By the time Fonda won his ridiculously overdue Oscar for On Golden Pond he was in a wheelchair. He had acted right up until his body failed him. Between completing On Golden Pond and getting his award, he made a TV movie with Myrna Loy called Summer Solstice, then appeared in a play.
Fonda had battled heart disease since 1974, when a pacemaker was placed in his chest. But his dedication to his craft kept him on a strenuous schedule until last year, when his worsening health forced him to be hospitalized often and to move about in a wheelchair.
Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond (1981), which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda. He was too ill to attend the ceremony and died from heart disease five months later.
Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart first met when they were up-and-coming theater actors in 1932, and they remained friends until Fonda's death in 1982. (Stewart died 15 years later in 1997.)
Did Henry and Jane Fonda have a good relationship?
Despite all being in the business, Jane and Henry had a strained relationship – and the legendary star is getting candid with CNN host Chris Wallace about what this meant to her, and her relationships with other men.
Henry Fonda Was No Hero After All, He Had Dark Secrets
Why did Henry Fonda leave his children out of his will?
The explanation as to why can vary with the circumstances. As Henry Fonda explained, two of his children were financially independent, yet his other child relied upon him for support. Keep your will current – Circumstances do change and your feelings about leaving an heir out of your will may also change.
Henry, best known for his roles in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath and 1957's 12 Angry Men, was described by PEOPLE in 1975 as "respected for his talent but widely disliked for his abrasive egotism and vanity," leading to sometimes difficult relationships with his children, Jane and her brother Peter Fonda.
PBS were airing a BBC Omnibus documentary about Jane Fonda made in 1977 and Henry Fonda explains: "I've been asked to update it." In his preface to the interview, Fonda states: "I'm Jane Fonda's father. I guess it's safe to say I'm a proud father. Fact is, I'm in total awe of her.
Jane Fonda is reflecting on one of her biggest regrets: Parenting. As mom to Vanessa Vadim, 54, Mary Luana Williams, 55, and Troy O'Donovan Garity, 49, "I was not the kind of mother that I wished that I had been to my children," Fonda said in an interview with CNN that aired Feb.
Fonda originally revealed her diagnosis in September. "So, my dear friends, I have something personal I want to share. I've been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and have started chemo treatments," she began her Instagram post.
In early September, Fonda announced she'd been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She said at the time that she had the better chance of survival in large part because she was privileged to have "health insurance and access to the best doctors and treatments."
In 1949, he married former model Gloria Hatrick McLean. They had twin daughters, and he adopted her two sons from her previous marriage. The marriage lasted until McLean's death in 1994, and Stewart died of a pulmonary embolism three years later.
Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for forty years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again.
In an interview with CBS News about the final season of the show, Fonda revealed that she stopped drinking. “And here's why: It's because even with one drink, like, if I had a martini tonight, I would be at half-mast tomorrow,” she explained. “Now, that wasn't true when I was younger.
Although raised as a Christian Scientist, according to his biography, Fonda: My Life, written by Howard Teichmann in collaboration with Fonda, "[Fonda] claims to be an agnostic. Not an atheist but a doubter." "My father was an agnostic," wrote Jane Fonda in her autobiography, My Life So Far (2005).
Fonda, who once told an interviewer that he disliked funerals, requested his body be cremated without services. The family asked that in lieu of flowers contributions be made to the Henry Fonda Memorial Wing of the Omaha Playhouse in Nebraska, where he began his career.
The older actor was candid about seeing Fonda as a threat and told someone else that she believed the Klute star "didn't have a soul." Hepburn passed away in 2003, but Fonda has since shared some of her memories from the set of the film.
According to her father, the surname Fonda came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1500s. There, he intermarried; the resultant family began to use Dutch given names, with Jane's first Fonda ancestor reaching New York in 1650. Fonda also has English, French, and Scottish ancestry.
