Fonda on Film: The Political Movies of Jane Fonda

Summary

As much coverage as Jane Fonda has elicited through the years, the stories often skim past her prime filmmaking core. 

Fonda on Film spotlights the signature political films Fonda generated in the 1970s—Coming Home, The China Syndrome, 9 to 5, and more—that are still underappreciated even as Fonda endures as one of the world’s most admired and controversial performers. 

This is a movie book about a mega-celebrity, an origin story voyaging through Fonda’s learning years in the 1960s and the calculated payoff of the 1970s. She emerged as a Hollywood scion challenged to prove herself while trying to rise above ingenue roles and sex-angst melodramas. Splitting time between the United States and France to stretch her range, Fonda broke through as the perky newlywed of Barefoot in the Park, the sci-fi pinup Barbarella, and the Oscar-winning star of the sleek Klute. 

And then Fonda earned her activist stripes with the Vietnam vets’ Winter Soldier hearings and her alt-USO F.T.A. tour. She survived the “Hanoi Jane” flap and, by the mid-1970s, transformed into a singular star on an unparalleled moviemaking mission. 

Fonda’s long post-Klute break ended with bold comeback hits—comedy and economic justice in Fun with Dick and Jane, high drama and political commitment with Julia. Over the following half decade, Fonda’s production company generated the purposeful movies that still underpin her actor-activist persona, including the groundbreaking Coming Home on Vietnam, the timely The China Syndrome on nuclear power and the still-relevant 9 to 5 on workplace equality.

Her more recent work protesting the Iraq War in 2005 and ringleading the 2019–20 Fire Drill Fridays campaigns on Capitol Hill illustrates Fonda’s political method—and how it guided her movie work. 

Fonda on Film is a movie buff’s book, and a portrait of an iconic activist-artist bridging the gap between streets and screens.