Nothing stirs up a brouhaha on MovieFanFare quite like the mention of Henry Fonda’s daughter. OK, maybe the mention of Song of the South. Or, whether or not John Wayne’s movie The Alamo really told it like it was. Or, the faintest suggestion that W.C. Fields might, just might, not always be as much a gut-buster of a comedic screen presence as he was back in his heyday…as in the case of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.
All right, maybe there are some other topics that get readers as fired up as their feelings about Jane Fonda, but right now, that’s who we’re here to discuss. Most of you are probably more than familiar with her 1972 trip to Vietnam, and the photograph taken of Fonda sitting atop an anti-aircraft gun that secured the film star and antiwar activist a piece of American infamy by way of the enduring nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
Does she deserve lasting condemnation? Is her expression of regret over the picture and its impact undermined by her failure to adopt the additional retroactive posture of “my country, right or wrong”? Maybe for some readers the answers to these questions are simple. Maybe for others, they’re a bit more nuanced. Irv?
We’re all about movies and such, so it’s a bit off-subject to next tackle the Dixie Chicks. Maybe for a subsequent exploration of “celebrities intersecting with politics” we’ll go for Sean Penn and Hugo Chavez! Or Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown. Or Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama…