Saint Jane and The Hollywood Dragon

If jane fonda ever gets elected to office, she'll join that elite circle of actors headed by Ronald Reagan and George Murphy, those two old radical leftists who evolved into the darlings of the right. Who's to say she won't be equally conservative by the time her hair turns gray? After all, she's still a young woman.

I'm thinking these rambling thoughts as I watch John Wayne, the Green Beret himself, standing before 1400 of Hollywood's elite, confessing his love for the Fonda family, even unto that little long-haired hippie, Peter, and, worse yet, his sister. The war is over.

Earlier, James Stewart, another rock-ribbed Republican, had noted pointedly that he had got through a 40-year friendship with Henry Fonda without ever discussing politics. And there was Hank himself, who wasn't always so keen on his daughter's dalliances, invoking imaginary quotes from Granddad on the perfection of Jane's political wisdom.

People say I'm cynical about Hollywood, yet I'm the one who expects evenings like this to make some lasting sense. Even though it's only a black-tie, blue-blooded American Film Institute tribute to father Henry, the Joad who made good, I'm looking for significance. After all, since Henry Fonda truly ranks among the great actors of all time, we don't really need a dinner to confirm the fact. What I suspect this gathering really celebrates is the revived respectability of rubbing shoulders with his daughter, a verified new superstar of Film City, one of only four women who can command--and get--$1,000,000 for 120 minutes of film.

What's more, Jane has an edge on the three others beyond the bankbook. Who the hell can feel guilty about Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway or Diana Ross, even if the black one is from the ghetto? True to its traditions, Hollywood now wants to make amends for the way it treated Jane during the Forgotten Conflict--it's hoped before she signs for somebody else's picture. The same old friends who were assuring Congressmen then that she was washed up in their town now embroider their jeans with peace symbols and are trying to get their sons back from Canada and into the biz before the script is ready to offer her.

Even better, when the occasion calls for it, Jane is willing to dress up with the rest of us for a glittering night such as the Fonda dinner. And she and Hank, and even Peter, have the social grace to forget all the unpleasant truths for the evening. That's the way it's done. Lots of praise for Henry and The Grapes of Wrath but no mention that old Darryl F. Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the part instead of Henry. Or that Fonda had to sell himself into five years of bitter bondage at Fox to get the role.

Once you're rich in Hollywood, the main goal is to outlive your enemies. Then you get your dinner. Hank was long overdue his, but until recently, the Fonda name made people nervous hereabouts. With Jane running around North Vietnam, with J. Edgar Hoover and the rest of the yahoos in pursuit, it was difficult to plan any feed for Henry without the risk of her showing up. Hell, even Henry himself probably wouldn't have come.

To everyone's relief, except Bob Hope's, it now turns out that Jane was right on the war. That was enough to make her safe for dinner, even if she did bring her radical husband, Tom Hayden. Then she did the most wondrous thing, besides. She hit with one (Fun with Dick and Jane), two (Julia) and three (Coming Home) smash pictures in a row.

If you don't live and breathe in Hollywood, you just can't realize the kind of charity and forgiveness, the apologies and genuflections that three big grossers can generate. Hell, they're even applauding Hayden this night, as Hank tells them what a great son-in-law he is and wasn't he right about everything, too?

But we must not draw too many conclusions from one night of festivity. There's work to be done tomorrow and the real question is whether Jane is back among us or not. No, that's not really the question, since, as my banker keeps reminding me, I am not technically one of the us. I want to know if she's one of them again.

In those troubled years of the late Sixties, I confess I greeted her initial revolt against the establishment with considerable doubt. Every time she talks now of those who thought she was just a silly starlet on a lark, I know she's thinking of me. In truth, though, I developed a grudging admiration, finally, for her courage and sincerity. No matter how much it would help my cynicism now, it would be a shame if she threw it all back for a few bucks.

Frankly, I was very comfortable with Fonda as Barbarella; the brief costumes didn't bother me a bit. Conversely, I was never at ease with GI Jane, so strident and so blatantly disheveled. Yet I find myself even more out of sorts with this beautifully mature woman showing up at the Golden Globe and Academy Awards ceremonies to receive Hollywood's accolades, yet insisting she hasn't changed her revolutionary ways. I will accept her who has seen the light and turned away from Hollywood to the real meanings of life. Or I will accept her who has renounced the false idols of the revolution and returned home to Hollywood, friends and family. But I find it hard to accept that both of these hearts beat in the same bosom.

Verily, I must seek the truth of this matter, hoping that too many years in Hollywood have not blinded me to truth when it appears. It's time to sober up and go into rigorous training, for Jane Fonda does not yield up the truth without a struggle. That is not to say she lies. But better interviewers than I have failed to elicit from Fonda anything she does not want to say.

A consummate actress, she encounters outsiders with a completely scripted scenario. But only she has the whole script, including questions and answers. Try to ad-lib into forbidden feelings and she'll slip into a soliloquy that brings the discussion right back where she wants it.

The quest begins as Fonda exits from Stage Four into a light rain, protecting her carefully constructed beauty in one of those dainty see-through bubble umbrellas as she paces off the few yards to the star's trailer. She demands no deference, but crew members step aside into the wet, taught by years of Hollywood service to show respect in the presence of a $1,000,000 property.

No matter how sincerely she may still sorrow over the world's poor and the downtrodden, union work rules in Hollywood make it hard for a leading lady to wear sackcloth and ashes. Fonda has two drivers, one to pick her up at home in the morning in a leather-appointed Mercury station wagon and wait faithfully to ferry her until late at night, another to steer the expensive motor home that functions as the star's dressing room, a servant well paid even though the trailer doesn't move for days on end.

A wardrobe mistress cares for the stylish salmon-colored slacks-and-sweater combination Fonda wears, and a makeup lady stands by with eight small brushes and three large ones to tend her beauty. But we must not blame Fonda for these trappings of extravagance and privilege. The clothes and hairdo are make-believe middle class because she enjoys playing women far different from herself. The drivers and other hand-servants are part of the labor scheme she can't change. Besides, the work rules provide good-paying jobs for many of her minority and women friends. (Both of her drivers and her make-up artist are black women.)

Today, she is working with Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon on a film called Power. She is very secretive about the plot and there are firm rules against visitors on the set, lest any secrets be revealed. As usual, though, if you just walk onto the stage looking weary and uninterested, everyone figures you belong there. Once inside, it's no big trick to discover that she plays a TV newswoman, Douglas her cameraman, and that Lemmon works in a nuclear plant where the news team uncovers an astonishing danger. Later I will ask Jane for the plot of the movie and she will insist it is a secret. I won't bother to upset her by letting her know that it is neither a secret nor all that astonishing.

Once out of the rain and nestled into the cramped little dressing trailer, Fonda wants most to talk about her most recent picture, Coming Home, a surprisingly well-rounded view of those damaged by Vietnam. With the first burst of rhetoric, Fonda transforms the sterile quarters of the motor home into some old roachinfested two-story house somewhere on the back streets of Berkeley, where the discontented spread their papers before the fireplace and plot to change the world. As she shakes her head to prove a point, her lacquered red hair frees itself and seeks to return to some frazzled state it remembers can lend a wild excitement to her words.

Trying to segue to my search for truth about her and Hollywood, I ask what she thinks about all of those who support her fight against the war now that it's safe to do so--the "reborn radicals." But she's surprisingly mellow. "People are friendlier when I call," she shrugs. "I wouldn't say it's reborn radicals. It's just a combination of the kind of movies I'm making and people feeling I haven't sold out. And liking what my movies are about and feeling I've done something that a lot of people would like to do. Everyone is looking for a meaning in their lives. People are becoming real aware of the fact that they are alienated, whether or not they allow the question to surface or bother them a whole lot, below the surface. Because basically people are good, they tend to ask themselves, What is my life for beyond the desire to make profit? When they see someone who seems to have more focus or meaning or sense of direction, I think they are real attracted to that and are real interested in that."

I could argue that Hollywood was only more than willing to let her starve with her focus and sense of direction until she recently began serving its desire to make a profit; but I had not come to debate, so let us move on. Does she still have her relatively simple little home in Santa Monica?

"Relative to what? Relative to [former Columbia Pictures president] David Be-gelman's house, it is very simple. Relative to a lot of other people's, it is a very nice middle-class house."

Is she happy? Yes, she is, but that leads quickly to a long plea on behalf of those who aren't, such as the "bad-paper" Viet veterans in San Diego. Try to pin down the shift of Hollywood sentiment in her favor and you get a discussion of Watergate. Mention that she seems to be dressing a little more glamorously these days, she refuses to accept the compliment. "When I speak at rallies, I wear one kind of clothes; when I go hiking, I wear one kind of clothes; if I go to a black-tie dinner, I try to dress appropriately. I don't spend a lot of money on clothes, because I don't think they matter very much. But I don't want to offend anyone. I just try to look neat and clean and appropriate for the occasion."

There's nothing wrong with an answer like that. Its genius, in fact, is in making the question seem thoroughly inane. If your strategy is to follow up on the clothes question with a stinger as to why she dresses up for Hollywood, you find that answer leaves no target yet says nothing. Unarmed, she could outfence Zorro with a shrug and a side step.

Such small probes, it's clear, will reveal nothing about how Fonda feels about Hollywood. The trick is to flow with one of her rolling discussions of something she finds of major importance and raise your hand every so often to pick at particular revelatory points.

With Hayden and others, Fonda's major political effort these days is the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an attempt to unite blue collars and white collars in battle with executive board rooms, in demanding internal reforms of the corporate structure, public members on company boards, Federal chartering of corporations, job programs, tax reform. In general, the foe is the multinational corporation running amuck, employing unhappy executives to wipe out the middle class and the poor.

As an old Texas populist myself, I could cheer her on in this fight. Except that I can't recall ever cheering anybody who was paid anywhere near $1,000,000 for a few weeks' work, or about a zillion times the minimum wage.

"It's ridiculous that someone earns a million dollars to act--it's just ridiculous," Fonda agrees. "But since a movie actor or actress can get that kind of money, I'm going to ask for it when the time comes. Without any guilt, because of how I use it. If it were for myself, I would feel very guilty about it, given the status of other people who do more important work than acting and can hardly pay their bills.

"I am part of a movement and we want to win. By win I mean redistribute power in this country. We want to achieve true economic democracy in this country. In order to do that, you have to hire and pay for and train organizers, to publish newspapers, to have control over television. It would be great to own your own TV station, so you would have freedom to get information out that is being stopped otherwise.

"To do this, you need money. And I don't mean a hundred or a thousand dollars. I mean millions of dollars. We have to find ways to raise millions of dollars if we are going to win.

"I intend to make as much money as I can. I intend to find ways to invest my money and other people's money in businesses that are responsible and whose profit can be turned over to a movement. I'm trying to get rid of the idea of using money for one's own gain and to use it for a social purpose instead."

I'm beginning here to get visions of Jane Fonda as Robin Hood, ripping off the rich to help the poor. But she doesn't like that idea, because it suggests charity instead of economic overhaul. And I don't like it much, either, because I still see Robin Jane rushing out of Sherwood Forest and riding off with the rich folks.

What bothers me, to be blunt, is that Fonda is very much in the thick of one questionable business, making lots of money in order to cure the ills in everybody else's questionable business. In the newspaper trade, this is called Afghanistanism, the courage to take strong, forthright stands on the ills of Afghanistan while ignoring all that's wrong in the (concluded on page 180)Saint Jane(continued from page 172) home town. I don't know what the same thing is called in Hollywood.

It's not just a matter of good deeds done with the money Jane earns. What makes her such a valuable commodity, anyway, if not the fact that the entertainment industry can use her name and popularity to enrich itself many times in deals--honest and not so honest--far beyond her control? Like it or not, the more valuable Fonda becomes as a box-office attraction, the more sins are committed in her name.

For whatever laudable motives, she is playing piano in one of the oldest whorehouses in town.

Consider that she and Hayden are leading a fight to keep solar energy out of the hands of utilities. But executives in that high-powered industry might well exchange cynical smiles over this outside agitator from a business that itself is awash in scandal. How penetrating are the economic barbs tossed by an actress who has recently made two films for Columbia Pictures, dealing with David Begelman, the studio president ousted for forgery; two pictures for United Artists, rocked by a corporate power play in a clash with its conglomerate parent, Transamerica Corp.; and one picture for 20th Century-Fox, accused by small theaters of bone-crunching business assaults that the 19th Century cartels would envy?

Fonda concedes some of the same naïveté and ignorance about big business that she initially had about Vietnam. Reaching for a handful of raw string beans she substitutes for lunch, she spreads them out on the table in front of her and tries to deal with the vulnerability of her position. She doesn't really eat the beans; they're pulverized in the rapid snap of her words.

Of the Begelman affair and similar revelations, she says, "We all abhor corruption. It's very complex what's going on here and I don't understand it well enough to be able to talk about it. One thing I do understand is that Hollywood needs to be restructured like every other corporate industry in the country.

"I don't pretend to have the expertise or the wherewithal to be able to say this has to happen and that has to happen. We need to study it and see exactly what is wrong, why it is that if I want people to see this movie I am making, I have to work for these studios. Otherwise, it will be stonewalled.

"It's not right. How can we envision change taking place in a way that won't screw the independent producers, that won't screw the small businesses, that won't destroy the industry, that will make it flourish, but flourish more democratically?"

Fonda thinks the way to start fresh is to get some of the movie business' best people out of town for a few days to begin re-examining its ills. But I suspect it wouldn't be more than a few hours before some of them began sneaking back to town to pin down deals while the rest were still smelling the roses.

She agrees that courageous leaders are scarce in Hollywood: "When you're working in a monopolized industry, people get very scared of expressing themselves, because they are afraid they are never going to work again."

"But that obviously does not concern you," I interject.

"Well, you know, I want to be very cautious about what I say, because I don't understand it very well. It's amazing how in this industry, especially if you're on the acting end of it, you go along sort of waiting for the scripts to come, knowing in the back of your mind that stuff is being skimmed off the top, your percentages aren't coming to you in the way they should and people sort of take it for granted.

"They can't afford to hire the accountant who could find it out, anyway. So you just go along. It's hard for individual people to change from that place until a process is set in motion as it is now. When problems become clear to people, then you can start sitting down with them and say, 'Let's talk about what we're doing.'"

But Fonda refuses to let me make her defensive. Blue eyes firing, she tells off my hypothetical utility executives who would remind her of the glass house from whence she hurls her stones:

"If they ever said that to me," she bristles, "I would say, if one could open your books, I'd be interested to know how much of the taxes you're supposed to pay do you really pay? Do you want to look at my books? I pay my taxes. I don't use corporate loopholes.

"Number two, what do you do with your money? What kind of a house do you live in? How many cars do you have? Do you have servants? What are your vacations like? Does any human being really need to live the way you do? Can you justify $800,000 a year if it's all spent on yourself, and your Rolls-Royces, and your Mercedes and your 15 servants and your four houses? How do you justify that?

"Do you want to ask me how I spend my money? I'll tell you, because I'm not ashamed of that, because most of it is not spent on me."

OK, how does she spend her money?

"I bought a ranch in Santa Barbara that is being turned into a children's camp. In the summer, it is turned into an organizers' training institute, which is going to be used to develop a model of alternative technology. I use it to support not only our own organization, which is not dependent on just my money, but other organizations."

At the bottom line, you have to believe her words or not. I guess I do. Though she may be more than a little naïve or overly optimistic, Fonda's credibility lies in her conviction and lifestyle, neither of which seems redecorated by Beverly Hills.

Tom and Jane still live in their old Santa Monica neighborhood near the beach, with its wooden houses crowded together in a confusion of domed roofs, widow's walks and picket fences lining the narrow one-way streets. The Hayden-Fonda house is nestled under the electric wires leading to a pole with a single light. Neatness doesn't count here. Three tilted trash cans clutter their driveway; two doors away, a front porch is piled high with cardboard cartoons; across the street, wet towels overhang a balcony. Old Volkswagens and a battered Lincoln Continental dominate the parking spaces.

Here and there, though, an open garage reveals the presence of a new $20,000 Mercedes. Everywhere, there's too much fresh paint, too many new apartment buildings and fashionable restaurants. Property values are soaring in California's crazed real-estate market.

Fonda settled here in a two-step move to escape the idiotic luxury of Beverly Hills, first leaving her expensive home there for a smaller house in the San Fernando Valley. Even that residence, however, had the minor grandeur of a swimming pool; and after her marriage to Hayden, they moved on to his former haunts in Santa Monica, partly because she knew he was uncomfortable with the size of her home and the pool.

Almost unemployed, they had to scrape together the $40,000 it cost to buy the little house. Now she's making plenty and the little house a block from the ocean is worth more than $100,000 and climbing.

For some people, downward mobility is hard to achieve. We can only hope Jane Fonda doesn't stop trying.

"'Hollywood needs to be restructured like every other corporate industry in the country.'"