Memoirs Of Two Hollywood Legends

Twenty years ago Hollywood superstars Jane Fonda and Eli Wallach each published a memoir or autobiography.

In interviews from 2005, Fonda and Wallach talk about their lives and careers.
Get your copy of My Life So Far by Jane Fonda and The Good, the Bad, and Me by Eli Wallach As an Amazon Associate, Now I've Heard Everything earns from qualifying purchases.

You may also enjoy my interviews with Diane Ladd and Hume Cronyn

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Jane Fonda photo by Georges Biard


mean, it just doesn't get any better.
I've worked with Charles Lauren,Edward G Robinson, Henry Fonda
for two years, Walter Matthau and each one is enriched in my

(00:21):
life. Hollywood giants Jane Fonda and
Eli Wallach today. And now I've heard everything.
I'm Bill Thompson. For seven seasons now, I've been
sharing with you here on Now I've Heard everything.
Interviews from my 30 year interview archive, interviews
with the famous, the near famous, the infamous, all of

(00:43):
them among the world's most fascinating people.
Now in season 8, which begins inJanuary, I'm taking the podcast
in a little bit new direction. I'll have more to say on that in
the days ahead, but in the meantime, I wanted to take
Season 7 out on a splash. So today I'm featuring
interviews of two Hollywood legends who, ironically, I met

(01:04):
within about 3 weeks of each other in 2005 when they each
wrote a memoir or autobiography.One of them was one of the best
and best known and most prolificcharacter actors of the 20th
century, Eli Wallach. And waiting to hear some of the
stories he tells and the joke hetells.
It was pretty good. But first up, another Hollywood

(01:25):
mainstay for six decades now, who's actually also the daughter
of another Hollywood legend. That's Henry Fonda's daughter,
Jane Fonda. From her earliest starring role
in the 1960s, Jane Fonda proved that she wasn't just a nepo
baby. She had the chops.
By the early 1970s, though, she had gained notoriety and a fair

(01:48):
degree of hatred for something else because she went to North
Vietnam during the height of theVietnam War and posed for
pictures with N Vietnamese soldiers.
People started calling her HanoiJane, but that didn't deter her
career. She continued acting for many
years and picked up a number of awards over the years.

(02:10):
Finally, in 2005, she wrote a memoir called My Life So Far.
That's when I had the chance to meet her in just a moment, my
conversation with Jane Fonda. Come back with us now as we
relive a little piece of our cultural history on Now.
I've Heard everything. This interview is from Bill
Thompson's 30 year archive. Enjoy.

(02:36):
So here, now, from 2005, Jane Fonda does it.
Dismay you that so many of the interviews seem to be
concentrating on just one narrowaspect of your life.
The two HS Hanoi and husbands. That's right.
No, it's it's you know, it's to be expected the the war, the
wounds of the Vietnam War are still open and will

(03:01):
unfortunately remain open until we all die or until we come to
terms with the war. There's really, there's not been
a reckoning. We, we don't understand the war.
We don't understand that the American people were lied to and
that men died unnecessarily. And that's such a sad thing to
have to come to terms with. Now, is this the first time
you've ever had the opportunity to explain so fully and to your

(03:21):
satisfaction, the context to whyyou went and what happened?
Well, I first apologized in 1980on when I was on national
television with Barbara Walters.And I have talked extensively
from time to time about the reasons that I went and about
exactly what happened there. This is the first time that I've

(03:41):
done it, you know, moment to moment in this much depth and
detail. And you know, I was at a book
signing in Atlanta yesterday andthere was a Vietnam veteran in
line who told the media that wasthere that he that he had
changed as a result of hearing what I had to say.
But I must say that is just one aspect of your life and the rest
of this book is so rich with detail about the rest of your

(04:02):
life. What a terrific read this is.
Thank you. I know somebody met me in the
airport today and said I'm goingto get fired because I just
can't put it down. I'm going to go off and and just
I can't stop reading it. As a long time movie buff, I
mean, I have to turn to my my favorite movie.
I have to tell you, out of all your movie roles, I don't know
if this is a good thing or not. The the role I like you best for
is Judy Burnley, 9:00 to 5:00. Oh my gosh, I didn't accept you

(04:23):
were going to say that. I loved to do it and I produced
that movie. That was a with Bruce Gilbert.
To this day that. Was one of my favorite movies.
Judy just seemed like just this sweet, innocent and somewhat
sweetly naive kind of persona that I could I really enjoyed.
Yeah, well, wait till you see mein the upcoming movie Monster in
Law. It's about the polar opposite of

(04:43):
Judy in in Nine to Five. Yeah, my daughter, actually,
who's big Jennifer Lopez fan, wanted me to ask you what it
what what it was like to work. With it was really fun.
Jennifer is smart, she's professional, you know, I was
worried. I didn't know whether she'd be a
diva or not, but she was great. She really was.
Now, I also have to tell you thechapter that you've written in
here about on Golden Pond, I think should be its own major

(05:06):
motion picture. What a terrific, moving story
this is. Yeah, it really, it was an
amazing experience and I think Icaptured it really well.
Oh. From the very first your your
very first meeting with Katherine.
Hepburn Yes, when she said I don't like you.
How? How do you react to the voice?
Like, like you said, the voice of God.
Not well, I think I I was paralysed for a while.

(05:29):
But you know, as I say in the book, once I realized where she
was coming from, you know, it's hard to get old.
It's hard to have been one of the great actresses of all time.
And then she was, you know, in her mid 70s and was no longer a
box office star. And here's me, you know, not
anywhere near the legend that she but young.

(05:49):
So hence box office and she wanted to put me in my place.
So it came out of such a human place that the minute I realized
that, it was easy. But just the, the transitions
that you made during the shooting of the movie, how the,
the, the respect that the two ofyou came to have for each other.
Yeah, her, her punch line at theend of the chapter, which I

(06:10):
don't know if I want to give away or not, but.
Don't don't give it away, but man, I, I, I earned her respect.
I tell you what, it was hard doing that backflip and getting
hammered and bruised and. And what I thought, you know,
just in, in those pages, I thought what a great metaphor
for so many things about, about life in general, about your life
in particular, that that backflip represented.
Yeah, that's right. Well, the whole movie was was

(06:31):
like, like a major metaphor. And I've just, I feel so, you
know, it's, it's it's hard for me to talk about it without
getting emotional. For a child who had a father
like mine, who was a lot like Norman Thaler Thayer in the
movie, to have had the opportunity to allow him to be

(06:53):
in a movie before he died, that won him his Oscar and he died
five months later. And for us to play in the movie
characters, father, daughter, that's so paralleled our own
real life experience was, I mean, it just doesn't get any
better. I just feel so blessed.
You're very frank in this book about your relationship with
your father and how the distancethat there always was made you

(07:16):
anxious and eager, perhaps too eager, to please men elsewhere
in your life. The disease to please.
That's right. I have to be perfect if I'm
going to be loved. And it was my father that I
wanted to love me. And so it's men that I wanted to
love me. And I was willing to leave
myself at the door and bring only to the table that which I
thought would be lovable. And you know, you can't really

(07:38):
have a full, authentic relationship that way.
And, you know, it's why I work now.
I work with young boys and girlsnow.
I don't want them to have to wait as long as I did to to be
to be able to own their voice orfor men to own their hearts and
women to own their voices. But having said that, I don't
sense from this book that you are that there's an attitude of

(07:59):
blame toward your father. It's just an explanation.
Blame, you know, you can get real old and brittle going
through life blaming. There's no way to you can't.
There's a statute of limitation on blaming pretty soon, at a
certain point in life, enough already you have to assume
responsibility for your own life.
You know, people have asked me what would you have written this

(08:20):
book if your father was still alive?
And I have to say yes, I would because first of all, I love him
and he and that shows in the book.
And he was a man of great integrity and he didn't shy away
in his own biography for saying that he wasn't a very good
father. I'm not saying anything out of
school here, but I think would surprise him and perhaps please

(08:40):
him is the degree of self reflection, the degree of how
hard I've worked to understand him.
And it's, it's an important thing for us to do for our
parents if we've had difficult, you know, relationships.
Do you think you understand him better?
I do, I do. And I've forgiven him a
thousandfold. And my mother, who killed
herself when I was 12, you know,this was a very cathartic book

(09:03):
for me to write because of her in particular.
I was thinking about that. That was was the the structure
of the book you're dividing yourlife into into discrete boxes of
the work. Was that evident from the
outset? Well, when I was about to turn
60, gulp, I realized that it wasgoing to be the beginning of my
third act. And, you know, being an actor, I

(09:25):
know how important third acts are.
And I only this isn't a dress rehearsal.
You know, this is, I'm seven years into my third act and I
can't rewrite it. This is it.
And I, you know, I don't want toget to the end of my life the
way my father did with regrets. I, I, so I have to know what
those regrets would be and deal with them in this final act of
my life. And that's where in order to do
that, in preparation for my 60thbirthday, I went back and, and

(09:49):
tried to look at my first two acts and what they were about
and what messages they held for me.
And that's when I realized that I had a story to tell.
I'm also a great fan of of synchronicity and and links and
how one things connect to the next.
We're talking about 9:00 to 5:00.
You meet Dolly Parton. Your next project is the doll
maker. She introduces you.
It it just this this continuous string of creativity.
Wasn't it amazing? So you actually spent time on

(10:10):
the 9:00 to 5:00 set whittling? Yes, get it.
And with a trail of blood, I waslearning how to be a wood Carver
for my next my next project. But let me just say that since
you raised 9:00 to 5:00, I was going to make it as a serious
movie because a friend of mine, Karen Nussbaum, had spent
several years telling me about the hardships that are faced by
women clerical workers. And then I saw Lily Tomlin in

(10:34):
her one woman show and was smitten.
And I thought, this woman is so brilliant.
She has to be one of the secretaries.
And as I was driving home from the theater, I turned on the
radio and Dolly Parton was singing 2 Doors Down.
And I thought, Oh my Lord, this is it.
Only it can't be serious, Not with Lily and Dolly and me.
It's going to have to be a comedy.
And then I guess someone answers.

(10:55):
Well, have you ever fantasized what you wanted to do to your?
Boss yes, that was Colin Higgins, the writer, director.
It was a genius question. And and it just the women, there
were 40 women sitting in a circle in Cleveland, OH.
And when he said you ever fantasize what you want to do
with to your boss, they they fell, they fell apart.
They really did. But there was one that we didn't
put in the movie. She said she fantasized putting

(11:16):
her boss through a paper shredder and then putting him
into a drip, you know, a coffee machine, and watching him drip
out and then drinking him. Jane Fonda will be 88 in
December. She is still a.
Working performer after this short break.
The conversation with another star of stage and screen, Eli

(11:37):
Wallach. You know, AI is not just for 22
year old coders. A lot of us older adults are
drawing on our life experience to find unique and creative ways
to use AI at home or at work. Got an AI success story you'd
like to share? Tap the link below to visit our
YouTube channel, AI After 40 andLet's keep learning.

(12:01):
Together Eli Wallach was born in1915, and from his earliest days
as an actor, the live theater was always his favorite venue
and he was very, very good at it, winning a number of awards
before. His first?
Acting role in a movie in 1956. And over the next few years,

(12:25):
even though the theater was still his first love, eventually
Eli Wallach appeared in 90 movies, mostly in supporting
roles in movies like The Magnificent 7, The Good, The Bad
and The Ugly and The Misfits, inwhich he had a chance to work
with Marilyn Monroe. And finally, in 2005, Eli
Wallach wrote his autobiography,a book that he called The Good,

(12:46):
the Bad and Me. And that's what I had the chance
to spend a few minutes with thisicon of the movie in Broadway
era. So here now from 2005, Eli
Wallach. I remember vividly each film I
made or each play I made, although I my favorites limit

(13:07):
limit the amount that I enjoy. You have, you've known everyone.
I mean, you've worked with everyone.
But I've worked with I'll go back away, Eva Legarion,
Catherine Cornell, Charles Laughton, Edward G Robinson,
Henry Fonda for two years, Walter Matthau and each one has

(13:31):
enriched my life. The book The book ends with my
wow to each one of these who helped me along in my career and
great directors. Kazan, John.
Houston, William. Wyler, John Sturgis.
Wonderful. It's like a who's who.
Yeah. And it was it was a Karl Malden

(13:54):
that told you not to open your mouth so wide.
Yes, on on the screen your head is 30 feet high.
Yes, and I so the first thing the the girl in the Carol Baker
sees me at the top of a flight of stairs and says hi O Silver
And I kept thinking of what Carlwarned me.
He said don't open your mouth because they'll see your golden

(14:14):
inlays and your tonsils. So she said hi O Silver and I
said, gripping my teeth, I said hi O.
And Kazan said what happened? I said what do you mean?
He said say it. I said I did.
He said say it again. She said hi O Silver.
I said hi O and Kazan said I don't want the Japanese version,

(14:36):
He says. He says just say the damn line.
And then he remembered. He said, oh, call him Walden put
you up. You strike me as the type of man
who has had a lot of fun doing what he has been doing all these
years. Well, a quote on the back of
that book was written by one of the great playwrights who just
died, Arthur Miller. And he, I sent him for a blurb

(15:00):
on the back. Just say something.
And he's he read the chapter on the Misfits that I did with
Clark Gable and Mama and he wrote Eli Wallach is probably
the happiest good actor I've ever known.
And I thought good, why not great?
That's what I thought. And then he said he he really

(15:20):
enjoys the work, just as he musthave enjoyed writing this
probably true book. And I thought, well, that did
it. That did it.
But we were good friends, and every month I'd call him and
tell him a joke. I wanted to hear his laugh just
as I hear your laugh. You want to hear the joke on me?

(15:40):
I'd say this old man in his late90s was quite a womanizer, and
his sons decided to give him a birthday present.
So they went out and they hired a hooker, a prostitute.
And she went to the house, knocked on the door.
And the old man opened the door and said, yes.
She said, I'm your birthday present and I'm here to give you

(16:03):
super sex. And there was a long pause.
He said, all right, I'll take the soup.
So. So I heard, I heard, I heard
Arthur Miller laugh. That may be the next title of
the book. My book will be I Made Arthur

(16:24):
Miller Land. Fill it with stories like that,
bestseller, guaranteed. When you mention The Misfits,
you talk about Marilyn Monroe inthis book, and we've known for
years that she was not the ditzyblonde that she was on the
screen. But as you describe her, she was
one sharp lady. I'll tell you one, We were
sitting there at an outdoor cafein in Manhattan, and there was

(16:46):
this huge poster on the on on the wall saying where her skirt
was being blown up. So she looked up at it and she
said, you see, that's all they think of me, just that with my
skirts blowing in the air. But I want to play Grushenka in
The Brothers Karamazov. And they all laugh when I say

(17:07):
it, but none of them have read the book.
She said, I want to play it. And the first time I was in the
movie, she said, let me see yourcontract.
And she said, delete the first paragraph, put this in, cut this
out. I thought she's not only a good
actress and a sex symbol, she's a lawyer and an accountant.

(17:27):
You know, that was it. But I it was tough making that
movie because her marriage was dissolving as we were doing it.
And she felt that the camera waslike an X-ray machine.
It could just go through what she was thinking and that made
her fearful about facing the camera.

(17:48):
Was it about that time that you were describing the book that
you were out? Was it her you were out dancing
with? And you look up and you see
there's Frank Sinatra, here's Milton Berle, here's Joe
DiMaggio. And what was it you say?
I don't feel like dancing anymore?
I. Said I, I, I looked up there and
it looked like the mafia about to destroy me.
I said no, I don't think I want to dance anymore.
She's the hell with him. Let's keep dancing.

(18:12):
Were there, was there ever a part that you were offered and
you looked at it and you said, no, I don't think that's right
for me and you wished later, Oh,why didn't I take that?
No, really. No really.
But there is a story about FrankSinatra in the book and me,
which I it's, I don't want it tosound boastful, but I, I had to
choose between doing a play thathad been in my mind for years

(18:37):
called Camino Royale by Tennessee Williams and to be
directed by Kazan. And I was dying to do it.
I'd been on the road and in New York for a year and a half doing
Tennessee's the Rose Tattoo. So I thought, I'll get to do
this. I'll get to do it.
And they couldn't raise the money for the play.

(18:58):
So I went and had a screen test and movie audition and I got the
part and then the money came through for the play.
And I said, is it the tiger, thetiger or the lady or the tiger?
I chose, I thought the lady I chose to do the play, which was
a failure. The movie.

(19:21):
I had a long scene, long scene in there between me and Harry
Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures.
And it was a kind of a violent discussion about about it.
But he said you have to do a test in a seven-year contract.
I said I'll do one test, and if you want me, if you like it,
I'll do more. Said all right, do it, dude.

(19:42):
I did it. I passed the screen test and the
money for the movie came throughfor the play came through.
Now I had to choose and I chose the play.
And the movie was From Here to Eternity.
And Frank Sinatra played it. And every time he'd see me after
that, he'd say hello, you crazy actor.

(20:03):
Oh, bless your heart. Again, I'm skipping very easily
from one topic to the next year.Tell me how you hold together a
marriage as long as yours in an industry where people change
spouses the way most of us change socks.
Annie has a simple solution, shesays, pointing to herself.
Because I'm a St. That's what she says.

(20:26):
And we've been married 57 years and the I, I'm going to tell
this, I don't know on the recordor off the record.
The first editor of the book said.
The book isn't, isn't commercial.
It won't sell. This book.
Yes, I said, what do you mean? He said one marriage over 50
years. No, no scandals, no prison, no

(20:49):
drugs. So my wife said, call him up,
tell him you want the manuscriptback and you're going to put
back everything your wife made you take out like all the women
you slept with in all those movies you made.
So I call him and tell him that he says that would help your
book. So there you have it.

(21:09):
But I I didn't do that. I don't like writing books where
you say, oh, I never knew this about.
I don't. I don't want that.
Yeah, I don't mind the story about hearing how you couldn't
get up on the horse because yourpants are too tight, but I don't
want to hear about the script girl you slept with, you know,
afterwards. That's that.
No, I. I'll tell you one more anecdote
about horses. Sergio Leone said to me, Eli,

(21:31):
and he always said, Eli, the second Eli, I don't want you to
carry the gun in a holster. I said, where do I carry it?
He said, you have a rope, a run of your neck.
I said, oh, and the gun dangles between my legs.
He said yes, And when you want the gun, you twist your
shoulders. It's on a rope around your neck.

(21:51):
You twist your shoulders. I cut to your hand.
There's the gun. I said, can you show me, Show me
how to do it? He put the rope around his neck,
the gun dangling. He twisted his shoulder.
The gun missed. His hand hit him in the groin.
He said keep it in your pocket. And that was it.
Also also the movie. I kept my gun in the pocket.

(22:12):
Now you were in the Batman TV series.
I did 1 episode. This is funny.
This truly happened. I did 1 episode.
I played Mr. Freeze. It was going to freeze the whole
world. One episode I got $350.00.
You know, we shot it in New YorkCity or in California two years
ago. I got $350.00.

(22:33):
Two years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze
in the movie Batman. He got $20 million.
I said to my wife, I can't believe it.
I spent my life in the theater working.
I've made 80 movies. I do this, I get 350, he gets 20
million, she said. Lift weights, lift weights, she

(22:56):
said. Eli Wallach died in 2014.
He was 98. Now you can get your copy of The
Good, the Bad and Me by Eli Wallach and your copy of My Life
So Far by Jane Fonda by tapping the link in our show notes by
clicking the link in the description below.
If you're watching this on YouTube or by going to our

(23:17):
website heardeverything.com, we may earn an Amazon Commission if
you make a purchase. Heardeverything.com is where you
can also find my 2006 conversation with the great
actress Diane Ladd. You know, I've seen some
fantastic things in this lifetime and I believe there's
so many things that we've yet todiscover and understand.
We have potential for vast miracles yet to be explored.

(23:41):
And my 1991 conversation with anactor often compared to Eli
Wallach Hume Cronin. Psychiatrists would say I LED a
very rich fantasy life. And when you're alone, you do,
you do a lot of dreaming. And the next thing to dreaming
is pretending. And pretending is acting.
And of course, we post new episodes of Now I've Heard
Everything every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
And you can find us wherever youfind podcasts.

(24:03):
And thank you so much for listening.
Now, as I said at the outset, this concludes the 7th season of
Now I've Heard Everything. And over those seven seasons,
I've shared with you over 800 interviews from my collection,
my interview collection that goes back to the mid 1980s.
And some of these interviews haven't been heard in 20-30
years or more. Now in January, when we return

(24:27):
with Season 8, we'll be taking now, I've heard everything in a
little bit new direction, but we'll still be here every week
with exciting interviews with the most fascinating people.
I'll have much more to say aboutthat in the days ahead.
In the meantime, enjoy the holidays.
And of course, this is a really good time for you to catch up on
episodes you may have missed because all of them are on our

(24:47):
website, heardeverything.com. I'll see you back here in
January as we begin Season 8. Thank you so much for listening.
I'm Bill Thompson.