It was a wonderful friendship
Hollywood’s golden buddies: Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The author had me at hello.
“In the end, as in the beginning, they didn’t need words’’ is the evocative opening line of “Hank & Jim,” a comprehensive retelling of the enduring, if unlikely, 50-year friendship of screen legends Henry Fonda and James Stewart. The engrossing dual biography by best-selling author and film historian Scott Eyman also documents a golden time in Hollywood and how these two iconic members of The Greatest Generation navigated both World War II and a changing industry.
Fonda and Stewart were two of the greatest stars of Hollywood, yet few fans realized that the men were close friends. Mr. Eyman’s exhaustive research shows the reader just how that friendship not only enriched the two actors’ lives, but also how it translated to whatwe saw — and loved — on the big screen. Fonda starred in “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Mister Roberts,” “Twelve Angry Men” and “On Golden Pond”; Stewart is known for “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Destry Rides Again,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Vertigo” and “Rear Window.”
Fonda and Stewart met in 1932 in New York as young theater actors sharing an apartment while scratching out a living during the Great Depression. They got along famously, shared a fascination with actress Margaret Sullavan (who would marry Fonda), and loved model airplanes, kites and (often X-rated) practical jokes. They once subsidizedtheir rent by selling hobo steaks — large slabs of beef with salt caked on the sides and served on toast. It would remain Fonda’s favorite meal.
The war changed everything. Fonda joined the Navy in 1942, saying he didn’t want to be “in a fake war in a studio.” He was decorated for his service, as was Stewart for his time as a bomber pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps. But like all veterans they came back to a different country, and as actors they returned to a very different Hollywood. Mr. Eyman explains that the millions who went off to war found that what really happened in the world did not remotely resemble what Hollywood portrayed. As a result, movies got darker and characters tougher. Actors had to make transitions. Consider the Stewart of “Wonderful Life” filmed in the mid1940s to the Stewart in “Vertigo” of the late 1950s.
The men were by nature polar opposites. Fonda (1905-82) was born near Omaha, Neb., the son of a prosperous salesman and a housewife mom. From an early age he showed great artistic abilities, and his family thought he would be a writer until he dropped out of the University of Minnesota, preferring to do itinerant labor. He joined the Omaha Community Players after being noticed by an actress named Dorothy Brando, who, it turned out, knew a thing or two about actors. (Her son was Marlon Brando.) Fonda was a liberal Democrat, with a hatred of bigotry that biographers agree was shaped by his witnessing a lynching when he was a child. Fonda, described by director Josh Logan as “the best looking human being I ever saw,” was known as a ladies’ man who was married five times and had a difficult relationship with his two actor children, Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda. Mr. Eyman describes “Hank” Fonda as quiet and wary, a perfectionist who was often hard on others.
The man on the other side of the ampersand, Jimmy Stewart (1908-97), remains the pride of Indiana, Pa., where there is a museum in honor of the town’s most famous native son. He was the son of a hardware store owner and a stay-athome mom and carried throughout his life the conservative Republicanism of his family. He was married to the same woman for 45 years and was revered by his children. Stewart was a Princeton grad who planned to be an architect until his accordion playing (an instrument his dad acquired in trade for store credit) landed him notice by a group called the University Players of Ivy Leaguers, where Fonda had earlier worked as a carpenter, then an actor.
Stewart’s stuttering, awshucks way of talking was genuine, as was his relaxed, easygoing style. Actress and co-star Kim Novak once wondered how he could “be so nice and survive in Hollywood.”
The biographer spoke with Fonda’s widow and children as well as three of Stewart’s children, plus actors and directors who had worked with the men. He fleshes out a portrait of two complex, contradictory artists. The 300-plus-page hardcover has the obligatory reprints of family photos and sappy movie posters. But it’s the candid black-and-white on the book’s last page — the two aging icons in black tie waiting backstage at an awards show — that sums up the book. In the end, as in the beginning, they didn’t need words.
The book, to paraphrase a signature title from Jimmy Stewart’s oeuvre, is the retelling of friendships that made for “A Wonderful Life.’’