{"id":83606,"date":"2025-08-21T22:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T22:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/83606\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T22:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T22:21:11","slug":"henry-fondas-favourite-co-star-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/83606\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Fonda’s favourite co-star of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Henry<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Thu 21 August 2025 16:15, UK <\/p>\n

The name \u2018Fonda\u2019 carries a lot of weight in Hollywood<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Jane Fonda has two Oscars to her name and a reputation for throwing herself into good causes. Her brother Peter went down a different route, co-writing and starring in the cult classic Easy Rider. The family talent clearly didn\u2019t stop there, either, with Peter\u2019s daughter Bridget making her mark in Hollywood too, and Jane\u2019s son Tony Garity picked up a Golden Globe nod for Soldier\u2019s Girl. It\u2019s quite the showbiz crew, if we\u2019re being honest. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the man who started it all\u2026the legendary Henry Fonda.<\/p>\n

Born to a humble family in Nebraska, Henry chased his acting dream to Broadway before making his film debut in the mid-1930s. Once the cameras got a look at him, there was no turning back. One of the many stars who specialised in playing the \u2018everyman\u2019 character, Fonda was a huge hit both pre- and post-stints in World War II. When the American Film Institute (AFI) compiled a list of the \u2018Greatest Male Screen Legends\u2019, he was number six, beating out such luminaries as Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin.<\/p>\n

As one of the great leading men of the age, Fonda regularly shared the screen with female stars of equal magnitude. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Vera Miles, Lucille Ball, the list of names goes on and on. However, there was one leading lady that he adored above all others, and that is the iconic Barbara Stanwyck. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I did with her was something I love to remember,\u201d he once revealed, \u201cAnd I\u2019m still in love with her, my wife has learned to live with it\u2026\u201d Given that three of Fonda\u2019s five marriages ended in divorce, it\u2019s safe to say that his wives probably didn\u2019t \u2018live with\u2019 this obsession as much as he would have liked. <\/p>\n

Fonda and Stanwyck were paired together in three films, starting with the 1938 comedy-mystery The Mad Miss Manton. Their next collaboration is arguably their most famous, 1941\u2019s The Lady Eve, where Stanwyck plays a con artist who, after she is rejected by Fonda\u2019s character when he learns of her criminal intent, masquerades as an aristocrat to win back his affection. It is one of the finest entries<\/a> in either actor\u2019s filmography. They teamed up for a final time that same year in You Belong to Me, which is another romantic comedy where Fonda plays a husband jealous of his doctor wife. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to see why he was so captivated by his co-star as Stanwyck was an incredibly talented performer, one of the best of her day. As excellent as she was in screwball comedies, she could pull out a dramatic performance just as easily from her vanity. <\/p>\n

Her turn in Baby Face, one of the most controversial films<\/a> of the pre-Hayes Code era, remains a captivating watch even after all these years, in no small part due to her excellent portrayal of sensual social climber, Lily Powers. She was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1982, but it was nothing short of an outrage that she never won one outright. <\/p>\n

This era of Hollywood was flushed with incredible female stars, so it says a lot that Stanwyck stood out from the crowd to somebody who has worked alongside pretty much all of them. Both she and Fonda remain icons of this glorious period of cinema, even if Fonda\u2019s wives weren\u2019t as keen as he deluded himself to believe. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Thu 21 August 2025 16:15, UK The name \u2018Fonda\u2019 carries a lot of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,42171,123,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-83606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-henry-fonda","tag-hollywood","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}