Henry Fonda - Personal Life - Marriages and Children

Marriages and Children

Fonda was married five times and had three children, one of them being adopted. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 soon ended in separation, which was finalized in a 1933 divorce.

In 1936, he married Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, widow of a wealthy industrialist, George Tuttle Brokaw. The Brokaws had a daughter, Frances de Villers, nicknamed "Pan," who had been born soon after the Brokaws marriage in 1931.

Fonda met his future wife Frances at Denham Studios in England on the set of Wings of the Morning, the first British picture to be filmed in technicolor. They had two children, Peter and Jane, both of whom became successful actors in their own rights. They have each had Oscar nominations and wins.

In August 1949 Fonda announced to Frances that he wanted a divorce so he could remarry; their thirteen years of marriage had not been happy ones for him. Devastated by Fonda’s confession, and plagued by emotional problems for many years, Frances went into the Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in January 1950 for treatment. She committed suicide there on April 14. Before her death she had written six notes to various individuals, but left no final message for her husband. Fonda quickly arranged a private funeral with only himself and his mother-in-law, Sophie Seymour, in attendance. Years later Dr. Margaret Gibson, the psychiatrist who had treated Frances at Austen Riggs, described Henry Fonda: “He was a cold, self-absorbed person, a complete narcissist.”

Later in 1950, Fonda married Susan Blanchard, with whom he had been having an affair since sometime in 1948. She was twenty-one years old and the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy Fishman (born 1953). They divorced three years later. Blanchard was in awe of Fonda, and she described her role in the marriage as “a geisha,” doing everything she could to please him, dealing with and solving problems he would not acknowledge.

In 1957, Fonda married the Italian countess Afdera Franchetti; they divorced in 1961. Soon after, Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams, and remained with her until his death in 1982.

Fonda's relationship with his children has been described as "emotionally distant." Fonda loathed displays of feeling in himself or others, and this was a consistent part of his character. Whenever he felt that his emotional wall was being breached, he had outbursts of anger, exhibiting a furious temper that terrified his family. In Peter Fonda's 1998 autobiography Don't Tell Dad (1998), he described how he was never sure how his father felt about him. He never volunteered to his father that he loved him until he was elderly, and Peter finally heard, "I love you, son." His daughter Jane rejected her father's friendships with Republican actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart. Their relationship became extremely strained as she became politically active.

Jane Fonda reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting days. In 1958 she met Lee Strasberg while visiting her father at Malibu. The Fonda and Strasberg families were neighbors, and she had developed a friendship with Strasberg's daughter, Susan. Jane Fonda began studying acting with Strasberg, learning the techniques of "The Method" of which Strasberg was a renowned proponent. This proved to be a pivotal point in her career. As Jane Fonda developed her skill as an actress, she became frustrated with her father’s talent that, to her, appeared a demonstration of effortless ability.