Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

for January 1936 Who's Afraid of the Little Black Cat? 65 Incidentally, although he's outgrown the gangliness, his general appearance even now is such that Fox visualizes him as Honest Abe in his log-cabin days and is already researching on a picture lor him to be called "Young Lincoln." Henry, actually thirty, only looks twenty-two or three; but don't let your chromo of the Great Emancipator fool you about Henry. Even Lincoln's best friends certainly wouldn't tell him that he was a matinee ido1 , , u 1 Henry's ice-man days were also his college days— and his gas station, telephone trouble-shooter, and insurance salesman days as well. By night he was a windowtrimmer, Boy Scout instructor, and amateur actor. The amateur part is not a reflection on his ability, either, because he seems to have had a lot of that even then. He just didn't get paid. Henry hasn't always wanted to be an actor. He has always wanted merely to get along. Although his forbears founded the town of Fonda in New York State Henry's own parents have never been wealthy, and for some time past both his mother and his father were invalids. It is the greatest regret of Henry's life that his mother never lived to see her son's success ; she had always believed in his ability, always encouraged him to accomplish things through hard work and thereby make his achievements lasting; and she passed away just as he was upon the threshold of the triumph she had dreamed of for him. By the same token Henry is eternally grateful to Winfield Sheehan for sending an advance print of "The Farmer Takes A Wife" to his father's bedside during the illness to which the elder Fonda recently succumbed. "I didn't ask him to," he said simply, ' I didn't have the nerve. But my father had been bedridden for quite a while before his death, and when Mr. Sheehan heard that his doctor had told me on the 'phone that dad was so anxious to see me make good on the screen, Mr. Sheehan rushed a print of the picture to Omaha immediately and had a projector taken right into my father's room — so dad saw his son actually in a picture with Janet Gaynor." That's the way Henry put it — in a film with Janet Gaynor. That's the kind of a guy Henry is. You wouldn't think that a youngster who so belies his age as Henry does would have gone through such a tough time as he has. Henry has known plenty of heartbreak_ in the days when he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Before he crashed through to the smash hit in New York he was many times virtually starving — it was as bad as that. In the beginning Henry didn't know just what it was he did want to do. His talents were so varied that he probably could have made the grade in any of them, and he hadn't found himself. After doing all kinds of odd jobs to work his way through high school and college — he matriculated at the University of Minnesota after graduating from the Omaha Central High — he felt the urge successively for painting, writing, and the stage. He has been a stage scene-painter and has a trunk full of original plays. He was never satisfied with anything he did; as a matter of fact he isn't yet. "I never have been able to finish anything which had the perfection I visualized for it," he said, "so I simply put my work away until I am able to satisfy myself. And," he added with the artist's dream of the imposrible, "I hope that will be never." Continued from page 56 Henry's going on the stage as an actor was largely an accident, even as an amateur. He had returned to Omaha from college in 1925 when the Omaha Playhouse was casting "You and I." The director saw Henry one day and out of a clear sky asked him to play the juvenile. Henry was pretty busy with his odd jobs besides painting a masterpiece, writing a play and sculpturing a couple of monuments in his spare time, Anna Lee, English lovely seen in Gaumont-British films, framed becomingly in silver and black. and he really didn't want to bother. The plaudits at the Playhouse were merely honorary. However, he did ; and so pleased with its bargain was the Playhouse that it invited him the next year to play the title role in "Merton of the Movies," also taking his pay in applause. He did that too, meanwhile dunning his fellow townsmen as an employe of the Retail Credit Company for his bread and butter. The following year, however, Henry was really bitten by the stage bug because the Playhouse directors offered him the job of assistant stage director — on salary. Thereafter Henry played in a vaudeville sketch which he wrote for George Billings, the two of them lasting for three months in one-night stands of the Middle West. Henry believes that Lincoln did have a lot to do with that because Billings was a famous Lincoln impersonator and the sketch was about Honest Abe. Henry thereupon became a real professional — and here began the precarious period of his career, when hot dogs tasted like terrapin to him — and intermittently secured engagements with summer stock companies, repertoire road companies and so on. Among these were the National Children's Theatre in Washington, D. C, and the University Players in Baltimore. In the summer of 1934 he found himself in a summer theatre in the town of Mt. Kisco, New York, where he designed the scenery and played small parts. And it was there that fate chose to find him on a summer day. June Walker saw him playing the role of the tutor in "The Swan" that day. Miss Walker had already been engaged to play the feminine lead in "The Farmer Takes A Wife," then preparing for Broadway, and she ran to Marc Connelly, the playwright, to tell him that she had discovered the ideal young canal-barge skipper to play opposite her. She introduced him to Max Gordon, the producer, and Henry got the job. Winnie Sheehan went to New York to see the play and saw Henry in it ; and Henry saw the little black kitten. Thus fate moves in wond'rous ways her queer miracles to perform — and thus Henry came to Hollywood. Henry likes Hollywood, and asks why shouldn't he ? In New York they didn't hand him even ham and eggs on a platter, much less whole pictures. "It's sure funny, though," he said, "here I play 'The Farmer' and that's all about a canal boatman who wants to get close to the soil. Then I play 'Way Down East,' and that's all about a farmer who hates the farm and wants to beat it for the city. Wouldn't it be a kick if people saw those two pictures on a double bill and saw the same guy both loving and hating himself as a farmer ? They'd think I ought to make up my mind." Since coming to Hollywood he actually has gone on the farm — to the extent of renting a farmhouse in Brentwood, anyhow. He did live in an apartment for a while but he acquired a police pup which tore the place to shreds one evening while Henry was away, so Henry decided he'd better have more territory for the pup to expand in. When he moved from the apartment, though, he wasn't allowed to take the black cat with him. The rest of the residents had grown so fond of her that they all signed a petition to ask him to let her stay. Henry passes that — but he does wish he could get a haircut. He hasn't had one since last September, he says, and it bothers him. Although so homespun in his pictures he's quite the natty dresser off-screen. Originally brought out for only the one picture, Henry looks like a fixture from now on. When the executives saw "The Farmer" they immediately saw Henry as a perfect running-mate for Janet Gaynor, freely prophesying that the team would be as popular as Janet and Charlie Farrell once were ; but fate is at her queer tricks again. Janet left the picture, and Rochelle Hudson was put into "Way Down East" in her place ; and now that Fox sees the rushes of Rochelle they're just as enthusiastic about her work as they are about Henry's. And so, although Rochelle has been in a lot of pictures, of course, there are two new stars in one of the year's important productions. Maybe Henry, in that unspoiled, boyish way of his, summed the whole thing up when he said : "That little black cat didn't have a thing to say about what was going to happen to it — I just up and took it, you see. And maybe it's the same way with all of us, eh?"