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| ON GOLDEN POND (1981) |
An ITC Films/IPC Films Production
A Universal/AFD Release
Technicolor, 109 minutes
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CAST
Ethel Thayer: Katharine Hepburn
Norman Thayer Jr.: Henry Fonda
Chelsea Thayer Wayne: Jane Fonda
Billy Ray: Doug McKeon
Bill Ray: Dabney Coleman
Charlie Martin: William Lanteau
Sumner Todd: Chris Rydell
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CREDITS
Director: Mark Rydell
Producer: Bruce Gilbert
Scenarist: Ernest Thompson
Based on the play by: Ernest Thompson
Photographer: Billy Williams
Production Design: Stephen Grimes
Second Unit Direction: Stephen Grimes
Set Design: Emad Halmy
Editor: Robert L. Wolfe
Sound Recorder: David Ronne
Musical Score: Dave Grusin
Wardrobe Designer: Dorothy Jenkins
Assistant Director: Gary Daigler
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SYNOPSIS
Norman Thayer Jr., a retired university professor with a heart condition, is spending what may well be his last summer of many with his wife, Ethel, at their lake house in New England. Crotchety and difficult, Norman masks his fear of death and his uncertainties about his health and his future with an attitude that others find abrasive. Stoical and feisty, the wifely Ethel is determined to make Norman's troubled days as easy as possible. Joining them is their daughter, Chelsea, a divorcee who has never gotten along with her father because he resents her not having been a boy. Result: his coldness and lifetime indifference have chilled and alienated her. She brings along her dentist boyfriend, Bill Ray, and his son, Billy, a rebellious teenager who seems to hate the world, feeling unloved and neglected.
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CRITIQUES
"Spunky Kate and Honest Hank! If people were allowed to vote on such matters, the pair would probably be grandparents to an entire nation, since they are among the very few movie stars who have gone on working while four or five movie generations have grown up. By this time, their personal crochets and graces, the events in the chronicle of their lives, have merged in the public mind with fragments from all those movies. Down the long corridor of the years, it seems we have encountered them at every turning. When they were young they gave lessons in romance; in middle age they taught steadfastness and honor; now it seems not only right but almost inevitable that they should come together - astonishingly - for the first time, to share the pains and puzzlements of age with us."
- Richard Schickel, Time
"The kind of uplifting twaddle that traffics heavily in rather basic symbols: the gold light on the pond stands for the sunset of life, and so on and on. Directed by Mark Rydell, from Ernest Thompson's adaptation of his own 1978 play, the movie is a doddering valentine in which popsy Norman (Henry Fonda), who's having his 80th birthday, and mopsy Ethel (Katharine Hepburn), who's nearing her 70th, crack jokes, weather domestic crises, and show us the strength of solid Yankee values. Or is it 'good American stock,' or Hepburn's pedigreed cheekbones? The movie is shaped so that it seems to be getting at the problems of old age (Norman's eyes and ears are failing, his memory is spotty, and his body is becoming more and more unreliable), but then his crankiness is made to appear sly - a form of one-upmanship. He's meant to be a lovable curmudgeon. With Jane Fonda, who gives a tense performance in the terrible role of the neurotic daughter of the lovey-dovey old pair."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
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COMMENTARY TRACK
"[Henry Fonda] was an oddie. I never felt that I knew him at all. He wasn't given to a lot of talk and neither was I. It is a very odd relationship acting with someone. You are of course thrown into a most intimate relationship with a person. Then the picture ends. You may never see the person again. But people - and especially ones writing articles or books - say, 'What was he (or she) like?' And I don't know. I don't really know them or anything about them. I wonder if this is true of most actors. I know that my father always advised an impersonal relationship with fellow workers. I must say I followed his advice, but as I look back I wonder if I just am like him. Not particularly given to easy friendships."
- Katharine Hepburn, Me, 1991
"It was a very good study of the relationship of a husband and wife who just really liked each other. Hank and I were the right age - we were old - so we weren't busy acting old. It comes upon one unexpectedly. Suddenly you lose your spring. Your spring in the sense of elasticity. Now - old - you don't spring up from a chair. You get up. It is a very different act. Henry had lost a little more spring than I had when we were doing the picture and we slid very easily into our relationship. He was wonderful to play with - very true - very natural. He moved me deeply in the scene when he was beginning to crumble. It really wasn't acting at all. I'm thrilled that he got the award. I think it pleased him very much. He gave some wonderful performances in his career."
- Katharine Hepburn, Me, 1991
"Hepburn is a presence wherever she is. In a room, she is the only one in it. In a big area, she doesn't do anything to dominate, she just does and is....I consider her someone very rare. You don't come across a person of her caliber often."
- Henry Fonda, Fonda: My Life, 1981
"It was a magical summer for both of us. We worked together as though we'd been doing it all of our lives. Kate is unique - in her looks, in the way she plays, most of all in herself. I love Kate for playing with me in this film. Other movies have had a lot of meaning for me...but On Golden Pond is the ultimate role of my career."
- Henry Fonda, 1981
"Jane [Fonda] and I enjoyed our scenes together. At one moment in the picture Jane had to do a back somersault into the water off a springboard. I would torture her by saying, 'If you can't do it, dear, I'll do it for you. It's one of my specialties.' You may be sure that she did it herself."
- Katharine Hepburn, Me, 1991
"One day about three weeks into this ordeal on the lake, I finally got it right. Nothing to write home about, but I had managed to flip far enough over to have time to straighten my legs and enter the water head-first. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do it again, but at least I'd done it once. As I crawled, battered and bruised, onto the shore, out of the nearby bushes appeared Ms. Hepburn. She must have been hiding there, watching me practice. She walked over to where I was standing and said in her shaky, nasal, God-is-a-New-Englander voice, 'Don't you feel good?' 'Terrific,' I answered. And it was true. 'You've taught me to respect you, Jane. You faced your fear. Everyone should know that feeling of overcoming fear and mastering something. People who aren't taught that become soggy.' Thank you, Lord! I'd been redeemed. God knows the last thing in the world I wanted was to be soggy, certainly not in the eyes of Ms. Hepburn, a living testament to nonsogginess. It was odd. In the film the backflip was to prove myself to my father. In real life I had proved myself to Ms. Hepburn. Dad probably couldn't have cared less if I'd done the dive myself or used a stunt double."
- Jane Fonda, My Life So Far, 2005
"On the set one day, Ms. Hepburn told our unit publicist that she thought it was the duty of a star to be fascinating. There is no denying the lady worked hard to do her duty and as a result was one of the two most fascinating people I have known (the other being Ted Turner)."
- Jane Fonda, My Life So Far, 2005
"[In filming the big father-daughter reconciliation scene] the camera swung around for my close-up. We did a rehearsal for the camera and...oh, no, the actor's ultimate nightmare: I was bone dry, spent, unable to call up any emotions. No one knew it, of course, because this was just a rehearsal, but I panicked. What to do? It wasn't that I had to be overtly emotional in the scene, but I needed to feel emotional and then stifle it. I tried to relax, as Strasberg would have wanted. I tried all the sense-memories I had, sang my old song that always made me cry, everything. But nothing seemed to work. As I was pacing around onshore waiting for the camera to be ready (dreading that the camera would be ready), up came Ms. Hepburn. She wasn't even supposed to be on set that day, but there she was. She looked at me. 'How are you?' she asked, sensing something. 'I'm in trouble. I've gone dry. Please don't tell Dad,' I answered weakly, and then I was called to the set. The time of reckoning had come. Hoping that some last-minute miracle would unleash my heart, I said to Mark, 'I'm going to turn my back to the camera while I prepare, and when I turn around, it means that I'm ready for you to roll.' He understood. I turned away to prepare, though I had no idea what to do, and as I was staring at the shore, trying to relax and bring myself into the scene, there was Hepburn, crouching in the bushes just within my line of vision. Nobody could see her but me. She fixed me intensely with her eyes, and slowly she raised her clenched fists and shook them as if to say, 'Do it! Go ahead. You can do this!' She was willing me into the scene: Katharine Hepburn to Jane Fonda; mother to daughter; older actress, who'd been there and knew about drying up, to younger actress. It was all those layers of things and more. Do it! Do it! You can! I know it. With her energy she literally gave me the scene, gave it to me with her fists, her eyes, and her generosity, and I will never, ever forget it."
- Jane Fonda, My Life So Far, 2005
"She was always testing me. Kate's an old-fashioned star who makes demands of old-fashioned protocol - flowers, meetings, dinners - and argues constantly in front of the crew. Of course, I'd make another film with her in a minute. This time, though, I'd give her a pair of boxing gloves."
- Bruce Gilbert, 1981
"I had the privilege of introducing her to Henry Fonda. Henry was very taciturn, in direct contrast to her effusiveness. He was a miniaturist, a detail-oriented man. She, on the other hand, was extremely generous with her feelings, with no impediment to expressing them. She embraced him and he slightly stiffened and softened and put his hands on her. She kept telling stories about her relationship with Spencer Tracy. And they were all extremely entertaining but I sensed after some days’ rehearsal that Henry was withdrawing a bit. I took her aside and told her she should make some gesture to transfer her affections to Fonda. And the following day she brought in and gave to Henry in front of everybody Spencer’s fishing hat, which he wore throughout the picture. He wept. He was very touched by that."
- Mark Rydell
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Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda
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Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda
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Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn
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Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn
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Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Jane Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Doug McKeon
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Katharine Hepburn, Jane Fonda
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Watch the trailer
