Peter Fonda: The Other Captain America

“I dig my father. I wish he could open his eyes and dig me.” — Peter Fonda (1940-2019).

It seems significant that Peter Fonda came into the world at around the same time audiences were watching his old man play Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). His father, Henry Fonda was a famously distant parent, but that film’s theme of being on the road, living outside of society, and bucking unjust authority seems to have stuck with the son, almost as though he were bonding with the image of his father, rather than the real guy, which was probably true. Later, Henry would seek a divorce from Peter’s mother, socialite, Frances Ford Seymour. Frances was institutionalized and committed suicide a short time later. Peter, who was ten at the time, accidentally shot himself in the abdomen while playing with a gun a few months after that. He was sent to India to recuperate. (Digressive but synchronicitous: the house I live in now was built on land once owned by Frances Seymour’s ex-husband’s cousin. Seymour was married to George Tuttle Brokaw; my neighborhood was built on the former estate of his cousin William Gould Brokaw).

At any rate, Peter had the typical upbringing of a privileged Baby Boomer. He attended private schools in New England, and then decided he wanted to try acting. He debuted in the Broadway play Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole opposite Darren McGavin in 1961. He then moved into tv guest shots and did a couple of undistinguished movies. One of the more significant of his earlier ones was Lilith (1964), Robert Rossen’s last film. Not only did it cast him as a well-to-do mental patient in a sanitarium (echoes of his mother), but the cast bespeaks the gathering changes in cinema at hand. Jean Seberg was a darling of the French New Wave. Warren Beatty would step from this film into a creative partnership with Arthur Penn, with whom he would go on to makeMickey One(1965) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967). And you can definitely draw a line from Breathless to Bonnie and Clyde to Easy Rider.

Also in 1964: the Beatles came to America; the Byrds formed; and Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters embarked on their acid-fueled bus trip. Not long after that (May 1965) Hunter S. Thompson wrote an article about biker gangs that was to become his career-making book Hell’s Angels. Meanwhile, Fonda had befriended the Byrds and was reflecting their influence. In August 1965, he joined them at a party at a house rented by the Beatles prior to their Hollywood Bowl concert. LSD was consumed. It was upon this occasion that Fonda, recalling his childhood experience with the gunshot (during which he was clinically deceased for a few minutes) uttered the line “I know what it’s like to be dead”, which became the inspiration for John Lennon’s song “She Said She Said”, which wound up onRevolver (1966).

At any rate, at this stage Fonda wasn’t going to go back and do movies like Tammy and the Doctor (1963), his first movie with Sandra Dee, any more. This was when he became involved with American International Pictures. The Wild Angels (1966) was the first picture in AIP’s biker cycle. It was a thinly veiled portrait of the Hell’s Angels penned by Charles B. Griffith and Peter Bogdanovich, with elements drawn from the same kind of embedded research Hunter Thompson was doing at the same time. Fonda played a gang leader named Heavenly Blues, with fellow Nepo Baby Nancy Sinatra, still riding high on her #1 hit “These Boots Were Made for Walkin'”, as his main squeeze. Married couple Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd were another biker couple. (Indeed, Laura Dern was conceived during this shoot.) Right after the film came out, Fonda was busted for pot possession. A couple of months later he was arrested yet again in the Sunset Strip Riots. His street cred was established and people were beginning to pay attention.

The following year, Fonda starred in Roger Corman’sThe Trip, from a script by Jack Nicholson. This one was about the LSD experience, withe Dern returning as his spirit guide. Fellow Nepo Baby Susan Strasberg, as was Dennis Hopper, who was married to Fonda’s pseudo sister Brooke Hayward (the daughter of Leland Hayward and Henry Fonda’s first wife Margaret Sullavan.)

In 1968, Nicholson, Dern, and Strasberg reunited for AIP’s Pysch-Out, with Dean Stockwell in a part that might have been Fonda’s, but he’d chosen instead to be in a European horror film called Spirits of the Dead, with sister Jane Fonda, with segments directed by his brother-in-law Roger Vadim, as well as FedericoFellini and Louis Malle. Jane was in the process of becoming a counter-cultural icon herself with films like Godard’sTout Va Bien, her infamous visit to Hanoi, and her later marriage to anti-war activist Tom Hayden.

Fonda, Hopper and Nicholson reunited yet again in 1969 for what is considered to be the high-water mark of this collaboration, Easy Rider. Which is especially remarkable given that all the drugs they take in the movie were real drugs. The movie was also shot at he real locations depicted in the film. (I’ve visited that graveyard in New Orleans where they take the LSD trip!) The supporting cast included Phil Spector, Karen Black, Toni Basil, and fellow Nepo Baby Robert Walker Jr. Though it was still an AIP picture, gone on this occasion were Corman holdovers like Dick Miller and Barboura Morris. Fonda plays the stoic, silent coke dealer Wyatt a.k.a. Captain America (a cohort perhaps of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”), a contrast to Nicholson’s chatty good ole boy, and Hopper’s completely drug addled freak. Believe it or not, the all-rock soundtrack was considered novel at the time.

Easy Rider caused a sensation and it was widely assumed that its success portended an endless chain of future great things. But that’s not what happened. It turns out that free spirits and drop-outs aren’t very good at buckling down and spinning gold. Hopper, who’d directed Easy Rider, proved that he was a director of genius in his next film The Last Movie (1971). Fonda was also in this, along with Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, who became Hopper’s second wife. But the film went overbudget, the studio only gave it a limited release, and audiences stayed away. Hopper and Hollywood parted ways for awhile. Meanwhile, Fonda went on to direct three modestly-budgeted films that were neither critical nor popular hits: The Hired Hand (1971), Idaho Transfer (1973), and Wanda Nevada(1979), which I wrote about here.

For a time, Fonda remained popular as an actor though, starring in movies like Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), Race with the Devil (1975), and Futureworld (1976), the sequel to Westworld. He was also prominently stunt cast in Cannonball Run (1981). But mostly he had a twenty year dry stretch where he starred in low-budget movies that immediately disappeared, things like Dance of the Dwarfs, and Spasms, both in 1983. His comeback began around 1996 with John Carpenter’sEscape from L.A. (1996), followed by his Oscar nominated turn in Ulee’s Gold (1997). The hot streak continued with The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999), The Limey (1999), South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000), The Laramie Project (2002), Ghost Rider (2007), Wild Hogs (2007), and 3:10 to Yuma (2007). His final performance was in the Vietnam War movie The Last Full Measure (2019).

Meanwhile daughter Bridget Fonda (born 1964 and named after another of Peter’s pseudo-siblings Bridget Hayward) had already become a major movie star, enjoyed a decade at the top, and retired. Her films include Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1990), The Godfather Part III (1990), Doc Hollywood (1991), Single White Female (1992), Army of Darkness (1992), The Road to Wellville (1994), City of Hall (1996), Grace of My Heart (1996), Jackie Brown (1997), Lake Placid (1999), and South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000). She retired shortly after marrying composer Danny Elfman in 2003 in or to raise a family. She describes her father, who left her when she was eight, as having been “distant”.