Henry Fonda
Birthday: 1905-05-16
Place of Birth: Grand Island, Nebraska, USA
Biography: Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor who had a career that spanned five decades in Hollywood. Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in several films now considered to be classics, earning one Academy Award for Best Actor on two nominations. Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. His film career began to gain momentum with roles such as Bette Davis's fiancee in her Academy Award-winning performance in Jezebel (1938), brother Frank in Jesse James (1939), and the future President in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), directed by John Ford. His early career peaked with his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, about an Oklahoma family who moved to California during the Dust Bowl 1930s. This film is widely considered to be among the greatest American films. In 1941 he starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve. Book-ending his service in WWII were his starring roles in two highly regarded westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), the latter directed by John Ford, and he also starred in Ford's western Fort Apache (1948). After a seven-year break from films, during which Fonda focused on stage productions, he returned with the WWII war-boat ensemble Mister Roberts (1955). In 1957 he starred as Juror No.8, the hold-out juror, in 12 Angry Men. Fonda, who was also co-producer, won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actor. Later in his career, Fonda moved into darker roles, such as the villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), underrated and a box office disappointment at its time of release, but now regarded as one of the best westerns of all time. He also played in lighter-hearted fare such as Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball, but also often played important military figures, such as a Colonel in Battle of the Bulge (1965), and Admiral Nimitz in Midway (1976). He finally won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond (1981), which also starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda, but was too ill to attend the ceremony. He died from heart disease a few months later.
Movies
The Ox-Bow Incident
A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing t...
View Movie
Fail Safe
Because of a technical defect an American bomber team mistakenly orders the destruction of Moscow. T...
View Movie
The Grapes of Wrath
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due t...
View Movie
The Lady Eve
It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Ch...
View Movie
My Darling Clementine
Three brothers stop off for a night in the town of Tombstone. The next morning they find one of thei...
View Movie
Jezebel: Legend of the South
Short documentary about the making of the 1938 film "Jezebel."...
View Movie
Jezebel
In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who car...
View Movie
Rollercoaster
A young terrorist kills and injures patrons of a Norfolk amusement park by placing homemade explosiv...
View Movie
Daisy Kenyon
Daisy Kenyon is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but ...
View Movie
Madigan
NYPD detectives Bonaro and Madigan lose their guns to fugitive Barney Benesch. As compensation, they...
View Movie
Firecreek
A peace-loving, part-time sheriff in the small town of Firecreek must take a stand when a gang of vi...
View Movie
The Tin Star
An experienced bounty hunter helps a young sheriff learn the meaning of his badge....
View Movie
Midway
This war drama depicts the U.S. and Japanese forces in the naval Battle of Midway, which became a tu...
View Movie
War and Peace
The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Gr...
View Movie
The Wrong Man
In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mista...
View Movie
On Golden Pond
For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer on golden pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When...
View Movie
Something to Do with Death
Third part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian...
View Movie
'Fail-Safe' and the Cold War
Film critic J. Hoberman discusses the best-selling 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler o...
View Movie
The Wages of Sin
Second part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italia...
View Movie
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Making '12 Angry Men'
A making of featurette of 12 Angry Men made exclusively for the Collector's Edition DVD....
View Movie
The Rounders
Ben (Glenn Ford) and Marion (Henry Fonda) are two cowboys who make a meager living breaking wild hor...
View Movie
How the West Was Won
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the en...
View Movie
My Name Is Nobody
Jack Beauregard, an aging gunman of the Old West, only wants to retire in peace and move to Europe, ...
View Movie
The Longest Day
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the...
View Movie
There Was a Crooked Man...
A charming but ruthless criminal is sent to a remote Arizona prison, where he enlists the help of hi...
View Movie
The Boston Strangler
Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story...
View Movie
Sex and the Single Girl
A womanizing reporter for a sleazy tabloid magazine impersonates his hen-pecked neighbor in order to...
View Movie
Tales of Manhattan
Ten screenwriters collaborated on this series of tales concerning the effect a tailcoat cursed by it...
View Movie
Yours, Mine and Ours
When a widower with ten children marries a widow with eight, can the twenty of them ever come togeth...
View Movie
Battle of the Bulge
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. ...
View Movie
Sometimes a Great Notion
Hank Stamper and his father, Henry, own and operate the family business by cutting and shipping logs...
View Movie
Meteor
After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards...
View Movie
The Cheyenne Social Club
Two cowboys inherit a "social club" specializing in satisfying men....
View Movie
The Sensational Shocking Wonderful Wacky 70's
A look back at the people, events, music, and trends of the 1970s....
View Movie
The Great Smokey Roadblock
An old trucker steals his truck for one last cross-country run, with a madam and her crew on board....
View Movie
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopar...
View Movie
The Best Man
The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a ma...
View Movie
Fort Apache
Owen Thursday sees his new posting to the desolate Fort Apache as a chance to claim the military hon...
View Movie
The Fugitive
Anti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary govern...
View Movie
Warlock
A band of murderous cowboys has imposed a reign of terror on the town of Warlock. With the sheriff h...
View Movie
The Return of Frank James
Farmer Frank and his ward hunt brother Jesse's killers, the back-shooting Fords....
View Movie
Jesse James
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn t...
View Movie
Young Mr. Lincoln
In this dramatized account of his early law career in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is born into a modes...
View Movie
The Mad Miss Manton
When the murdered body discovered by beautiful, vivacious socialite Melsa Manton disappears, police ...
View Movie
The Serpent
Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes ov...
View Movie
The Long Night
City police surround a building, attempting to capture a suspected murderer. The suspect knows there...
View Movie
Mister Roberts
Mr. Roberts is a Navy officer who's yearning for battle but is stuck in the backwaters of World War ...
View Movie
Gideon's Trumpet
True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This land...
View Movie
Spencer's Mountain
Clay Spencer and his wife, Olivia, live in a small town deep in the mountains. When Clay isn't busy ...
View Movie
In Harm's Way
A Naval officer, reprimanded after Pearl Harbor, is later promoted to Rear Admiral and gets a second...
View Movie
La Classe américaine
George Abitbol, the classiest man in the world, dies tragically during a cruise. The director of an ...
View Movie
Jigsaw
New York Assistant District Attorney Howard Malloy launches an investigation into a series of murder...
View Movie
Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker
This documentary, hosted by actor Burgess Meredith, explores the life and career of movie director O...
View Movie
Breakdowns of 1938
Flubs and bloopers that occurred on the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1938....
View Movie
Stiletto
A rich, jet-setting playboy has a secret life: he's also a professional Mafia hitman. When he decide...
View Movie
Wanda Nevada
In the American Southwest of the 1950s, middle-aged vagabond Beaudray Demerille survives as a cardsh...
View Movie
Advise & Consent
Proposed by the President of the United States to fill the post of Secretary of State, Robert Leffin...
View Movie
Sacco and Vanzetti
SACCO AND VANZETTI is an 80-minute-long documentary that tells the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolo...
View Movie
The Swarm
Scientist Dr. Bradford Crane and army general Thalius Slater join forces to fight an almost invisibl...
View Movie
Hollywood: The Great Stars
Host Henry Fonda follows the creation of the star system with Mary Pickford in the Silent Era throug...
View Movie
Hollywood: The Selznick Years
Henry Fonda hosts this retrospective on the career and films of iconic filmmaker David O. Selznick, ...
View Movie
Hollywood: The Fabulous Era
Henry Fonda reminisces about the stars and pictures of the glory days of Tinseltown....
View Movie
Tentacles
Several people disappear from and at the sea. Their bodies are found gnawed to the skeleton, even th...
View Movie
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying ...
View Movie
Let Us Live
When a confused eyewitness identifies New York City cabbie Brick Tennant as a killer, he is sentence...
View Movie
The Biggest Battle
A story of how World War II affected the lives of a German family and an American family, both of wh...
View Movie
The Greatest Man in the World
This version of James Thurber's tale tells the story of a young amateur pilot who beats Charles Lind...
View Movie
You Only Live Once
Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a bre...
View Movie
Drums Along the Mohawk
Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the M...
View Movie
On Our Merry Way
Oliver Pease gets a dose of courage from his wife Martha and tricks the editor of the paper (where h...
View Movie
The Male Animal
The trustees of Midwestern University have forced three teachers out of their jobs for being suspect...
View Movie
Fedora
An ambitious Hollywood hustler becomes involved with a reclusive female star, whom he tries to lure ...
View Movie
The Battle of Midway
The Japanese attack on Midway in June 1942, filmed as it happened. Preserved by the Academy Film Ar...
View Movie
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
A well-established tale of a long-running feud between two mountain clans....
View Movie
Immortal Sergeant
During WWII, a corporal in the desert reminisces about the love he left behind and faces uncertainty...
View Movie
Spawn of the North
Two Alaskan salmon fisherman find their friendship at risk when one aligns with Russian fish pirates...
View Movie
Rings on Her Fingers
Susan Miller works behind the girdle counter in a department store and dreams about the beautiful cl...
View Movie
You Belong to Me
A playboy marries a woman doctor then grows jealous of her male patients....
View Movie
The Big Street
Meek busboy Little Pinks is in love with an extremely selfish nightclub singer who despises and uses...
View Movie
The Man Who Loved Bears
The Man Who Loved Bears (1979) True-story documentary detailing the struggle of a man trying to rai...
View Movie
The Fondas: A Cinematic Dynasty
The story of legendary actor Henry Fonda (1905-1982), and his children, Jane (1937) and Peter (1940-...
View Movie
Stranger on the Run
A drifter finds himself wrongly accused of murder by a power-crazed sheriff. The sheriff gives him a...
View Movie
City on Fire
An ex-employee of a city oil refinery creates an explosion at the facility which starts a chain-reac...
View Movie
The Moon's Our Home
A writer and an actress meet and marry without really knowing each other--they are even unaware that...
View Movie
An Opera of Violence
First part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian...
View Movie
Inside 'the Swarm'
A behind-the-scenes/Making of documentary short focused on Irwin Allen's all-star disaster flick The...
View Movie
Revisiting 'Fail-Safe'
Documentary featuring interviews with director Sidney Lumet, "Fail-Safe" (2000) producer George Cloo...
View Movie
Stage Struck
A young woman arrives in New York City determined to become a great theatrical star, but discovers t...
View Movie
Chad Hanna
Country boy joins a circus in the 1840s and falls in love with the bare-back rider. Later he falls i...
View Movie
Blockade
A simple peasant is forced to take up arms to defend his farm during the Spanish Civil War. Along th...
View Movie
Collision Course: Truman vs. MacArthur
U.S. President Harry S Truman and his commander in the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur, disagr...
View Movie
Welcome to Hard Times
A sociopathic stranger all but destroys a small hardscrabble town but the 'mayor' convinces its surv...
View Movie
Lillian Russell
Alice Faye plays the title role in this 1940 film biography of the early-20th-century stage star....
View Movie
Slim
Expert lineman Red takes Farm-boy Slim under his wing and teaches him the dangerous, migratory trade...
View Movie
The Dirty Game
A U.S. intelligence general recalls three Cold War cases of Soviet, French and Italian spies....
View Movie
Born to Buck
Bronco riders travel through South Dakota and round up 400 wild horses in danger of extinction, then...
View Movie
The Farmer Takes a Wife
A farmer tries to convince a girl to leave her life on a canal boat to live with him on his farm....
View Movie
I Met My Love Again
In Vermont, college student Ives Towner refuses to marry his longtime girlfriend, Julie Weir, until ...
View Movie
I Dream Too Much
Opera student Annette Monard meets composer Jonathan Street, and in a buoyant, alcohol-fueled evenin...
View Movie
Benjy
Benjy is a 1951 American short documentary film directed by Fred Zinnemann. It won an Oscar in 1952 ...
View Movie
The Man Who Understood Women
A film director turns his actress wife into a star, leading to marital problems....
View Movie
Way Down East
A family living on a farm in Maine takes in a young woman to stay with them, not knowing that the wo...
View Movie
The Alpha Caper
A parole officer forced into retirement gets together three ex-convicts to pull off a $30-million ar...
View Movie
Spendthrift
A profligate, polo-playing playboy (Henry Fonda) is married to a beautiful but superficial heiress (...
View Movie
The Red Pony
A young farmboy who can't seem to communicate with his father develops an attachment to a young red ...
View Movie
Clarence Darrow
The taped performance of Henry Fonda's one-man show was aired as "IBM Presents Clarence Darrow" on S...
View Movie
Going Hollywood: The '30s
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were...
View Movie
Rappaccini's Daughter
Set in 18th Century Italy, RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER is the tale of a young scholar named Giovanni (Kris...
View Movie
The Sky Is Gray
From Ernest J. Gaines, author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," comes a deceptively simpl...
View Movie
The Golden Honeymoon
Charley Tate is an old windbag, often a braggart, but somehow always lovable. Married over fifty yea...
View Movie
Paul's Case
Captures the essence of Willa Cather's haunting story of Pittsburgh circa 1900. Lost in a world of f...
View Movie
The Blue Hotel
Nebraska in the 1880's: bleak, lonely, and far from what you'd expect The Wild West to be. But for a...
View Movie
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Bernice, a shy young woman, leaves her safe home to go visit her flapper cousin. When her cousin tri...
View Movie
The Displaced Person
A conscientious but driven Polish refugee disrupts the hierarchy of power on a Georgia farm in the 1...
View Movie
Soldier's Home
Harold Krebs went off to fight in World War I, "the war to end all wars." But when he comes home, Ha...
View Movie
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
A mysterious stranger descends on the small town of Hadleyburg to teach its deceitful residents a le...
View Movie
Barn Burning
Ab Snopes (Tommy Lee Jones) is a Southern tenant farmer whose unrelenting and violent nature proves ...
View Movie
Guilt Trip: Hitchcock and 'The Wrong Man'
Documentary on the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s "The Wrong Man."...
View Movie
Pictura
A documentary film directed by seven famous directors, and narrated by several famous Hollywood acto...
View Movie
The Magnificent Dope
Dwight Dawson, who runs an unsuccessful success school, stages a contest to find the biggest failure...
View Movie
Ash Wednesday
Barbara gets secret plastic surgery in Switzerland in an attempt to save her marriage to Mark, but h...
View Movie
The Really Big Family
The Really Big Family is a 1966 American documentary film directed by Alexander Grasshoff about the ...
View Movie
Wild Geese Calling
In the 1890s lumberjack John leaves Seattle for Alaska to look for gold. After he marries dancehall ...
View Movie
John Ford & Monument Valley
John Wayne, Henry Fonda and James Stewart discuss working with John Ford...
View Movie
The Real Miss America
Henry Fonda narrates this documentary short film produced by the United States Department of Defense...
View Movie
It's Everybody's War
Wartime documentary propagandizing for greater participation in the U.S. war effort during the Secon...
View Movie
Barbara Stanwyck: Straight Down The Line
Born Ruby Stevens, she was orphaned when she was four. A chance audition led to a chorus job. By 17 ...
View Movie
The American West of John Ford
A documentary encapsulating the career and Western films of director 'John Ford' , including clips f...
View Movie
Let Poland Be Poland
Broadcast live via satellite around the world on January 31, 1982, this special produced by the US I...
View Movie
Pat Paulsen for President
Before there were mockumentaries, there was this "Documentary/TV Movie" on the satirical 1968 Presid...
View Movie
Henry Fonda: Hollywood's Quiet Hero
Profiling the life and career of actor Henry Fonda, who starred in such film classics as "The Grapes...
View Movie
The Oldest Living Graduate
Henry Fonda stars as Col. J. C. Kincaid, crusty patriarch of a Texas family. Kincaid's weak-willed s...
View Movie
The Fabulous Fifties
The Fabulous Fifties, CBS, combines style, humor, and imagination. It was rich in touches of quality...
View Movie
The Last Four Days
In 1945, the dictator of fascist Italy and Hitler's close ally Benito Mussolini faces defeat. In a d...
View Movie
To Save a Soldier
Henry Fonda-narrated 1966 ABC documentary that follows a wounded soldier in Vietnam from the field, ...
View Movie
Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still
The film's subject is a photograph of Jane Fonda visiting Hanoi during the Vietnam War. It asks what...
View Movie
Henry Fonda for President
A personal essay about the United States, viewed through the life and work of a movie actor. Henry F...
View Movie
Summer Solstice
An old man lives out the final years of his half-century marriage by living and remembering....
View Movie
Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire
Actress Sally Field looks at the dramatic life and successful career of the superb actress Barbara S...
View Movie
Parkinson: Meet Henry Fonda
Episode of the BBC television program with host Michael Parkinson interviewing American actor Henry ...
View Movie
Too Late the Hero
A WWII film set on a Pacific island. Japanese and allied forces occupy different parts of the island...
View Movie
A Special Sesame Street Christmas
Leslie Uggams hosts this take on A Christmas Carol, where she and fellow guest stars, Anne Murray, I...
View Movie
Myrna Loy: So Nice to Come Home To
This tribute to Myrna Loy is organized chronologically with a few photographs, many film clips, a ha...
View Movie
The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind
This documentary revisits the making of Gone with the Wind via archival footage, screen tests, insig...
View Movie
Home to Stay
A teenage girl sets off on an odyssey from her Illinois farming community with her free-spirited but...
View Movie
John Ford: The Man Who Invented America
Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the leg...
View Movie
A Space to Grow
A Space to Grow is a 1968 American short documentary film produced by Thomas P. Kelly Jr.. It was no...
View Movie
12 Angry Men
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a...
View Movie
Spanish Western
A vindication of the role of the technicians and artists who made spaghetti western genre possible, ...
View Movie
Once Upon a Time in the West
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jil...
View Movie
I'm a Fool
Traveling from town to town during the summer of 1919, young Andy (Ron Howard) has left his Ohio hom...
View Movie
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Granny Weatherall (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is a spunky old lady of eighty who bosses around her doctor...
View Movie
The Petrified Forest
Gabrielle Maple works in a dusty desert gas station-café, but yearns for the life of an artist in Fr...
View Movie
President Kennedy's Birthday Salute
President Kennedy's birthday celebration was held at the third Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962...
View Movie
Underground Doctors
Not that long ago, crippling diseases were blamed on evil demons. What's more, nowadays, healing mir...
View Movie
Hidden Hollywood II: More Treasures from the 20th Century Fox Vaults
Second installment of deleted scenes, mostly musical or comedic, from Fox films of the 30's - 50's....
View Movie
Henry James' The Jolly Corner
Expatriate Spencer Brydon returns to his now-empty childhood home, and finds himself obsessed with w...
View Movie
The Music School
This drama is based on a John Updike story and is narrated by the author. It is the tale of an angst...
View Movie
Parker Adderson, Philosopher
A Union prisoner-of-War, captured behind Confederate lines, and condemned to be shot,, argues with h...
View Movie
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
Anchored by intimate, one-on-one interviews with the man himself, Nicholas Wrathall’s new documentar...
View Movie