This was a lie, but the woman believed her daughter. “Get out of my house!” she raged at her husband. “How dare you do such a vile thing?”
“Did she tell you that?” he said, appalled. “Are you willing to take her word against mine? You remember how old she is, don’t you? She’s fourteen.”
“I believe her.”
“Then I’ll go. But I’ll tell you this—you’re going to have more sorrow through that girl than you’ve believed possible in this world. You’ll see.” He proved to be an accurate prophet.
Divorce is often an inherited affliction, passed on from mother to daughter, father to son, like hemophilia among the Hapsburgs. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Doris Day, and a dozen more came from broken homes. Their own chances of success as wives may well have been blighted. The children of Hollywood’s broken marriages inherit a tradition of trouble. As an example, take a look at the Fonda family tree.
I used to wonder how Henry Fonda could so much as cut his meat when he sat at the table next to mine when we were fellow passengers aboard the boat sailing from Southampton to New York. His table mate was Mrs. Frances Seymour Brokaw, whom he’d met in London, and she was so stuck on him that I doubt she let go of his hands for more than five minutes at a time all the way across the Atlantic.
Hank had already tried marriage once, and so had she. Mr. Brokaw had been the husband of Clare Boothe before she married Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life. Hank had been the husband for two years of Margaret Sullavan.
Frances Brokaw was the second Mrs. Fonda—the knot was tied in 1936—and the mother of two children: Jane, born in 1937; and Peter, who arrived in 1940.
There is a darker inheritance than divorce. As man and wife, the Fondas were seemingly happy for years. But Frances was increasingly possessive, and though no divorce suit ever was filed, Hank wanted his freedom to marry Susan Blanchard. In April 1950, Frances took her life in a Beacon, New York, sanitarium, after cutting Hank completely out of her $500,000 will.
The first Mrs. Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, went on to three other marriages; to director William Wyler in 1934; to producer Leland Hayward in 1936, to whom she bore three children, Brooke, Bridget, and Bill; to financier Kenneth Wagg, who had four children already. Margaret’s life ended in tragedy, too. She was depressed by an ever-increasing deafness, which had crept up on her unnoticed at first. We discussed it together. I spoke about possible treatments, but she dismissed them. “I’ve discovered it too late,” she said.