Hank Fonda
Military
connection
Movies List
Fonda, Jane
Fonda, Peter
Mr. Peter Fonda. Of course, we all know that Fonda is the son of good ol’ Hank Fonda, lovable
Hollywood liberal and all-around nice guy. And certainly even a contrarian such
as myself would not be so bold as to suggest that Henry Fonda might have some
skeletons in his closet … right? Just for the hell of it though, there are a few
chapters of the Hank Fonda saga that we should probably review here.
We can begin, I suppose, by noting that Hank
served as a decorated US Naval Intelligence officer during World War II, thus
sparing Peter the stigma of being the only member of the
Laurel Canyon
in-crowd to have not been spawned by a member of the military/intelligence
community. Not too many years after the war, Hank’s wife, Francis Ford Seymour,
was found with her throat slashed open with a straight razor. Peter was just ten
years old at the time of his mother’s, uhmm, suicide on
April 14, 1950.
When Seymour
had met and married Hank, she was the widow of George Brokaw, who had, curiously
enough, previously been married to prominent
CIA
asset Claire Booth Luce.
....I should probably mention that Hank’s first wife, Margaret Sullavan – who was yet another child of
Norfolk,
Virginia
– also allegedly committed suicide, on New Year’s Day, 1960. Nine months later,
her daughter Bridget followed suit. In 1961, very soon after the deaths of first
her mother and then her sister, Sullavan’s other daughter, Brook Hayward, walked
down the aisle with the next Young Turk on our list, Dennis Hopper. For those
who may be unfamiliar with Hopper’s body of work, he is the guy who was once
found wandering naked and bewildered in a Mexican forest. And the guy who, after
divorcing Hayward in 1969, married Michelle Phillips on Halloween day, 1970,
only to have her file for divorce just eight days later claiming that Hopper had
kept her handcuffed and imprisoned for a week while making “unnatural sexual
demands.”[2008] Inside
The LC by Dave McGowan
One other thing we could note here about Hank
Fonda before wrapping up this instalment: on
September 28, 1919,
when Henry was just fourteen years old, he bore witness to a crime so brutally
sadistic and depraved that one wonders what such an event would do to a young
boy’s psyche. According to an account published at the time, a young black man
named Will Brown, accused of raping a white girl, was beaten unconscious by an
angry mob. His clothes were then torn off and he was hanged from a lamppost.
Though quite dead, his corpse was then riddled with bullets, after which he was
cut down and dragged behind a car. His body was then doused with fuel and
burned. Following that, Mr. Brown’s charred, battered, bullet-ridden corpse was
proudly dragged through the streets of downtown. To commemorate the event, the
lynch rope was cut into small pieces that were sold for 10 cents each to eager
buyers. [2008] Inside
The LC by Dave McGowan