Jane Fonda

by Bosworth, Patricia

• ISBN13: 9780547152578
• ISBN10: 0547152574
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-08-30
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

A father who could not show love; a mother who killed herself; stardom; a war that tore her apart; husbands who used her; the transformation that made her, finally, a heroine. No one has taken us so far inside the public dramas that made Jane Fonda part of history or the private ones that left scars. Her own best-selling memoir was candid, but left out many intimate moments.Becoming Jane Fondagets closer, benefiting from advantages no other writer will ever share. Patricia Bosworth has known Fonda since the '60s when both attended the Actor's Studio, and has been granted access to her best friends and deepest secrets: Fonda's rejection of her mother the day before her suicide; her FBI profile; her often manic behavior and astonishing sexual career; the dark psychological downfall that led to her marriage to Ted Turner; and her strangely intimate relationship with her brother, Peter. Jane Fonda's fame stems from her heritage as Henry Fonda's daughter, her beauty, her talent, and the kind of gnawing ambition that never gets satisfied. Like Hillary Clinton and Princess Diana, Fonda is complicated, ever-changing, and more haunted and vulnerable than she has shown. Moving from sex symbol to serious actress, from Hanoi Jane to Exercise Queen, she inspires questions that Bosworth answers: Who is she underneath it all? And why does she keep on running? Open this book and you won't look up.

Table of Contents

Prologue	p. 1
Daughter: 1937-1958	p. 15
Actress: 1958-1963	p. 105
Movie Star/Sex Symbol: 1963-1970	p. 187
Political Activist: 1970-1988	p. 307
Workout Guru/Tycoon Wife: 1988-2000	p. 439
Epilogue	p. 528
Acknowledgments	p. 35
Notes	p. 538
Bibliography	p. 564
Photo Credits	p. 567
Index	p. 569
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

During the first weeks without Tom Hayden, Jane could barely speak above a whisper;

she was having a hard time swallowing food or even water; she soon lost so much weight she appeared almost skeletal. At the one benefit she did attend in Beverly Hills, photographers caught her hanging onto Troy’s arm; she seemed totally dazed and out of it.

Sometimes she’d spend all day at the house wandering in her nightgown, moving slowly around the cavernous living room, stopping to cuddle Spencer the golden retriever or Taxi the black Lab. The female mutt Scott was her favorite, but she didn’t really respond to any of her animals. There was no air conditioning, since she opposed it on environmental grounds, so the house was especially warm in the summer. She didn’t notice the temperature; she didn’t notice anything since she was

contemplating her own death.

She decided to stipulate in her will that Tom would not be able to speak at her funeral. “I was convinced he’d be opportunistic and try to do so—I couldn’t ever imagine we would be able to be friends.”