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

Goldwyn, was the forerunner of Paramount Pictures. In the silent era, Wanger had helped bring early classics like The Sheik (1921) and Beau Geste (1926) to the screen; later, he would lure to the movies many writers and directors whose careers had been made on the stage (Cukor, Sturges, Mamoulian). Wanger had gone on to work for both Harry Cohn at Columbia and Irving G. Thalberg at MGM; in the latter post, he was William Randolph Hearst’s studio liaison on properties starring Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies. By 1933, when he struck out on his own, he’d become famous for infusing his productions with leftist political content.
    As an independent, he would produce classics by Ford, Hitchcock, Lang, and Ophuls. He would marry actress Joan Bennett, and, in 1951, bestow a legend on Hollywood by shooting her lover, agent Jennings Lang, in the groin. After serving four months on an honor farm near Los Angeles, Wanger would seek out director Don Siegel to make the prison drama Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954). The two would then collaborate on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, during which Wanger would introduce Siegel to an aspiring actor-writer named Sam Peckinpah, thus providing the latter with his entry into movies. Wanger’s main labor in late years would be hauling the disastrously expensive Elizabeth Taylor–Richard Burton remake of Cleopatra to the screen. He would die in 1968, his achievements little noted, an exile in the land he helped make.
    But now it is the summer of 1934, and Wanger is a prince of Hollywood. Stars like Sylvia Sidney and Charles Boyer are in his stable; he’s conquered the industry on his way to becoming its resident champion of “problem films,” the man who is called “a fine and daring producer” (Fritz Lang), “a daring experimenter” ( Time ), and a purveyor of “one of the fanciest shell games even this industry has seen” (Otis Ferguson).
    He has been tipped to Fonda by Hayward. Wanger comes from Broadway, and he still has spies reporting to him from Forty-second Street. (He is, in fact, a close friend of Fonda’s nemesis, Jed Harris.) Hollywood has fairly recently discovered sound, and the miraculous or mortifying effect of the human voice on the screen image. The movies are hungry for actors who can talk, and that means actors from the stage: already, erstwhile Broadway players like Fred Astaire, Edward G. Robinson, Katharine Hepburn, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and the Marx Brothers are building movie careers that will far outclass their collected achievements in the theater.
    In Fonda’s summary, Wanger’s deal is this: “I could go back to my beloved theatre in the winter and come out the next summer to do two pictures for one thousand dollars a week.” A remarkable offer, by any standard; it speaks of Wanger’s visionary eagerness to invest faith and dollars in the unknown. But Henry resists: “I turned to [Hayward] and said, ‘There’s something fishy.’ I just couldn’t believe it. And he laughed and laughed.”
    Wanger is one of the half dozen key people in Fonda’s professional life. But Henry will not recall him warmly, seeming to blame him for the cornpone quality of his early parts. He’s being unfair. Wanger convinces Fox to cast the unknown stage actor in The Farmer Takes a Wife, though the executives desire Joel McCrea or Gary Cooper (both unavailable). Wanger takes half of Fonda’s five-thousand-dollar-a-week loan-out fee, but by far the greater profit, in the long run, is Henry’s. Wanger produces six of his first thirteen films, and lends him for the others, but part of Wanger’s contract is that the star gets approval on loan-outs. And if Fonda’s pickings are initially slim, they improve immensely once the producer places him in two key properties— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine and You Only Live Once .
    Wanger positions Fonda to come over as both a star and an actor. He helps him to cultivate an image appealing to both sexes, free of binding