me mother." ##
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