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The Greatest Actor Who Ever Lived?
by Richard Horgan |
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4/17/2008 at 4:06:16 PM |
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Playwright David Mamet has watched a lot of great actors tackle his staccato words over the years, so when he chooses to go “big picture” and identify the performer he thinks may be the greatest actor who ever lived, it’s a name obviously well worth considering. Mamet’s choice? Henry Fonda.
Though Fonda was nominated for Best Actor at age 35 for the 1940 classic The Grapes of Wrath, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that he finally snagged an Honorary Academy Award and that same Best Actor trophy the following year in 1981 for On Golden Pond. As we all know, because there are only so many Oscars to go around each year, the number of nominations and-or statuettes claimed by a particular performer rarely tends to correspond with the breadth and depth of their talents.
In the words of Mamet, Fonda “is always telling the truth, always simple and never making anything up.” As it so happens, the actor has cropped up again in recent months on DVD, first via the March 4th release of a 50th anniversary edition of 12 Angry Men and then shortly thereafter via the first-ever DVD version of the love triangle drama Daisy Kenyon. Though the latter is decidedly a minor work, Fonda is his usual solid self alongside co-stars Joan Crawford and Dana Andrews.
Another specter of Fonda can be found in the film Leatherheads. Co-stars George Clooney and Renée Zellweger do their best to banter in the spirit of Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, but it only serves to remind us that the era of classic screwball comedies is long gone. Jack Klugman certainly agrees with Mamet’s assessment; he recently told a reporter that the biggest thrill of his career was appearing with Fonda and Humphrey Bogart in a 1955 Producers Showcase live TV episode staging of The Petrified Forest.
Meanwhile, at the just concluded “Real to Reel”, a three-day conference and exhibit (April 10th - 12th) at New Orleans’ National Museum of World War II, Fonda was among the actors whose presence in newsreels and documentaries was discussed, as part of a broader look at how the movies have helped shape people’s perceptions of the conflict. The recent deaths of Charlton Heston and Richard Widmark also resonated with Fonda fans. In the case of the former, it was because Heston - like Fonda, John Wayne and James Stewart - often played characters who were quintessentially American; in the case of the latter, it came from the fact that Fonda and Widmark were friends, and that Widmark late in life (1999) married Fonda’s ex-wife Susan. (If you want to see a great little Widmark-Fonda film, check out 1968’s Madigan.)
If I had to pick one favorite Fonda film (not an easy thing to do), I think it would have to be The Lady Eve. Blessed with a Preston Sturges working at the peak of his powers, Fonda proved that along with making a great Tom Joad or Abraham Lincoln, he could also deftly manage comedy. Unlike the other two films Fonda made with Stanwyck around that same time, this one is as fresh as the day it first hit theaters.
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