Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman

642 Pages·2011·7.44 MB·English

by  Bosworth

Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
DAUGHTER: 1937–1958
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
ACTRESS: 1958–1963
9
10
11
12
13
14
MOVIE STAR / SEX SYMBOL: 1963–1970
Photos 1
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
POLITICAL ACTIVIST: 1970–1988
22
23
24
25
26
27
Photos 2
28
29
30
31
32
WORKOUT GURU / TYCOON WIFE: 1988–2000
33
34
35
36
37
38
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Photo Credits
Index
About the Author
Footnotes
First Mariner Books edition 2012
Copyright © 2011 by Patricia Bosworth
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park
Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Bosworth, Patricia.
Jane Fonda : the private life of a public woman / Patricia Bosworth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-547-15257-8
1. Fonda, Jane, 1937-2. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.F56B78 2011
791.4302'8092—dc22
[B]
2011009144

eISBN 978-0-547-50447-6
v4.0414

Photo credits appear at the end of the book.

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from the following
works: My Life So Far by Jane Fonda, copyright © 2005, 2006 by Jane Fonda,
published by Ebury Press. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Fonda:
My Life by Henry Fonda and Howard Teichmann, copyright © 1981 by Howard
Teichmann and Orion Productions, Inc. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a
division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Don’t Tell Dad: A Memoir by Peter
Fonda, copyright © 1998 by Peter Fonda. Used by permission of Hyperion. All
rights reserved. Jane: An Intimate Biography of Jane Fonda by Thomas
Kiernan, copyright © 1973 by Thomas Kiernan. Reprinted by permission of
Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. The Fondas: A Hollywood Dynasty by Peter
Collier, copyright © 1991 by Peter Collier, Inc. Used by permission of G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. and Georges Borchardt,
Inc., on behalf of the author. Memoirs of the Devil by Roger Vadim, Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Roger
Vadim and Editions Stock.
for Tom
We are so many selves. It’s not just the long-ago child within us who needs
tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be
yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter, in one love affair or
in one house where even now, we can close our eyes and smell the rooms.
What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and
returnings is this: There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.

—GLORIA STEINEM, REVOLUTION FROM WITHIN
Prologue
ONLY JANE FONDA could upstage Oprah Winfrey. It happened on February 10,
2001, during a performance of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, which was
being acted out by sixty megastars in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison
Square Garden. The show was a fundraiser for V-Day, the international
organization that works to prevent violence toward women.
I’ll never forget it.
All the celebrities, including Oprah, stood in a semicircle reciting their
vignettes about women’s sexual triumphs and tragedies from index cards—all
the celebrities except Jane, who had memorized her piece and when it was her
turn stepped out of the circle and gave a spellbinding rendition about what it’s
like to watch one’s grandchild emerge bloody and screaming from his mother’s
womb. By turns anxious, tender, and emotional, Jane ended the monologue with
“and I was there in the room. I remember.”
The audience gave a loud cheer. At that point, Jane curtsied to a dark-haired
young woman who was seated in the front row. It turned out the young woman
was Jane’s daughter, Vanessa Vadim. Months before, Jane had assisted the
midwife at the birth of Vanessa’s son, Malcolm. Jane was paying her homage.

Afterward there was a noisy party at the cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom. Jane
was surrounded by so many admirers that I had to push my way through the
crowd to congratulate her.
“I did it! I did it!” she exclaimed to me, eyes sparkling. She hadn’t acted in
thirteen years and she suffered from “such God-awful stage fright I was petrified
I wouldn’t be able to get through it,” she confided to me, “but I did.”
We gripped hands.
Jane and I have known each other since the 1960s. We were kids then,
studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. I was an actress for ten years
on Broadway before switching to journalism, while Jane was refashioning
herself as Barbarella.
I wrote my first article about Jane in 1970 for McCall’s magazine. She had
just been nominated for an Academy Award for her searing performance as the
suicidal marathon dancer in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? She went on to win
Oscars for both Klute and Coming Home, movies that defined her political
evolution.
For the next three decades I continued to write stories about her: when she