He was a close friend of actor Ross Alexander from the time they first worked together on Broadway.
He was a founding member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee during the 1930s, formed in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda.
He was one of the most active, and most vocal, liberal Democrats in Hollywood along with Robert Ryan and Gregory Peck. He once said that President Ronald Reagan made him "physically ill", and that he "couldn't stomach any of the Republicans, most of all Richard Nixon.".
He was voted the 10th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
He was voted the 29th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
His ancestors came from Genoa, Italy, and fled to the Netherlands around 1400. Among the early Dutch settlers in America, they established a still-thriving small town in upstate New York named Fonda in the early 1600s, named after patriarch Douw Fonda, who was later killed by Indians. His paternal grandparents moved to Nebraska in the 1800s.
His performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is ranked #51 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Hobby was making model airplanes and kites.
In spite of his kind, heroic, honest screen persona, he was often described as being cold, aloof and frequently angry off-screen.
Longtime friend of James (Jimmy) Stewart.
Named Father of The Year 1963 by the Father's Day/Mother's Day Council, Inc.
Named the #6 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends by the American Film Institute
Nearly fell out with his close friend James Stewart in an argument over blacklisting in the spring of 1947. It happened shortly after Fonda joined Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and John Huston in signing an open letter to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, suggesting it end its investigations of Communism involvement in the film industry. According to Stewart, the argument was "long and pretty heated" and ended only when the two men realized they were jeopardizing so many years of friendship. Soon afterward, Fonda moved to New York, not returning to Hollywood until 1955. Although part of the reason for his extended stay in the East was his starring role in Mister Roberts on Broadway, he also confided to friends that he couldn't tolerate the political climate in Southern California during those years. Jane Fonda admits she never got her father to say exactly what was said during the argument with Stewart. "I know it was definitely about the House Unamerican Activities Committee and what became known as McCarthyism later on," she recalled. "And it's true that their friendship really almost ended over that. That was why, after they had cooled down, they decided
Of the Oscar-winning father-daughter couples, he and daughter Jane are the one of two pairs where the daughter won an Academy award before the father did. The other pair is Hayley Mills and John Mills. Hayley's 1960 honorary Oscar was given to her for the best juvenile performance in Pollyanna (1960). Her father John became very popular with the denizens of Hollywood when the Mills family resided there while Hayley made films for Walt Disney. He won a supporting actor Oscar in 1971 for his role as the village idiot in David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970/I).
On April 12, 1967, he visited the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk for an overnight stay.
One of his hobbies was bee keeping. This was one of many traits that his son, Peter Fonda, incorporated into his performance in Ulee's Gold (1997), a performance Peter says he based on his father.
Pictured on a 37¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued in his honor on 20 May 2005.
Played a man wrongly accused of a crime three times: You Only Live Once (1937), Let Us Live (1939), and The Wrong Man (1956).
Ranked #6 as AFI's top male screen legends.
Ranked #95 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]