SECTION ONE
PAGE NINE
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-THREE, SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
AMERICA'S
ANSWER TO BARDOT
THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
IX.
Jane,
of course, went to the finest schools. There
was the Greenwich Academy and the Emma Willard School and Vassar.
“I
was always getting into trouble at school," she told me.
"I was always prone to gossip.
I was always open to have things told about me that weren’t true.
I did enough things, but they were always making things up,
too.
I remember one story that was going around Vassar that I was at a bar and
I got up on the table and did a striptease, which was not true at all.
And when these things would get back to me, I would feel ashamed,
probably because somewhere in me I would like to have done them---I
don't know. And it's one of the reasons why I never stayed at
college.
“See,
I had been shy for so long and when I was younger I thought I was ugly. And when
I finally did start going out with boys---I was about thirteen and not
terribly popular---it was no fun, I was so shy and I couldn't make conversation.
Soooo, when I discovered that boys liked me I went wild.
I went out all the time. I
never studied."
She would stay up through the night and sleep
through her morning classes, either in bed or at her desk.
Her classmates remember her room as a wasteland of feminine clutter.
“She
was just sort of sloppy,” said Brooke Hayward, the sister of Bridget Hayward
and also a lifelong friend of Jane. “Oh, God, she never got up.
She’d sleep until noon. I
think she never went to one philosophy class the whole freshman year.
And she was very proud of that. I mean she wore it like a feather in her
cap, because people on campus would say, ‘My God, where is Jane?' She never
showed up. And I’d go into her
room at one or two in the afternoon, she’d be asleep.”
It
was at Vassar that Jane first became aware of the power of her father’s name. She remembers people whispering as she walked across
the campus, “There's Jane Fonda---she’s Henry Fonda’s daughter," and
teachers began patronizing her as if she were the alumni-faculty club.
"Like, I never had to study hard to got good
grades," she told me. "But sometimes I would really goof off.
For example, once there was a very difficult course and I hadn't studied for it.
I mean I just listened to what I liked to listen to and the rest, I
didn't bother. And I went into the examination and I died.
It's not the kind of a thing you can cram on, and I just didn't know.
So I wrote all over my blue book. I drew pictures of hysterical women---I
have certain faces that I draw, kind of with bags under their eyes, crying and
everything. I distracted a lot of
people around me, and I turned it in.
“Well, about three hours later, I got a call in my dormitory from the head of the music department saying, 'We understand, we understand what happened. Come back tomorrow
Jane
cruised along
on her father's name
at ten o'clock and we'll give you the test over again.' Now I had the
exam and I knew what the questions were, so I just learned the questions and I
got an A on it.
“So, in a way it's cheating, but all my life I
have always been able to come
through. I don't know whether that's going on the name Fonda or what, but I mean
I would do something like that and people would automatically attribute it to
some momentary hysteria or emotional problem that I didn't really have at all. I
just didn't know the answers.
"So,
at Vassar, I began to use it. For
example, you could take only a certain amount of weekends, and after that the
weekends were illegal.
So
once I took an illegal weekend---well, I just wanted to see some boy. And so,
like, I hid under a stone wall for a few hours and then got picked up by a car
that was meant to meet me there. And then I was driven to such-and-such a place
and it was all very illegal. And it was about two weeks after my father had
remarried Afdera, his fourth wife. Anyway, just before I came back I called my
roommate from New York and she said, Jesus Christ, they’re all out looking for
you.’
“And
I cried' and I was so upset, because you can got kicked out for
that. So I called up the house fellow, the professor that was like a Don
in the dormitory, and I was crying. Before
I got a chance to say, ‘I'm so sorry, I've gone on an illegal weekend,’ he
said, 'That's all right, that’s all right, come back right away and just come
in and see me.’
“So,
I remember I came back and went straight to his place and he handed me a
drink---you know, liquor. And, like
you’re not allowed to drink on campus. And before I was allowed to say
anything, he said that he understood the fact that my father had remarried and
that I was emotionally upset. And I wasn't.
I'd just gone away with a boy for the weekend.”
Brooke
Hayward, who was born six months before Jane, who lived around the corner from
her in Brentwood and who attended the Greenwich Academy with her and then
Vassar, remembers Jane with an image that Jane doesn't entirely have of herself.
"She
was always generally honest, straightforward, unpretentious," said Brooke,
now the wife of actor Dennis Hopper. "In
a funny way, she wasn't like other girls. She
didn't have the guile and the wiles.
"I
wouldn’t ever have picked an acting career for Jane when I knew her when she
was about sixteen. Even my mother said 'There's just no spark there.’ There
was anything else you can name, but there was just no spark. I saw her as being
really married rather young and having a sort of social existence, and there was
a point where she did a lot of that. There was no real flair for dramatics.
Jane was completely without any sort of that melodrama which comes to
young girls in adolescence. Jane
was totally without it.
"She
was a tomboy, sort of gay and fun, but there was nothing particularly creative
about her. You know, she liked horses.
Really, she liked to go riding, and that was about the only thing she
liked. And when I told my mother
she was going to Lee Strasberg's acting classes, Mother said, 'I can't believe
it."'
Brooke
Hayward's mother was Margaret Sullavan, Henry Fonda's first wife. Her father is Leland Hayward, the Broadway producer.
"There
was a competitive thing between Jane and Brooke Hayward," said Tony
Perkins, one of Jane's former escorts. "Jane
just didn't want to be outdone by Brooke Hayward. Women can be that way---close friends and very competitive.
The two of them had a very female race to run. It’s my guess the world
owes the presence of Jane Fonda among us to Brooke Hayward."
Jane
herself told me:
"Brooke
always was the one who wanted to be the actress. I didn't want to be an actress.
She was always the one everybody said was going to be a big star. She’s
the one, you know, and I was much too shy.”
Jane remembers once riding in a car with David 0. Selznick and
listening to him tell Brooke that she had star quality, that she was beautiful,
that she was glamorous and that she would become a great actress. Jane remembers
that Selznick didn't say anything to Jane.
"I
feel," Brooke told me, "'that for some reason, Jane's always
been extremely competitive. And I
don't know why. I've never figured
it out.” ##
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE ONE OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE TWO OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE THREE OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE FOUR OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE FIVE OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE SIX OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE SEVEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE EIGHT OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE TEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE ELEVEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE TWELVE OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE THIRTEEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE FOURTEEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO PAGE FIFTEEN OF SECTION ONE---AMERICA'S ANSWER TO BARDOT: THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN SIXTY-THREE
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX
OF COLUMNS
The
Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ