AllMovie

Part of the Biography television series from A&E, this documentary reviews the career and personal life of Academy Award winning actor Henry Fonda. His involvement with the Omaha Community Playhouse led to Broadway and a film career in which his self-effacing manner and dry, flat tones projected honesty and decency. His movie debut in The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935) led to more than 100 screen appearances, including Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). His movie roles culminated with his Oscar-winning role in On Golden Pond (1981) in which he appeared with his daughter Jane only a year before his death. He also appeared occasionally on Broadway, as in Mister Roberts (1948) and a one-man stage production of Clarrance Darrow (1974). He received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1978.