Charlie Rose with Jane Fonda & Barbara Walters

Guest host Barbara Walters talks with Jane Fonda for the hour. Topics include her film career, her three marriages, her opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and her relationship with her children.

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Sympathetic to the personal- appalled by the political

This interview had for me two distinct parts. The first, the longest, the most interesting and the part I was sympathetic to , was the personal story part. First of all, there is something disconcerting about Fonda's appearance. At the age of sixty- eight she looks exceptionally well. Walters ,also blonded- up, has known Fonda for thirty- six years and it is something of an 'old friends' conversation. Fonda who is promoting her autobiography speaks about her now after her third- divorce coming at last to her true authentic self. She speaks about how all her life she searched for and needed the approval of a man, and now is free of this. In this context her newly found 'spirituality' or Christian faith is a key element although she does not go on about this aspect of it. She tells of her three marriages, including an unsavory side with her first husband. She appears as a truly winning personality, able to laugh at herself, with a fine sense of humor. Her teary- eyedness comes in speaking about her father, the actor Henry Fonda and her receiving the Oscar for him in a movie she made and played in , 'Golden Pond' which was her father's farewell appearance. Her deepest expression of emotion is in talking about how she was not a good mother to her daughter, and only in recent years has found a way to heal the relationship. She also speaks about her pleasure in being a grandmother. She tells of her meeting her third- husband Ted Turner, describes his character with some affection, tells why her religiousness and his infidelity led to the break- up. This was the sympathetic personal part.
Then she went on to to the political side. She did express regret about certain of her actions in Vietnam , the famous photo of her on a Vietnamse artillery- battery. But then she went on to insult the present President and harangue about the war in Iraq. Humility after the insult and pain she caused so many during the Vietnam War and since , is not her strong suit. At that point I stopped watching. October 29, 2007

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