soldiers had lost their lives in the conflict Vietnamese casualties were close to 1 million. streets for the Women’s March to protest Donald Trump’s policies, already was one of Hollywood’s most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War when, at 34, she made a two-week trip to Hanoi in July 1972. In the earlier version Terry Jastrow's surname was misspelled three times as Astrow.The actress and activist, who took to the L.A. This article was amended on 11 April 2014. The Trial of Jane Fonda will run at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, from 30 July to 24 August I just want people to see this and judge for themselves." "What is the truth other than what people remember it to be and say it was, often to serve their own political view? I'm a storyteller, not a politician or a historian. She said, 'You have no idea of the anger and vitriol you will create.'" But Jastrow still hopes to make a movie version - Fonda was also vocal in her opposition to the Iraq war and the current conflict in Syria. "For the first two hours after we met, she tried to talk me out of it. I have the same passion Jane has for justice and the truth."įonda herself has had no sight of Jastrow's script, nor has she invested in the production, he stressed. "I first read the script as a favour to Terry," admits Archer, "but it became apparent that I fit in the clothes very well. Best known for her Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe nominated turn as Michael Douglas's wife in Fatal Attraction, she is also a human rights activist. Ten years Fonda's junior, Archer made her West End debut in 2001 as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. But spurred by the success of the Oscar-nominated Frost-Nixon, which started life on the London stage, Jastrow converted his screenplay into a play, which will open at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh this August with Archer in the title role. When he pitched the Waterbury meeting as the basis for a feature film, two separate Hollywood producers rejected the idea as "a hot potato". Jastrow cited a women's magazine poll in which 80% called Fonda a brave American – "but 20% hate her so much they can barely stand to hear the sound of her name". Yet still the conspiracy theories persist, multiplied in the internet age. The story she told matches the accounts of her Vietnamese guides: Fonda had learned a folk song, Dai Mi Da, to impress her hosts – but butchered its delivery and, in the infamous shot, is holding her hands up in embarrassment. On his return from Vietnam, he interviewed Fonda for four days at her ranch in Santa Fe, as well as meeting some of the Waterbury veterans. Was she a peace activist or traitor? Seeking to reconcile opposing historical accounts of the trip, Jastrow retrod Fonda's steps to Hanoi, hiring the same interpreters she used and revisiting the same places they took her, including the site of the anti-aircraft gun – now a launderette.Īnyone who has spent any time with the Hollywood actor, said Jastrow, would know she was not mocking the American troops. Wherever she went, she was photographed by western news crews and locals. "And they were killed in their tens of thousands."ĭriven by suspicion of the Nixon administration's propaganda, Fonda set out with her own camera on a 14-day tour of Vietnam to bear witness to the hushed-up US bombings of the country's dykes. "Some of these kids were 18 or 19 years old, drafted to fight a war they didn't understand against a people they didn't really know," said Jastrow. Jastrow, a seven-times Emmy award winner, said: "She had never been an activist about anything – she hadn't even followed the war."īut confined to her bed in Paris after a difficult pregnancy, Fonda became politicised as she began watching the wall-to-wall TV footage coming out of Vietnam. Spotting a chance to face her critics head-on, Fonda arranged a private room where, unaccompanied, she talked with them for four hours and, amid tears on both sides, was able to tell them her side of the story for the first time.įonda had been at the peak of her fame when she visited Vietnam in 1972: every schoolboy's dream in Barbarella, Academy award-nominated for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and an Oscar winner for Klute.
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