Free The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda by Devin McKinney

Goldfarb, in an earnest gaze and says something like: I have come all the way to your fine city of New York, Mr. Goldfarb, to be an actor. It hasn’t worked out for me. So now I have decided that it’s time for me to grow up. To put away childish things and become—yes, what I always wanted to be—a florist.
    Fonda is acting, but part of him must be telling the truth, because he gets the job. Now he is hauling flowerpots up and down a staircase, scaling an endless ladder in a tiresome dream. What keeps the body pressing against failure, the spirit against rejection? It must be the sense that there is no alternative to perseverance—or that the alternative is unthinkable.
    *   *   *
    Then, out of nowhere, the thing happens. Anyone who storms or steals past fame’s first forbidden gate gets through on a thing : a break of breaks, the moment of being seen.
    Fonda is cast in New Faces, a musical-comedy revue conceived by a fledgling impresario, Leonard Sillman. It’s conceived as a performance showcase for unknown stage talent, a collection of sketches, dances, songs, parodies of pop culture—“a potpourri, a bouillabaisse,” in the words of composer Arthur Siegel, “in which there was something for everyone.” Sketch will follow sketch in rapid order, with music covering the cracks and blackout routines fronting the set shifts. For Sillman, Siegel says, pace “was very important. He didn’t want to give an audience a chance to think about what it just saw.”
    Fonda snags an audition. He admits he can’t sing, dance, or tell jokes; instead, he does his impression of a man changing a baby’s diaper while driving a car. Sillman—who is even younger than Fonda, and a hearty laugher—signs him. Henry becomes one new face in a troupe of twenty-two.
    The band of outsiders rehearses in whatever space is found (apartments, a church, a restaurant, unheated lofts) and runs performances for selected “angels” (investors). “Finances had to be pooled so that quarters could be doled out for lunch money,” runs a contemporary account. “Collections were taken to buy shoes for two penniless performers. Watches and jewels were in pawn…” Finally the balance is tipped when a producer places a call to Hollywood, and America’s Sweetheart herself, Mary Pickford, agrees to foot half the bill.
    The show goes on. Fonda is not at first prominent; he and a few others, including a classical dancer named Imogene Coca, do a deadpan group dance during blackouts. But later, Fonda will stand in for an ailing singer to deliver the show’s hit song, “She’s Resting in the Gutter and She Loves It.”
    New Faces imparts welcome silliness to an uneasy springtime, and a cool breeze to a few thousand souls stewing in the cauldron of the Great Depression. Critics and playgoers turn out to root for the underdogs; reviews are encouraging. Time ’s critic believes the show “lacks pace and polish, [but] contains enough wit to make it good entertainment of its type.” The Associated Press says it is “a fairly witty and pseudo-sophisticated revue and, more important, is a box office sell-out.” Staged at the Fulton Theatre and running for 149 performances, from March through July 1934, New Faces is a small hit.
    And Fonda is a hit in it. His song and dance routines are enough to convince at least one spectator that he could be the next idol of musical comedy. Tractor mogul and part-time producer Dwight Deere Wiman says he would like to place Fonda under contract for one year, during which time he’ll receive instruction as a singer and dancer. The dangling carrots are one hundred dollars a week and Henry’s vision of himself in a tuxedo, spinning into the night.
    Funny that he was first noticed and pursued not for his moody magnificence or wholesome mug, but for talents—singing and dancing—that in his hands would have been the blunt tools of low comedy. His entire career shows that when walking, running, riding, or