Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies and Universal Pictures are bringing On Golden Pond to select cinemas nationwide for a special limited engagement, which includes exclusive insights from TCM. Henry Fonda, brilliant as Norman Thayer Jr, angry about being 80 and losing his faculties - Katharine Hepburn, his fine all devoted wife who shared his summers at their Maine lakefront home - and the alienated daughter, played by Jane Fonda.
The 1981 Universal Pictures release was adored by the critics, garnering Oscars for Henry Fonda for Best Actor, Katharine Hepburn of Best Actress, and Best Screenplay for Ernest Thompson. The film also saw Jane Fonda nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Picture for Bruce GIlbert, Best Director for Mark Rydell, Best Cinematography for Billy Williams (Gandhi), as well as nominations for Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Original Score. The film offered the unique perspective from three generations, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and The Gen Xers, capturing the voice of each. If you weren’t brought to the theater as a kid to watch what might not have been your first choice, after all, TIme Bandits and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior hit the theaters the same month, you absolutely caught in on cable that summer. Grab the tissues!
The film was also unique in that it united Henry Fonda and daughter Jane Fonda (She purchased the rights for her father to star opposite her.) who were known to have had a difficult relationship, Jane Fonda saying the play mirrored she and her father’s relationship in quite a few ways. When asked to encapsulate what the movie meant to her, she responds, “Imagine a woman with a difficult relationship with her father finds a play in which the father and daughter so paralleled real life. And I was able to buy the rights!”
Answering The Hollywood Reporter on what advice she would have liked to have been given about show business, Jane Fonda responded, “I think the best advice a mentor could have given me was, ‘Jane, you know you can say no if the script isn’t good.’ I was just so surprised anybody ever wanted me in anything! I didn’t pay enough attention. I think the only actor who ever taught me much about life, more than acting, was Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond. Even though I did the movie for my dad, I produced it, who I learned from was Hepburn. I was 45 when I made that movie, and it was she who taught me to be self-conscious. I used to think that was a bad thing, but that means being conscious of the self you project to the public; having a persona, a style, a presence. I had none of that. I didn’t know how to dress! When I went onstage for my father at the Oscars, because he was too sick, I couldn’t believe how I looked and how I was dressed. I never paid attention. Hepburn taught me to pay attention and that style is important.”
On Golden Pond can be seen in select theaters this Wednesday, December 15.
