We have to have a comment on the wonderful Henry Fonda.
Seen him in a ton of movies, from Grapes of Wrath to Mr Roberts to 12, even to Golden Pond and especially Once uatit West.
But not long ago I ran across this little gem, with the equally appealing and classic Barbara Stanwyck, The Lady Eve.
Man, I think I could spend a solid month watching only Fonda performances. Stanwyck too !
There The first Henry Fonda post on Movie Chat
Bless your heart!
A fine actor! I love so many of his films. He was quite handsome too.
He could certainly do it all too. Comedy and drama. you list some good movies.
Another fave is 12 Angry Men.
Now, I believe I'll go over to see if Henry's buddy has any comments yet.
That would be James Stewart.
Yep, I truncated 12 Angry Men to "12" just to get in line with the internet age of shortening things.
I posted something about the Ox-Bow Incident earlier, and discovered there were no HF comments.
I was aghast !
I confess that I'm a bit surprised too. Of course, there are probably many actors and actresses here on MovieChat with no comments yet. All of the posts from the movies came over from IMDb but none of the posts from the actors/actress boards.
I guess we had all better step up to the plate and play ball.....
In this case, get things started.
It's been sad to have lost all the old comments from the IMDb message boards. I'm sure there were some interesting discussions about him over the years. He was an asset to every film he was in. I love his performance in Once Upon a Time in the West. He was scary as a stone cold killer. I heard that Henry Fonda wanted to wear brown contact lenses to make himself look meaner but Sergio Leone insisted it would be better to have his ice blue eyes. It worked, I think. He looks so evil in that movie.
shareJust to have fun and quibble, I don't know if he LOOKED all that mean.
The same could be said for Lee Marvin in Lib Valence.
I mean, Lee Van Cleef or Jack Elam can really look mean when they choose to.
In OUATITW, Fonda didn't necessarily look mean -- but he sure was mean !
What a great turn for Hank. Also liked him in Sometimes A Great Notion as a cranky old snot, haha.
I guess you're right. He probably looked about the same but the mannerisms, spitting the tobacco all the time, may have been the thing that did it for me. He was sort of dirty and unshaven looking. I've never seen Sometimes A Great Notion. I'll keep an eye out for it on TCM or STARZ. I love when they play so against type.
shareI think The Lady Eve is one of the best of Henry Fonda's many wonderful performances. He is rightly well-known for his thoughtful, honest, non-nonsense heroes, for his immense gravitas but here his character is pretty much an idiot, and he is hilarious.
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