Henry Fonda

[7] Katharine Hepburn had never acted with Henry Fonda before, and Fonda had never acted with his daughter Jane. On Golden Pond united the three screen legends for their first and only film together. Hepburn and the elder Fonda play an old couple vacationing at a rustic lake cabin. Fonda has had heart problems and is preoccupied with his own mortality, while Hepburn enjoys picking …

[8] Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda star in this fluffy, family-oriented comedy about a widower with ten children who falls in love with a widow who has eight kids of her own. But do they dare merge their families into a twenty-person household? Yours, Mine and Ours is a charming little flick that quickly won me over with Ball’s and Fonda’s performances and plenty of …

[6] Barbara Stanwyck stars in this murder mystery romp about a socialite who enlists her girlfriends to help her find a dead body she discovered, but which went missing before the police arrived at her calling. The police think she’s a prankster, and Henry Fonda’s newspaper reporter character only makes matters worse by publishing the play-by-play. Before long, Stanwyck and Fonda start to fall in …

[6] Henry Fonda barricades himself inside his motel room after murdering a fiendish magician played by Vincent Price. While the police and a impassioned Barbara Bel Geddes try to coax him out, the movie cuts back and forth to events leading up to the siege. The Long Night features some fancy outdoor sets and occassionally gorgeous cinematography, as well as some enjoyable performances from Fonda and …

[7] In 1880’s Nevada, news spreads of the murder of a local cattle farmer, inciting a few dozen townspeople to form a posse hellbent on lynching those responsible for the crime. Based on the book by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and directed by the always-thoughtful William Wellman (Wings, Battleground), The Ox-Bow Incident is a relatively simple, straight-forward meditation on mob mentality and vigilante justice. When …

[7] Barbara Stanwyck’s a card shark and Henry Fonda’s a naive millionaire. They meet and fall in love aboard an Atlantic cruise in Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve, a romantic comedy made tolerable with its sizzling sexual teasing and moderate slapstick humor. Stanwyck is great in her multi-faceted role. She starts the film as a deceptive villain, but turns into a very sympathetic character when …

[6] Henry Fonda is caught between a beleaguered WWII cargo crew and their vindictive captain in this oddly cheerful, lightweight drama directed by John Ford and Mervyn Leroy. James Cagney hams it up as the nutcase captain while William Powell makes a graceful big screen exit as the ship’s doctor. Jack Lemmon won the first of his two Oscars for his supporting role as an …

[7] In this political drama from director Otto Preminger, Henry Fonda plays the president’s newly appointed Secretary of State, but before he can take the position he must pass the Senate’s nasty accusations of communism and homosexuality. Advise and Consent starts out very plot-driven and a little dry, unless you’re really interested in senate politics. But by the mid-point, I had invested in the ensemble …

[10] John Ford directs John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a destitute Oklahoma family who pile everything they own into a jalopy and head for California in hope of finding work and a new home. The Grapes of Wrath puts an exclamation point on stories about the Great Depression and the down-trodden. The film features a stellar cast, gorgeous photography by Gregg Toland, and enough …