Jane Fonda by Patricia Bosworth

Author:Patricia Bosworth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part IV

POLITICAL ACTIVIST: 1970–1988

Jane Fonda is important because she is a celebrity

and unimportant because she is a celebrity.

She is a revolutionary who happens to be an

actress who happens to be a revolutionary.

— TIM FINDLEY, “HANOI JANE FONDA”

22

AS SOON AS SHE slammed the door and gunned the motor of the station wagon, Jane forgot about Vanessa. Oh, yes, she loved her very much, but she had the ability to blot out one reality (in this case abandoning her daughter) and replace it with another one.

Jane drove very fast out of Los Angeles and onto the Pacific Coast Highway. She chain-smoked, her face half-hidden by big dark glasses. Every so often she’d consult a map. Her destination was the Paiute Indian reservation forty miles outside of Reno.

For a while she didn’t speak to Elisabeth Vailland, who sat next to her gazing out at the scenery: Hearst Castle at San Simeon, the redwoods rising tall and stately above Big Sur. When they approached the Golden Gate Bridge spanning San Francisco Bay, Elisabeth gasped, “C’est formidable.” She had never been in the United States before and she was impressed. Every so often she’d scribble notes on a pad. The notes would be part of a memoir she later wrote about their “political journey.” It was published in France as Le Voyage dans L’Amérique de gauche, but in fact it sheds little light on what actually happened on the trip.

In the memoir Elisabeth writes impersonally about their friendship, but there were always rumors that she and Jane were lovers. In her memoir and in interviews Jane has denied the rumors, saying, “People thought she was my hairdresser, too.” But she was intrigued by Elisabeth, with her frizzy black hair and inquisitive nut-brown face. As a young girl she’d been a partisan in Italy during World War II. While married to Roger Vailland, she became part of one of the most vociferous left-wing intellectual groups in Paris.

In his autobiography Vadim described the meeting of the two women in the Vailland garden outside Paris on a cloudy afternoon. They had shaken hands, and then Jane smiled her dazzling American smile, all big white teeth and glistening lips, and began addressing Elisabeth in impeccable French.

Elisabeth seemed mesmerized. After observing Jane for several moments, she started caressing her face and murmuring, “I like your third eye.” Vadim thought she meant she admired Jane’s power to juggle roles.

They became friends. Elisabeth would see a rough cut of Barbarella and the French version of The Game Is Over, in which Jane goes mad. She would hang out in the kitchen of the farm when Vadim was teaching Jane how to make mayonnaise; she would be with Jane in the garden as she played with Nathalie and Christian and then frolicked with her dogs. There were so many facets to this woman, Elisabeth would think.

Now on their cross-country trip Jane kept melting into the persona of Madame Vadim as they discussed the curious bond they shared, since they’d both procured many women for their husbands and joined them in bed as well.

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