This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2009)

Color print film is the most common type of photographic film in consumer use. Print film produces a negative image when it is developed, requiring it to be reversed again when it is printed on to photographic paper.

Almost all color print film made today is designed to be processed according to the C-41 process.

This photography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (June 2009)

Color printing or Colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color (as opposed to simpler black and white or monochrome printing). Any natural scene or color photograph can be optically and physiologically dissected into three primary colors, red, green and blue, roughly equal amounts of which give rise to the perception of white, and different proportions of which give rise to the visual sensations of all other colors. The additive combination of any two primary colors in roughly equal proportion gives rise to the perception of a secondary color. For example, red and green yields yellow, red and blue yields magenta (a purple hue), and green and blue yield cyan (a turquoise hue). Only yellow is counter-intuitive. Yellow, cyan and magenta are merely the "basic" secondary colors: unequal mixtures of the primaries give rise to perception of many other colors all of which may be considered "tertiary."

Today[link]

While there are many techniques for reproducing images in color, specific graphic processes and industrial equipment are used for mass reproduction of color images on paper. In this sense, "color printing" involves reproduction techniques suited for printing presses capable of thousands or millions of impressions for publishing newspapers and magazines, brochures, cards, posters and similar mass-market items. In this type of industrial or commercial printing, the technique used to print full-color images, such as color photographs, is referred to as four-color-process or merely process printing. Four inks are used: three secondary colors plus black. These ink colors are cyan, magenta and yellow; abbreviated as CMYK. Cyan can be thought of as minus-red, magenta as minus-green, and yellow as minus-blue. These inks are semi-transparent or translucent. Where two such inks overlap on the paper due to sequential printing impressions, a primary color is perceived. For example, yellow (minus-blue) overprinted by magenta (minus green) yields red. Where all three inks may overlap, almost all incident light is absorbed or subtracted, yielding near black. It is because of this poor "subtractive" black that a separate black ink is used. The secondary or subtractive colors cyan, magenta and yellow may be considered "primary" by printers and watercolorists (whose basic inks and paints are transparent).

Two graphic techniques are required to prepare images for four-color printing. In the "pre-press" stage, original images are translated into forms that can be used on a printing press, through "color separation," and "screening" or "halftoning." These steps make possible the creation of printing plates that can transfer color impressions to paper on printing presses based on the principles of lithography.

An emerging method of full-color printing is six-color process printing (for example, Pantone's Hexachrome system) which adds orange and green to the traditional CMYK inks for a larger and more vibrant gamut, or color range. However, such alternate color systems still rely on color separation, halftoning and lithography to produce printed images.

Color printing can also involve as few as one color ink, or multiple color inks which are not the primary colors. Using a limited number of color inks, or specific color inks in addition to the primary colors, is referred to as "spot color" printing. Generally, spot-color inks are specific formulations that are designed to print alone, rather than to blend with other inks on the paper to produce various hues and shades. The range of available spot color inks, much like paint, is nearly unlimited, and much more varied than the colors that can be produced by four-color-process printing. Spot-color inks range from subtle pastels to intense fluorescents to reflective metallics.

Color printing involves a series of steps, or transformations, to generate a quality color reproduction. The following sections focus on the steps used when reproducing a color image in CMYK printing, along with some historical perspective.

History of color printing[link]

Woodblock printing on textiles preceded printing on paper in both Asia and Europe, and the use of different blocks to produce patterns in color was common. The earliest way of adding color to items printed on paper was by hand-coloring, and this was widely used for printed images in both Europe and Asia. Chinese woodcuts have this from at least the 13th century, and European ones from very shortly after their introduction in the 15th century, where it continued to be practiced, sometimes at a very skilled level, until the 19th century—elements of the official British Ordnance Survey maps were hand-colored by boys until 1875. Early European printed books often left spaces for initials, rubrics and other elements to be added by hand, just as they had been in manuscripts, and a few early printed books had elaborate borders and miniatures added. However this became much rarer after about 1500.

Europe[link]

Most early methods of color printing involved several prints, one for each color, although there were various ways of printing two colors together if they were separate. Liturgical and many other kinds of books required rubrics, normally printed in red; these were long done by a separate print run with a red forme for each page. Other methods were used for single leaf prints. The chiaroscuro woodcut was a European method developed in the early 16th century, where to a normal woodcut block with a linear image (the "line block"), one or more colored "tone blocks" printed in different colors would be added. This was the method developed in Germany; in Italy only tone blocks were often used, to create an effect more like a wash drawing. Jacob Christoph Le Blon developed a method using three intaglio plates, usually in mezzotint; these were overprinted to achieve a wide range of colors.

Asia[link]

Bijin (beautiful woman) ukiyo-e by Keisai Eisen, before 1848

In Europe and Japan, color woodcuts were normally only used for prints rather than book illustrations. In Chinese woodblock printing, where the individual print did not develop until the nineteenth century, the reverse is true, and early color woodcuts mostly occur in luxury books about art, especially the more prestigious medium of painting. The first known example is a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606, and color technique reached its height in books on painting published in the seventeenth century. Notable examples are the Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio of 1633, and the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual published in 1679 and 1701.^[1]

In Japan color technique, called nishiki-e in its fully developed form, spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the 1760s on. Text was nearly always monochrome, as were images in books, but the growth of the popularity of ukiyo-e brought with it demand for ever increasing numbers of colors and complexity of techniques. By the nineteenth century most artists worked in color. The stages of this development were:

• Sumizuri-e (墨摺り絵, "ink printed pictures") - monochrome printing using only black ink
• Benizuri-e (紅摺り絵, "crimson printed pictures") - red ink details or highlights added by hand after the printing process；green was sometimes used as well
• Tan-e (丹絵) - orange highlights using a red pigment called tan
• Aizuri-e (藍摺り絵, "indigo printed pictures"), Murasaki-e (紫絵, "purple pictures"), and other styles in which a single color would be used in addition to, or instead of, black ink
• Urushi-e (漆絵) - a method in which glue was used to thicken the ink, emboldening the image; gold, mica and other substances were often used to enhance the image further. Urushi-e can also refer to paintings using lacquer instead of paint; lacquer was very rarely if ever used on prints.
• Nishiki-e (錦絵, "brocade pictures") - a method in which multiple blocks were used for separate portions of the image, allowing a number of colors to be utilized to achieve incredibly complex and detailed images; a separate block would be carved to apply only to the portion of the image designated for a single color. Registration marks called kentō (見当) were used to ensure correspondence between the application of each block.

19th century[link]

In the 19th century a number of different methods of color printing, using woodcut (technically Chromoxylography) and other methods, were developed in Europe, which for the first time achieved widespread commercial success, so that by the later decades the average home might contain many examples, both hanging as prints and as book illustrations. George Baxter patented in 1835 a method using an intaglio line plate (or occasionally a lithograph), printed in black or a dark color, and then overprinted with up to twenty different colors from woodblocks. Edmund Evans used relief and wood throughout, with up to eleven different colors, and latterly specialized in illustrations for children's books, using fewer blocks but overprinting non-solid areas of color to achieve blended colors. Artists such as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway were able to draw influence from the Japanese prints now available and fashionable in Europe to create a suitable style, with flat areas of color.

Chromolithography was another process, which by the end of the 19th century had become dominant, although this still used multiple prints with a stone for each color. Mechanical color separation, initially using photographs of the image taken with three different color filters, reduced the number of prints needed to three. Zincography, with zinc plates, later replaced lithographic stones, and remained the commonest method of color printing until the 1930s.

Chromolithograph showing the three color technique. 1893, L. Prang & Co.

Modern process[link]

Color separation process[link]

The process of color separation starts by separating the original artwork into red, green, and blue components (for example by a digital scanner). Before digital imaging was developed, the traditional method of doing this was to photograph the image three times, using a filter for each color. However this is achieved, the desired result is three grayscale images, which represent the red, green, and blue (RGB) components of the original image:

The next step is to invert each of these separations. When a negative image of the red component is produced, the resulting image represents the cyan component of the image. Likewise, negatives are produced of the green and blue components to produce magenta and yellow separations, respectively. This is done because cyan, magenta, and yellow are subtractive primaries which each represent two of the three additive primaries (RGB) after one additive primary has been subtracted from white light.

Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three basic colors used for color reproduction. When these three colors are variously used in printing, the result should be a reasonable reproduction of the original, but in practice this is not the case. Due to limitations in the inks, the darker colors are dirty and muddied. To resolve this, a black separation is also created, which improves the shadow and contrast of the image. Numerous techniques exist to derive this black separation from the original image; these include grey component replacement, under color removal, and under color addition. This printing technique is referred to as CMYK (the "K" stands for Key, a traditional word for the black printing plate).

Today's digital printing methods do not have the restriction of a single color space that traditional CMYK processes do. Many presses can print from files that were ripped with images using either RGB or CMYK modes. The color reproduction abilities of a particular color space can vary; the process of obtaining accurate colors within a color model is called color matching.

Screening[link]

Inks used in color printing presses are semi-transparent and can be printed on top of each other to produce different hues. For example, green results from printing yellow and cyan inks on top of each other. However, a printing press cannot vary the amount of ink applied to particular picture areas except through "screening," a process that represents lighter shades as tiny dots, rather than solid areas, of ink. This is analogous to mixing white paint into a color to lighten it, except the white is the paper itself. In process color printing, the screened image, or halftone for each ink color is printed in succession. The screen grids are set at different angles, and the dots therefore create tiny rosettes, which, through a kind of optical illusion, appear to form a continuous-tone image. You can view the halftoning, which enables printed images, by examining a printed picture under magnification.

Traditionally, halftone screens were generated by inked lines on two sheets of glass that were cemented together at right angles. Each of the color separation films were then exposed through these screens. The resulting high-contrast image, once processed, had dots of varying diameter depending on the amount of exposure that area received, which was modulated by the grayscale separation film image.

The glass screens were made obsolete by high-contrast films where the halftone dots were exposed with the separation film. This in turn was replaced by a process where the halftones are electronically generated directly on the film with a laser. Most recently, computer to plate (CTP) technology has allowed printers to bypass the film portion of the process entirely. CTP images the dots directly on the printing plate with a laser, saving money, and eliminating the film step. The amount of generation loss in printing a lithographic negative onto a lithographic plate, unless the processing procedures are completely ignored, is almost completely negligible, as there are no losses of dynamic range, no density gradations, nor are there any colored dyes, or large silver grains to contend with in an ultra-slow rapid access negative.

Screens with a "frequency" of 60 to 120 lines per inch (lpi) reproduce color photographs in newspapers. The coarser the screen (lower frequency), the lower the quality of the printed image. Highly absorbent newsprint requires a lower screen frequency than less-absorbent coated paper stock used in magazines and books, where screen frequencies of 133 to 200 lpi and higher are used.

The measure of how much an ink dot spreads and becomes larger on paper is called dot gain. This phenomenon must be accounted for in photographic or digital preparation of screened images. Dot gain is higher on more absorbent, uncoated paper stock such as newsprint.

See also[link]

• Block printing
• Flexography
• Letterpress printing
• Offset printing
• Rotogravure
• Typography

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bruno, Michael H. (Ed.) (1995). Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook (16th ed.). Memphis: International Paper
• Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet, 1986 (2nd Edition, 2004), Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0-500-23454-X
• Hunt, R.W.G., The Reproduction of Color (1957, 1961, 1967, 1975) ISBN 0-85242-356-X
• Yule, John A.C., Principles of Color Reproduction (1967, 2000) ISBN 0-88362-222-X
• Morovic, J., Color Gamut Mapping (2008) ISBN 978-0-470-03032-5

Further reading[link]

• Bruno, Michael H. (Ed.) (October 2000). Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook Graphic Arts Technical Fndtn; 18th edition, ISBN 0-88362-338-2
• Hardie, Martin, English Coloured Books (1906, reprinted 1990)
• Gascoigne, Bamber, Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859 (Cambridge UP, 1997)
• Also various articles in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society - see: http://www.printinghistoricalsociety.org.uk/journal_indices/index.html

External links[link]

• Monitor Calibration (Written by: Mohamed Al-Dabbagh)
• Color Separation Process (animations)

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American film and stage actor.^[1]

Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins.^[2] He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball.

Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity. His family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

Family history and early life[link]

Fonda was born in Grand Island, Nebraska,^[3] to advertising-printing jobber William Brace Fonda and his wife, Elma Herberta (née Jaynes), in the second year of their marriage.^[4] The Fonda family had migrated from Genoa, Italy, to the Netherlands in the 15th century. In 1642 they emigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The Fondas were among the first Dutch population to settle in what is now upstate New York, establishing the town of Fonda, New York. By 1888, most of the Fondas had relocated to Nebraska.^[5]

Fonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist, though he was baptized an Episcopalian at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church^{[citation needed]} in Grand Island. He said, "[M]y whole damn family was nice." They were a close family and highly supportive, especially in health matters, as they avoided doctors due to their religion.^[6] Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. He worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist. Later, he worked after school for the phone company. He also enjoyed drawing. Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America; Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout.^[7] When he was about 14, his father took him to observe a lynching, from the window of his father's plant, of a young black man accused of rape.^[8] This so enraged the young Fonda that he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for his entire adult life.^[9] By his senior year in high school, Fonda had grown to more than six feet tall, but remained a shy teenager. He attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in journalism,^[10] but he did not graduate. He took a job with the Retail Credit Company.

Career[link]

Early stage work[link]

At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse, when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in You and I, in which he was cast as Ricky.^[3] He was fascinated by the stage, learning everything from set construction to stage production, and embarrassed by his acting ability.^[11] When he received the lead in Merton of the Movies, he realized the beauty of acting as a profession, as it allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. Fonda decided to quit his job and go East in 1928 to strike his fortune.

He arrived on Cape Cod and played a role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts; a friend took him over to Falmouth, where he quickly became a valued member of the new University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company. There he worked with Margaret Sullavan, his future wife.^[12] James Stewart joined the Players months after Fonda left, and they later became lifelong friends.^[13] He landed his first professional role in the University Players production of The Jest, by Sem Benelli. Joshua Logan, a young sophomore at Princeton who had been double-cast in the show, gave Fonda the part of Tornaquinci, "an elderly Italian with long, white beard and heavy wig." Also in the cast of The Jest with Fonda and Logan were Bretaigne Windust, Kent Smith, and Eleanor Phelps.^[14]

The tall (6'1.5") and slim (160 lbs) Fonda headed for New York City, where he was soon joined by Stewart (after Fonda's short marriage to Margaret Sullavan ended.) The two men were roommates and honed their skills on Broadway. Fonda appeared in theatrical productions from 1926 to 1934. They fared no better than many Americans in and out of work during the Great Depression, sometimes lacking enough money to take the subway.^[15]

Entering Hollywood[link]

Fonda in Jezebel (1938)

Fonda got the first break, as he was hired to make his first film appearance in 1935 as Janet Gaynor's leading man in 20th Century Fox's screen adaptation of The Farmer Takes a Wife; he reprised his role from the Broadway production of the same name, which had gained him critical recognition. Suddenly, Fonda was making $3,000 a week and dining with Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard.^[16] Stewart soon followed him to Hollywood, and they roomed together again, in lodgings next door to Greta Garbo. In 1935 Fonda starred in the RKO film I Dream Too Much with the opera star Lily Pons. The New York Times announced him as "Henry Fonda, the most likable of the new crop of romantic juveniles."^[17] Fonda's film career blossomed as he costarred with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors.

He starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, and a short re-kindling of their relationship led to a brief but temporary consideration of re-marriage. Fonda got the nod for the lead role in You Only Live Once (1937), also costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang. He was a critical success opposite Bette Davis, who had picked him, in the film Jezebel (1938). This was followed by the title role in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), his first collaboration with director John Ford, and that year he played Frank James in Jesse James (1939). Another 1939 film was Drums Along the Mohawk, also directed by Ford.

Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve (1941)

Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play "Tom Joad" in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1940). A reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who preferred Tyrone Power, insisted on Fonda's signing a seven-year contract with his studio Twentieth Century-Fox.^[18] Fonda agreed, and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the 1940 film, which many consider to be his finest role. Fonda starred in The Return of Frank James (1940) with Gene Tierney. He then played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941), and again teamed with Tierney in the successful screwball comedy Rings on Her Fingers (1942 ). She was one of Fonda's favorite co-stars, and they appeared in three films together. He was acclaimed for his role in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

Fonda after enlisting in United States Navy in November 1942.

Fonda enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio."^[19] Previously, he and Stewart had helped raise funds for the defense of Britain.^[20] Fonda served for three years, initially as a Quartermaster 3rd Class on the destroyer USS Satterlee. He was later commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and was awarded the Navy Presidential Unit Citation and the Bronze Star.^[21]

Post-war career[link]

After the war, Fonda took a break from movies and attended Hollywood parties and enjoyed civilian life. He and Stewart would listen to records and invite Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Dinah Shore, and Nat King Cole over for music, with the latter giving the family piano lessons.^[22] Fonda played Wyatt Earp in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and appeared in the film Fort Apache (1948) as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role. Fonda did seven post-war films until his contract with Fox expired, the last being Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon (1947), opposite Joan Crawford.

Fonda in naval guise

Refusing another long-term studio contract, Fonda returned to Broadway, wearing his own officer's cap to originate the title role in Mister Roberts, a comedy about the Navy, where Fonda, a junior officer, wages a private war against the captain. He won a 1948 Tony Award for the part. Fonda followed that by reprising his performance in the national tour and with successful stage runs in Point of No Return and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. After a few years almost completely absent from films, he starred in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts opposite James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of Mister Roberts, Fonda came to blows with John Ford, who punched him during filming, and Fonda vowed never to work for the director again. While he kept that vow, Fonda spoke glowingly of Ford in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford.

Fonda next acted in Paramount Pictures's production of the Leo Tolstoy epic War and Peace (1956), in which he played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn; it took two years to shoot. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of robbery in The Wrong Man; the unusual semi-documentary work of Hitchcock's was based on an actual incident and partly filmed on location.

Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Fonda in a live 1955 TV version of The Petrified Forest

In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into production with 12 Angry Men, based on a teleplay and a script by Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet. The low-budget production was completed in seventeen days of filming, mostly in one claustrophobic jury room. It had a strong cast, including Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, and E. G. Marshall. The intense film about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young Puerto Rican man accused of murder was well-received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as "Juror #8", who with logic and persistence eventually sways all the jurors to an acquittal. Early on the film drew poorly, but after winning critical acclaim and awards, it proved a success. In spite of the good outcome, Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie again, fearing that failing as a producer might derail his acting career.^[23] After acting in the western movies The Tin Star (1957) and Warlock (1959), Fonda returned to the production seat for the NBC western television series The Deputy (1959–1961), in which he starred as Marshal Simon Fry. His co-stars were Allen Case and Read Morgan.

Fonda in How the West Was Won

During the 1960s, Fonda performed in a number of war and western epics, including 1962's The Longest Day and How the West Was Won, 1965's In Harm's Way and Battle of the Bulge. In the Cold War suspense film Fail-Safe (1964), Fonda played the President of the United States who tries to avert a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets after American bombers are mistakenly ordered to attack the USSR. He also returned to more light-hearted cinema in Spencer's Mountain (1963), which was the inspiration for the TV series, The Waltons.

Fonda appeared against type as the villain 'Frank' in 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West. After initially turning down the role, he was convinced to accept it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone, who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to take the part. Fonda had planned on wearing a pair of brown-colored contact lenses, but Leone preferred the paradox of contrasting close-up shots of Fonda's innocent-looking blue eyes with the vicious personality of the character Fonda played.

Fonda's relationship with Jimmy Stewart survived their disagreements over politics — Fonda was a liberal Democrat, and Stewart a conservative Republican. After a heated argument, they avoided talking politics with each other. The two men teamed up for 1968's Firecreek, where Fonda again played the heavy. In 1970, Fonda and Stewart costarred in the western The Cheyenne Social Club, a minor film in which they humorously argued politics. They had first appeared together on film in On Our Merry Way (1948), a comedy which also starred William Demarest and Fred MacMurray and featured a grown-up Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, who had acted as a child in Our Gang.^[24]

Late career[link]

Despite approaching his seventies, Fonda continued to work in theater, television and film through the 1970s. In 1970, Fonda appeared in three films, the most successful The Cheyenne Social Club. The other two films were Too Late the Hero, in which Fonda played a secondary role, and There Was a Crooked Man, about Paris Pitman Jr. (played by Kirk Douglas) trying to escape from an Arizona prison.

Fonda returned to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. He starred in the ABC television series ''The Smith Family between 1971 and 1972. 1973's TV-movie The Red Pony, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel, earned Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, Ash Wednesday, he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, My Name is Nobody, presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a "fan" of sorts.

Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, Clarence Darrow, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Fonda's health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion. After the appearance of a heart arrhythmia brought on by prostate cancer, he had a pacemaker installed following cancer surgery. Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After the run of a 1978 play, First Monday of October, he took the advice of his doctors and quit plays, though he continued to star in films and television.

Fonda appeared in a revival of The Time of Your Life that opened in March 17, 1972 at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles where Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Gloria Grahame, Ron Thompson, Strother Martin, Jane Alexander, Lewis J. Stadlen, Richard X. Slattery and Pepper Martin were among the cast with Edwin Sherin directing.^[25][26]

In 1976, Fonda appeared in several notable television productions, the first being Collision Course, the story of the volatile relationship between President Harry Truman (E. G. Marshall) and General MacArthur (Fonda), produced by ABC. After an appearance in the acclaimed Showtime broadcast of Almos' a Man, based on a story by Richard Wright, he starred in the epic NBC miniseries Captains and Kings, based on Taylor Caldwell's novel. Three years later, he appeared in ABC's Roots: The Next Generations, but the miniseries was overshadowed by its predecessor, Roots. Also in 1976, Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster Midway.

Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films. The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacoli (Tentacles) and Rollercoaster, in which Fonda appeared with Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. He performed again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and José Ferrer in the killer bee action film The Swarm. He also acted in the global disaster film Meteor (his second role as a sitting President of the United States after Fail-Safe), with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden, and the Canadian production City on Fire, which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in Wanda Nevada (1979), with Brooke Shields.

As Fonda's health declined and he took longer breaks between filming, critics began to take notice of his extensive body of work. In 1979, the Tony Awards committee gave Fonda a special award for his achievements on Broadway. Lifetime Achievement awards from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards followed in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

Fonda continued to act into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions he was featured in before his death were for television. The television works included the critically acclaimed live performance of Preston Jones' The Oldest Living Graduate and the Emmy nominated Gideon's Trumpet (co-starring Fay Wray in her last performance).

On Golden Pond in 1981, the film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play, marked one final professional and personal triumph for Fonda. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, along with Fonda and his daughter, Jane. The elder Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life. Jane Fonda has said that elements of the story mimicked their real-life relationship, and helped them resolve certain issues. She bought the film rights in the hope that her father would play the role, and later described it as "a gift to my father that was so unbelievably successful."^[27]

Premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics, and after a limited release on December 4 On Golden Pond developed enough of an audience to be widely released on January 22. With 11 Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster. In addition to wins for Hepburn (Best Actress), and Thompson (Screenplay), On Golden Pond brought Fonda his only Oscar - for Best Actor (he was the oldest recipient of the award; it also earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor award). Fonda was by that point too ill to attend the ceremony, and his daughter Jane accepted on his behalf. She said when accepting the award that her dad would probably quip, "Well, ain't I lucky." After Fonda's death, some film critics called this performance "his last and greatest role".^[who?]

Fonda's final performance was in the 1981 television drama Summer Solstice^[28] with Myrna Loy. It was filmed after On Golden Pond had wrapped and Fonda was in rapidly declining health.

Personal life[link]

Marriages and children[link]

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.^[29] The Brokaws had a daughter, Frances de Villers, nicknamed "Pan," who had been born soon after the Brokaws marriage in 1931.^[30]

Fonda met his future wife Frances at Denham Studios in England on the set of Wings of the Morning,^[31] 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.^[32] 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.^[33] 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.” ^[34]

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.^[35] Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy Fishman (born 1953).^[36] 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 did not acknowledge.^[37]

In 1957, Fonda married the Italian countess Afdera Franchetti;^[38] 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.^[39] 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."^[40] 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, as the families were neighbors, and she knew his daughter Susan. Jane Fonda started studying acting with him, which was a turning point in her career. He taught the techniques of "The Method."^[41] As Jane Fonda developed as an actress, she was frustrated by being unable to understand her father's effortless acting style.

Politics[link]

Fonda was an ardent supporter of the Democratic party, and "an admirer" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.^[42] In 1960, Fonda appeared in a campaign commercial for Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. The ad focused on Kennedy's naval service during World War II, specifically the famous PT-109 incident.^[42]

On acting[link]

In the late 1950s, when Jane Fonda asked her father how he prepared before going on stage, she was baffled by his answer, "I don’t know, I stand there, I think about my wife, Afdera, I don't know."

The writer Al Aronowitz, while working on a profile of Jane Fonda for The Saturday Evening Post in the 1960s, asked Henry Fonda about Method acting: "I can't articulate about the Method", he told me, "because I never studied it. I don't mean to suggest that I have any feelings one way or the other about it...I don't know what the Method is and I don’t care what the Method is. Everybody's got a method. Everybody can’t articulate about their method, and I can't, if I have a method—and Jane sometimes says that I use the Method, that is, the capital letter Method, without being aware of it. Maybe I do; it doesn’t matter."^{[citation needed]}

Aronowitz reported Jane saying, "My father can't articulate the way he works. He just can't do it. He's not even conscious of what he does, and it made him nervous for me to try to articulate what I was trying to do. And I sensed that immediately, so we did very little talking about it...he said, 'Shut up, I don't want to hear about it.’ He didn’t want me to tell him about it, you know. He wanted to make fun of it."^{[citation needed]}

Death and legacy[link]

Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982, from heart disease. Fonda's wife Shirlee, his daughter Jane and his son Peter were at his side when he died.^[43] He also suffered from prostate cancer, but this did not directly cause his death; it was noted only as a concurrent ailment on his death certificate.

In the years since his death, Fonda has become more highly regarded as an actor than during his life. He is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era. On the centenary of his birth, May 16, 2005, Turner Classic Movies honored him with a marathon of his films. Also in May 2005, the United States Post Office released a 37-cent postage stamp with an artist's drawing of Fonda as part of their "Hollywood legends" series.^[19] The Henry Fonda Theater (now called the Music Box) is located at 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. 34°06′07″N 118°20′27″W / 34.101944°N 118.340972°W / 34.101944; -118.340972

Filmography[link]

From the beginning of his career in 1935 through his last projects in 1981, Fonda appeared in 106 films, television programs, and shorts. Through the course of his career he appeared in many critically acclaimed films, including such classics as 12 Angry Men and The Ox-Bow Incident. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath and won for his part in 1981's On Golden Pond. Fonda made his mark in westerns (which included his most villainous role as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West), war films, and made frequent appearances in both television and foreign productions late in his career.

Broadway stage performances[link]

• The Game of Love and Death (November 1929 – January 1930)
• I Loved You, Wednesday (October – December 1932)
• New Faces of 1934 (Revue; March – July 1934)
• The Farmer Takes a Wife (October 1934 – January 1935)
• Blow Ye Winds (September – October 1937)
• Mister Roberts (February 1948 – January 1951)
• Point of No Return (December 1951 – November 1952)
• The Caine Mutiny (January 1954 – January 1955)
• Two for the Seesaw (January 1958 – October 1959)
• Silent Night, Lonely Night (December 1959 – March 1960)
• Critic's Choice (December 1960 – May 1961)
• A Gift of Time (February – May 1962)
• Generation (October 1965 – June 1966)
• Our Town (November – December 1969)
• Clarence Darrow (March – April 1974; March 1975)
• First Monday in October (October – December 1978)

Awards[link]

Henry Fonda received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1978.

See also[link]

World War II portal

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Collier, Peter (1991). The Fondas: A Hollywood Dynasty. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-13592-8. 
• Fonda, Henry (1982). Fonda: My Life. Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 0-453-00402-4. 
• Fonda, Jane (2005). My Life So Far. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50710-8. 
• Fonda, Peter (1998). Don't Tell Dad. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-6111-8. 
• Houghton, Norris (1951). But Not Forgotten: The Adventure of the University Players. New York: William Sloane Associates. 
• James, John Douglas (1976). The MGM Story. Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-52389-2. 
• Roberts, Allen and Max Goldstein (1984). Henry Fonda: A Biography. McFarland & Co.. ISBN 0-89950-114-1. 
• Sweeney, Kevin (1992). Henry Fonda: A BioBibliography. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-26571-2. 
• Thomas, Tony (1990). The Films of Henry Fonda. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-1189-3. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Henry Fonda

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Henry Fonda

• Henry Fonda at the Internet Broadway Database Retrieved on 2008-07-26
• Henry Fonda at the Internet Movie Database Retrieved on 2008-07-26
• Henry Fonda at the TCM Movie Database Retrieved on 2008-07-26 Retrieved on 2008-07-26
• Henry Fonda as found in the 1910 US Census, 1920 US Census, 1930 US Census, 1931 Maryland Marriages, and Social Security Death Index.
• Literature on Henry Fonda