![]() But it wouldn't be long before Fonda focused all her energy on the growing anti-war movement.įonda's evolution into political activist coincided with a period of personal reinvention away the conventionally alluring, sex-kittenish persona she cultivated in movies like Barbarella and toward an entirely new image. In recognition of her hitherto-charmed life as the talented, privileged daughter of actor Henry Fonda, Fonda said later that “it took a moment in history where millions of people were changing to show me that there was another way to be.” At that time she was interested in a number of causes, including the civil rights movement, the rise of the Black Panthers, the Native American struggle - the latter of which inspired a 1970 visit to Alcatraz Island during its occupation by Native American protesters. US bombers, including B-52 strato-fortresses, started to bomb the North Vietnamese capital and its port Haiphong in April 1972. ![]() ![]() Fonda's trip to North Vietnam was part of her protest campaign against the US involvement in the Vietnam war. Fonda later said that her desire to learn about social causes was sparked after seeing a magazine with a Native American activist on the cover, accompanied by the words “Red Power." Jane Fonda, holding a camera, visits 25 July 1972 a Hanoi site bombed by US airplanes. She was no part-time activist, effectively placing her career on hold just after 1969’s Academy Award-winning They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? to dedicate herself to the cause. Longworth herself says that before entering the exhaustive research phase for 'Jean and Jane,' she only “knew what a lot of people think they know - which is, ‘that she did something really bad in Vietnam that some people have never forgiven her for.’” Those unfamiliar with the extent of Fonda’s involvement in the anti-war movement could be forgiven for assuming that the extent of her involvement was that fateful 1972 trip to Vietnam where she climbed on top of a North Vietnamese gun.īut as 'Jean and Jane' makes clear, Fonda’s fight against the Vietnam War went far deeper than the popular image. But Fonda became a target for right-wing ire after she aligned herself with the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the "Hanoi Jane" image would haunt Fonda even to this day.īeyond that iconic photograph, the details of Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam War activism aren’t widely remembered in 2017. Both Fonda and Seberg advocated for civil rights and supported the Black Panthers, and both were vilified by the media (at the behest of J. Yet the fact that both actresses were “hounded” by the FBI as a result of their outspoken activism was, Longworth says, a major motivation for combining their narratives. They both start as consistently underestimated blonde ingenues, they both make films with Jean-Luc Godard, and they both have professional and personal ties to France. Throughout the season, Longworth identifies several similarities between these two women. A deep dive into the storied lives of two movie stars, the season follows these women’s fortunes as they intersect and diverge down the decades from the 1950s onward, culminating in Fonda’s reinvention as the first queen of home fitness, and Seberg’s tragic decline and death. ![]() The show lays bare “the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century” and, over the course of 100 episodes, Longworth repeatedly revisits stories from the Golden Age of Film that were once considered gospel and turns the narrative on its head - like the tale of "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.Īs images go, the photograph of actress and activist Jane Fonda sitting astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War is indelible, and it's one that Longworth examines at length in ‘Jean and Jane,’ a 9-episode season of YMRT. I always will.” - Jane FondaĬonfronting the images of popular culture and deconstructing their myths is what drives You Must Remember This (YMRT), the acclaimed podcast by film historian Karina Longworth. Now by mistake, I appear in a photograph to be their enemy. “I have spent the last two years working with GIs and Vietnam veterans, and have spoken in front of hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters, telling them that our men in uniform aren’t the enemy.
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