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Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family (FOTF or FotF) is a fundamentalist Protestant organization founded in 1977 in Southern California by James Dobson, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The group is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s. As of the 2017 tax filing year, Focus on the Family declared itself to be a church, "primarily to protect the confidentiality of our donors." Traditionally, entities considered churches have been ones that have regular worship services and congregants.

It most prominently lobbies against LGBT rights — including those related to marriage, adoption, and parenting — labeling it a "particularly evil lie of Satan". The organization also seeks to change public policy in the areas of sex education, creationism, abortion, state-sponsored school prayer, gambling, drugs, and enforcement of their interpretation of proper gender roles.

The core promotional activities of the organization include the flagship daily radio broadcast hosted by its president Jim Daly together with co-host Focus VP John Fuller. Focus also provides free resources in line with the group's views, and publishes books, magazines, videos, and audio recordings.

The organization also produces programs for targeted audiences, such as Adventures in Odyssey and Ribbits! for children, and dramas.

History
From 1977 to 2003, James Dobson served as the sole leader of the organization. Dobson and his organization generated significant controversy by taking a different approach to ministry than many other evangelical parachurch organizations, opting to combine its parenting programs with conservative political activism. By 1993, Focus on the Family was receiving approximately 10,000 personal letters and 3,000 phone calls per day by individuals seeking personal assistance from the organization. In 2003, Donald P. Hodel became president and chief executive officer, tasked with the day-to-day operations. Dobson remained chairman of the board of directors, with chiefly creative and speaking duties. In March 2005, Hodel retired and Jim Daly, formerly the Vice President in charge of Focus on the Family's International Division, assumed the role of president and chief executive officer.

By 2007, the executive leadership of the organization reportedly worked to sustain the group's cultural influence by investing more heavily into family programs targeted at younger generations as opposed to only bolstering its political programs favored by James Dobson. As a result of targeting a younger demographic more frequently in digital spaces, the organization reported a decrease in donations, dropping from 755,000 donors in 2004 to 564,000 donors by September 2007.

In November 2008, the organization announced that it was eliminating 202 jobs, representing 18 percent of its workforce. The organization also cut its budget from $160 million in fiscal 2008 to $138 million for fiscal 2009.

In February 2009, Dobson resigned his chairmanship. He left Focus on the Family in early 2010, and subsequently founded Family Talk as a non-profit organization and launched a new broadcast that began airing nationally on May 3, 2010. He is no longer affiliated with Focus on the Family.

In a break from previous status quo, president Jim Daly purportedly tried to steer the organization away from the same level of political activism that the organization was known for in its initial decades of existence. Daly made connections with figures and organizations that founder Dobson disdained and cut off, such as Democratic United States President Barack Obama, liberal activist Ted Trimpa, and the newspaper The Independent.

On June 23, 2017, Vice President Mike Pence attended the organization's 40th anniversary celebration; at the event, he praised founder James Dobson, stated that President Donald Trump is an ally of the organization, and added that the Trump administration supports its goals (including the abolition of Planned Parenthood). Pence's attendance at the event, along with Focus on the Family's stances on LGBT rights, was criticized by the Human Rights Campaign.

In its IRS Form 990 for Tax Year 2015, dated October 26, 2017, Focus on the Family for the first time declared itself a "church, convention of churches or association of churches", claiming that it was no longer required to file the IRS disclosure form and that the sources and disposition of its $89 million budget were "Not for public inspection". Tax attorney Gail Harmon, who advises nonprofit organizations on tax law, said she found the declaration "shocking", noting that "There's nothing about them that meets the traditional definition of what a church is. They don't have a congregation, they don't have the rites of various parts of a person's life." A spokesperson for the organization stated that it changed its status "primarily to protect the confidentiality of our donors". By 2023, the organization would have offices in 14 countries and partnerships in 60 countries, for an international presence in 98 countries.

Marriage and family
One of Focus on the Family's notable political stances is its strong opposition to same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships.

The organization has referred to the LGBT rights movement as a "particularly evil lie of Satan".

Wait No More
Focus on the Family's Wait No More ministry works with adoption agencies, church leaders and ministry partners to recruit families to adopt children from foster care. In Colorado, the number of children waiting for adoption dropped from approximately 800 to 350 persons, due in part to the efforts of Wait No More. Focus on the Family's efforts to encourage adoption among Christian families is part of a larger effort by Evangelicals to, in their perception, live out what they see as the "biblical mandate" to help children.

Option Ultrasound Program
Focus on the Family's Option Ultrasound Program (OUP) provides grants to crisis pregnancy centers to pay the cost of ultrasound machines or sonography training. Focus on the Family began OUP in 2004 with the goal of convincing women not to have abortions. FOTF officials said that ultrasound services help a woman better understand her pregnancy and baby's development, creating an important "bonding opportunity" between "mother and unborn child".

A study released in February 2012 shows that ultrasounds do not have a direct impact on an abortion decision. In 2011, FOTF announced that they would like to talk with pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood to work towards the shared goal of making abortion less common. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) introduced a sonogram bill in 2011 and, citing Focus on the Family, told Congress that "78 percent of women who see and hear the fetal heartbeat choose life." She was later corrected by Focus on the Family, which released a statement saying they did not release such data.

Boundless.org
Boundless.org is Focus on the Family's website for young adults ages 18–34 featuring articles, a blog, a podcast, and a conference. The site has been classified as a webzine, and originally included a moderated forum for young adults to exchange thoughts and ideas about topics relevant to them without being dictated what they should believe by an "authoritarian tone". The website covers topics such as singleness, dating, relationships, popular culture, career, and sex.

Plugged In
Plugged In is a Focus on the Family publication and associated website created for families that reviews magazines, newspaper comics, films, books, music, and TV and radio shows. As of 2007 it was one of their most popular products, and reviews were offered to members through both their website and through text messages.

Day of Dialogue
The Day of Dialogue was a student event which took place April 16. Since 2018 the event is no longer marked on a single date, or organized nationally. Founders described the goal of the event, created in opposition to the anti-bullying and anti-homophobic Day of Silence, as "encouraging honest and respectful conversation among students about God's design for sexuality." It was previously known as the Day of Truth and was founded by the Alliance Defense Fund in 2005. In 2007, Exodus International began supporting the Day of Truth, an event created by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in 2005 that challenges homosexuality. In 2009, the ADF announced they had passed on their leadership role for the event to Exodus. In October 2010, Exodus announced they would no longer support the event. President Alan Chambers stated they realised they needed to "equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they'd like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not", adding that the Day of Truth was becoming too divisive. Chambers said that Exodus had not changed its position on homosexuality, rather they were reevaluating how to best communicate their message. Focus on the Family subsequently took leadership of the event, and renamed it the Day of Dialogue.

National Day of Prayer
The National Day of Prayer Task Force is an American evangelical conservative Christian non-profit organization which organizes, coordinates, and presides over Evangelical Christian religious observances each year on the National Day of Prayer. The website of the NDP Task Force states that "its business affairs are separate" from those of Focus on the Family, but also that "between 1990 and 1993, Focus on the Family did provide grants in support of the NDP Task Force" and that "Focus on the Family is compensated for services rendered." Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson, was chairwoman of the NDP Task Force from 1991 until 2016, when Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, assumed the post.

Radio Theatre
Radio Theatre is a program run by Focus on the Family that makes both original and adapted radio dramas. Much of the staff involved with Adventures in Odyssey is also involved with Radio Theatre such as Paul McCusker. They have made adaptations of many novels including Les Miserables and Anne of Green Gables as well as an adaptation of the complete Chronicles of Narnia. Radio Theatre often hires famous actors to be a part of their adaptations such as Andy Serkis.

Love Won Out
Focus on the Family formed Love Won Out, an ex-gay ministry in 1998. In 2009, it was sold to Exodus International.

Political positions and activities
Focus on the Family's 501(c)(3) status prevents them from advocating any individual political candidate, though it has permitted them to spend up to a certain amount on other political activities such as lobbying and voter education. Focus on the Family has an affiliated group, Family Policy Alliance, though the two groups are legally separate. As a 501(c)(4) social welfare group, Family Policy Alliance has fewer political lobbying restrictions. FOTF's revenue in 2012 was US$90.5 million, and that of Family Policy Alliance (formerly CitizenLink) was US$8 million. By 2023, Family Policy Alliance and its network of local state councils were generating over $40 million of revenue.

Focus on the Family, through its partnership with Family Policy Alliance, strongly advocates for legislation against transgender rights, including crafted policies which oppose the consensus of medical experts who work with the transgender community.

Focus on the Family maintains a strong stand against abortion, and provides grant funding and medical training to assist crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs; also known as pregnancy resource centers) in obtaining ultrasound machines. According to the organization, this funding, which has allowed CPCs to provide pregnant women with live sonogram images of the developing fetus, has led directly to the birth of over 1500 babies who would have otherwise been aborted. The organization has been staunchly opposed to public funding for elective abortions.

Focus on the Family has been a prominent supporter of the pseudoscience of intelligent design, publishing pro-intelligent design articles in its Citizen magazine and selling intelligent design videos on its website. Focus on the Family co-published the intelligent design videotape Unlocking the Mystery of Life with the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement.

In New Zealand, Focus on the Family supported a Citizens Initiated Referendum on the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961, which placed limits on the physical disciplining of children.

Focus on the Family Singapore came under criticism in October 2014 over allegations of sexism and promoting gender stereotypes during their workshops on managing relationships for junior college students. The workshop received a complaint from both a Hwa Chong Junior College student, as well as negative feedback from the college management as being 'ineffective' and stopped before the end of the year.

Following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Focus on the Family published an article on its Daily Citizen site urging conservative Christians to engage in a "cultural civil war" against "radical abortion laws" implemented in left-leaning states. This added to speculation that political violence similar to the January 6th attacks could be accepted or encouraged on the grounds of opposing abortion rights.

2008 presidential campaign
In the 2008 United States presidential election, Focus on the Family shifted from supporting Mike Huckabee, to not supporting any candidate, to accepting the Republican ticket once Sarah Palin was added. Prior to the election, a television and letter campaign was launched predicting terrorist attacks in four U.S. cities and equating the U.S. with Nazi Germany. This publicity was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. Within a month before the general election, Focus on the Family began distributing a 16-page letter titled Letter from 2012 in Obama's America, which describes an imagined American future in which "many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court of the United States and a majority of Democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate." According to USA Today, the letter "is part of an escalation in rhetoric from Christian right activists" trying to paint Democratic Party presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama in a negative light.

Focus on the Family Action supported Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) in his successful December 2, 2008, runoff election win. The organization, according to the Colorado Independent, donated $35,310 in radio ads to the Chambliss runoff campaign effort. As the Independent reports, the Focus-sponsored ads were aired in about a dozen Georgia markets. The commercials were produced in the weeks after Focus laid off 202 employees, some 20 percent of its workforce, because of the national economic crisis.

Opposition to LGBTQ rights
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson drew criticism for using the group to oppose homosexual members in the United States Military. Similarly, Dobson and the organization supported a 1992 amendment to the Colorado constitution which stopped laws that allowed for protections from LGBTQ discrimination.

Dobson spoke at the 2004 rally against gay marriage called Mayday for Marriage. The event marked the first time that Dobson publicly endorsed a presidential candidate, George W. Bush. During the event he denounced the Supreme Court rulings in favor of gay rights, and he urged rally participants to vote so that the battle against gay rights could be won in the Senate.

In an interview with Christianity Today, Dobson also explained that he was not in favor of civil unions. He stated that generally agreed civil unions were merely same-sex marriage under a different name. He claimed his main priority in opposing the same-sex marriage movement was first and foremost to define marriage on the federal level as being exclusive between a man and a woman, and that afterward he wished to combat the passage of civil unions on a state-by-state basis.

Civil rights advocacy groups identify Focus on the Family as a major opponent of gay rights. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights and hate group monitoring organization, described Focus on the Family as one of a "dozen major groups [which] help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade". The SPLC does not list Focus on the Family as a hate group, however, since it opposes homosexuality "on strictly Biblical grounds".

Focus on the Family was a member of ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition formed to sponsor California Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples, which passed in 2008, but was subsequently struck down as being unconstitutional by a federal court in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

Misrepresentation of research
Social scientists have criticized Focus on the Family for misrepresenting their research in order to bolster its own perspective. Researcher Judith Stacey, whose work was used by Focus on the Family to claim that gays and lesbians do not make good parents, said that the claim was "a direct misrepresentation of the research". She elaborated, "Whenever you hear Focus on the Family, legislators or lawyers say, 'Studies prove that children do better in families with a mother and a father,' they are referring to studies which compare two-parent heterosexual households to single-parent households. The studies they are talking about do not cite research on families headed by gay and lesbian couples." FOTF claimed that Stacey's allegation was without merit and that their position is that the best interests of children are served when there is a father and a mother. "We haven't said anything about sexual orientation", said Glenn Stanton.

James Dobson cited the research of Kyle Pruett and Carol Gilligan in a Time magazine guest article in the service of a claim that two women cannot raise a child; upon finding out that her work had been used in this way, Gilligan wrote a letter to Dobson asking him to apologize and to cease and desist from citing her work, describing herself as "mortified to learn that you had distorted my work ... Not only did you take my research out of context, you did so without my knowledge to support discriminatory goals that I do not agree with ... there is nothing in my research that would lead you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article." Pruett wrote a similar letter, in which he said that Dobson "cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions", and asked that FOTF not cite him again without permission.

After Elizabeth Saewyc's research on teen suicide was used by Focus on the Family to promote conversion therapy she said that "the research has been hijacked for somebody's political purposes or ideological purposes and that's worrisome", and that research in fact linked the suicide rate among LGBT teens to harassment, discrimination, and closeting. Other scientists who have criticized Focus on the Family for misrepresenting their findings include Robert Spitzer, Gary Remafedi, and Angela Phillips.

Football advertisements
In 2010, Focus on the Family bought ad time during Super Bowl XLIV to air a commercial featuring Heisman Trophy winning Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. In the ad, Pam described Tim as a "miracle baby" who "almost didn't make it into this world", and further elaborated that "with all our family's been through, we have to be tough" (after which Pam was promptly tackled by Tim). The ad directed viewers to the organization's website.

Women's rights groups asked CBS not to air the then-unseen ad, arguing that it was divisive. Planned Parenthood released a video response of its own featuring fellow NFL player Sean James. The claim that Tebow's family chose not to perform an abortion was also widely criticized; critics felt that the claim was implausible because it would be unlikely for doctors to recommend the procedure because abortion is illegal in the Philippines. CBS's decision to run the ad was also criticized for deviating from its past policy to reject advocacy-type ads during the Super Bowl, including ads by left-leaning groups such as PETA, MoveOn.org and the United Church of Christ (which wanted to run an ad that was pro-same-sex marriage). However, CBS stated that "we have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms on the issue."

Focus on the Family produced another commercial which ran during the second quarter of the January 14, 2012 Denver Broncos-New England Patriots AFC Divisional Playoff broadcast on CBS, featuring children reciting the Bible verse John 3:16. The ad did not generate nearly the amount of controversy that surrounded the Super Bowl commercial. It did gain some national media attention, and president Jim Daly stated in a press release that its purpose was to "help everyone understand some numbers are more important than the ones on the scoreboard."

Recognition and awards
In 2008, Dobson's Focus on the Family program was nominated for induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Nominations were made by the 157 members of the Hall of Fame and voting on inductees was handed over to the public using online voting. The nomination drew the ire of gay rights activists, who launched efforts to have the program removed from the nominee list and to vote for other nominees to prevent Focus from winning. However, on July 18, 2008, it was announced that the program had won and would be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in a ceremony on November 8, 2008. Truth Wins Out, a gay rights group, protested against the ceremony with over 300 protesters.

Headquarters
The Focus on the Family headquarters is a four building, 47 acre complex located off of Interstate 25 in northern Colorado Springs, Colorado, with its own ZIP Code (80995). The buildings consist of the Administration building, International building, Welcome Center and Operations building (currently unused), and totals 526,070 square feet.

Focus on the Family moved to its current headquarters from Pomona, California, in 1991, with 1,200 employees. In 2002, the number of employees peaked at 1,400. By September 2011, after years of layoffs, they had 650 employees remaining. Christopher Ott of Salon said in 1998 that the FOTF campus has "handsome new brick buildings, professional landscaping and even its own traffic signs" and that "The buildings and grounds are well-maintained and comfortable. If there is any ostentatious or corrupt influence here, it is nowhere in sight."

title: Focus on the Family


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Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters that embodied an everyman image.

Born and raised in Nebraska, Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. He rose to film stardom with performances in films like Jezebel (1938), Jesse James (1939) and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

In 1941, Fonda starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve. After his service in World War II, he starred in two highly regarded Westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), the latter directed by John Ford. He also starred in Ford's Western Fort Apache (1948). During a seven-year break from films, Fonda focused on stage productions, returning to star in the war-boat ensemble movie Mister Roberts in 1955, a role he championed on Broadway. In 1956, at the age of 51, Fonda played the title role of 38-year-old Manny Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda starred as Juror 8, the hold-out juror, in 12 Angry Men, a film he co-produced and that earned him a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor.

Later in his career, Fonda played a range of characters, including a villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and the lead in the romantic comedy Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball. He also portrayed military figures, such as a colonel in Battle of the Bulge (1965) and Admiral Nimitz in Midway (1976).

Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond (1981), which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda. He was too ill to attend the ceremony and died from heart disease five months later.

Fonda was the patriarch of a family of actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda and grandson Troy Garity. In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Screen Legends of the Classic Hollywood Era (stars with a film debut by 1950) by the American Film Institute.

Family history and early life
Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, on May 16, 1905, Henry Jaynes Fonda was the son of printer William Brace Fonda, and his wife, Herberta (Jaynes). The family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906.

Fonda's patriline originates with an ancestor from Genoa, Italy, who migrated to the Netherlands in the 15th century. In 1642, a branch of the Fonda family immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland on the East Coast of North America. They were among the first Dutch population to settle in what is now upstate New York, establishing the town of Fonda, New York. By 1888, many of their descendants had relocated to Nebraska.

Fonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist They were a close family and highly supportive, especially in health matters, as they avoided doctors due to their religion. Despite having a religious background, he later became an agnostic. Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. He worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist. Later, he worked after school for the phone company. He also enjoyed drawing. Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America; Howard Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout. However, this is not supported elsewhere. When he was 14, he and his father witnessed the brutal lynching of Will Brown from a nearby building during the Omaha race riot of 1919. This enraged the young Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Remarking on the incident in a 1975 BBC interview, he said: "It was the most horrendous sight I'd ever seen. My hands were wet, there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope." By his senior year in high school, Fonda had grown to more than 6 ft tall, but remained shy. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism, but did not graduate. While at Minnesota he was a member of Chi Delta Xi, a local fraternity, which later became Chi Phi's Gamma Delta chapter on that campus. He took a job with the Retail Credit Company.

Early stage work
At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in You and I, in which he was cast as Ricky. He was fascinated by the stage, learning everything from set construction to stage production, and embarrassed by his acting ability. When he received the lead in Merton of the Movies, he realized the beauty of acting as a profession, as it allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. Fonda decided to quit his job and go east in 1928 to seek his fortune.

He arrived on Cape Cod and played a minor role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. A friend took him to Falmouth, MA where he joined and quickly became a valued member of the University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company. There, he worked with Margaret Sullavan, his future wife. James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left, though they were soon to become lifelong friends. Fonda left the Players at the end of their 1931–1932 season after appearing in his first professional role in The Jest, by Sem Benelli. Joshua Logan, a young sophomore at Princeton who had been double-cast in the show, gave Fonda the part of Tornaquinci, "an elderly Italian man with a long white beard and even longer hair." Also in the cast of The Jest with Fonda and Logan were Bretaigne Windust, Kent Smith, and Eleanor Phelps.

Soon after, Fonda headed for New York City to be with his then wife, Margaret Sullavan. The marriage was brief, but when James Stewart came to New York his luck changed. Getting contact information from Joshua Logan, "Jimmy" and "Hank" found they had a lot in common, as long as they didn't discuss politics. The two men became roommates and honed their skills on Broadway. Fonda appeared in theatrical productions from 1926 to 1934. They fared no better than many Americans in and out of work during the early part of the Great Depression, sometimes lacking enough money to take the subway.

Entering Hollywood
Fonda got his first break in films when he was hired in 1935 as Janet Gaynor's leading man in 20th Century Fox's screen adaptation of The Farmer Takes a Wife; he reprised his role from the Broadway production of the same name, which had gained him recognition. Suddenly, Fonda was making $3,000 a week and dining with Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard. Stewart soon followed him to Hollywood, and they roomed together again, in lodgings next door to Greta Garbo. In 1935 Fonda starred in the RKO film I Dream Too Much with the opera star Lily Pons. The New York Times announced him as "Henry Fonda, the most likable of the new crop of romantic juveniles." Fonda's film career blossomed as he costarred with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors.

Fonda starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, and a short rekindling of their relationship led to a brief but temporary consideration of remarriage. Fonda got the nod for the lead role in You Only Live Once (1937), also costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang. He starred opposite Bette Davis, who had chosen him, in the film Jezebel (1938). This was followed by the title role in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), his first collaboration with director John Ford, and that year he played Frank James in Jesse James (1939) starring Tyrone Power and Nancy Kelly. Another 1939 film was Drums Along the Mohawk, also directed by Ford.

Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play Tom Joad in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1940). A reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who preferred Tyrone Power, insisted on Fonda's signing a seven-year contract with his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Fonda agreed and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the film, which many consider to be his finest role. Fonda starred in Fritz Lang's The Return of Frank James (1940) with Gene Tierney. He then played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve (1941), and again teamed with Tierney in the successful screwball comedy Rings on Her Fingers (1942). Stanwyck was one of Fonda's favorite co-stars, and they appeared in three films together. He was acclaimed for his role in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

Fonda enlisted in the United States Navy to fight in World War II, saying, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio." Previously, Jimmy Stewart and Fonda had helped raise funds for the defense of Britain. Fonda served for three years, initially as a quartermaster 3rd class on the destroyer USS Satterlee (DD-626). He was later commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Navy Presidential Unit Citation. After being discharged from active duty due to being "overage in rank", Fonda was transferred to the Naval Reserve, serving three years (1945-1948).

Postwar career
After the war, Fonda took a break from movies and attended Hollywood parties and enjoyed civilian life. Stewart and Fonda would listen to records and invite Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Dinah Shore, and Nat King Cole over for music, with the latter giving the family piano lessons. Fonda played Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946), which was directed by John Ford. Fonda did seven postwar films until his contract with Fox expired, the last being Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon (1947), opposite Joan Crawford. He starred in The Fugitive (1947), which was the first film of Ford's new production company, Argosy Pictures. In 1948 he appeared in a subsequent Argosy/Ford production, Fort Apache, as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role.

Refusing another long-term studio contract, Fonda returned to Broadway, wearing his own officer's cap to originate the title role in Mister Roberts, a comedy about the U.S. Navy, during World War II in the South Pacific Ocean where Fonda, a junior officer, Lt. Douglas A. Roberts wages a private war against a tyrannical captain. He won a 1948 Tony Award for the part. Fonda followed that by reprising his performance in the national tour and with successful stage runs in Point of No Return and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. After an eight-year absence from films, he starred in the same role in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts with James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of Mister Roberts, Fonda came to blows with director John Ford, who punched him during filming, and Fonda vowed never to work for the director again. While he kept that vow for years, Fonda spoke glowingly of Ford in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford and in a documentary on Ford's career alongside Ford and James Stewart. Fonda refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of Mr. Roberts, reviving Fonda's film career after concentrating on the stage for years.

After Mr. Roberts, Fonda was next in Paramount Pictures's production of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace (1956) about French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, in which he played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn; it took two years to shoot. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of robbery in The Wrong Man; the unusual semidocumentary work of Hitchcock was based on an actual incident and partly filmed on location. In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into producing with 12 Angry Men, in which he also starred. The film was based on a teleplay and a script by Reginald Rose, and directed by Sidney Lumet. The low-budget production was completed in 17 days of filming, mostly in one claustrophobic jury room. It had a strong cast, including also Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, and E. G. Marshall. The intense story about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young man accused of murder was well received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose, and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as Juror 8. Early on, the film drew poorly, but after gaining recognition and awards, it proved a success. In spite of the outcome, Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie again, fearing that failing as a producer might derail his acting career. After acting in the Western movies The Tin Star (1957) and Warlock (1959), Fonda returned to the production seat for the NBC Western television series The Deputy (1959–1961), in which he starred as Marshal Simon Fry. His co-stars were Allen Case and Read Morgan.

During the 1960s, Fonda performed in a number of war and Western epics, including 1962's The Longest Day and the Cinerama production How the West Was Won, 1965's In Harm's Way, and Battle of the Bulge. In the Cold War suspense film Fail-Safe (1964), Fonda played the President of the United States who tries to avert a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets after American bombers are mistakenly ordered to attack the USSR. He also returned to more light-hearted cinema in Spencer's Mountain (1963), which was the inspiration for the 1970s TV series, The Waltons, based on the Great Depression of the 1930s memories of Earl Hamner Jr.

Fonda appeared against type as the villain 'Frank' in 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West. After initially turning down the role, he was convinced to accept it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone (who had previously tried to hire him to portray the Man with No Name in his Dollars Trilogy, a role that was later taken on by Clint Eastwood), who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to take the part. Fonda had planned on wearing a pair of brown-colored contact lenses, but Leone preferred the paradox of contrasting close-up shots of Fonda's innocent-looking blue eyes with the vicious personality of the character Fonda portrayed.

Fonda's relationship with Jimmy Stewart survived their disagreements over politics – Fonda was a liberal Democrat, and Stewart a conservative Republican. After a heated argument, they avoided talking politics with each other. The two men teamed up for 1968's Firecreek, where Fonda again played the heavy. In 1970, Fonda and Stewart co-starred in the Western The Cheyenne Social Club, in which they humorously argued politics. They had first appeared together on film in On Our Merry Way (1948), an episodic comedy which also starred William Demarest and Fred MacMurray and featured a grown-up Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, who had acted as a child in the Our Gang movie serials of the 1930s.

Later career
Despite approaching his seventies, Fonda continued to work in theater, television and film through the 1970s. In 1970, Fonda appeared in three films; the most successful was The Cheyenne Social Club. The other two films were Too Late the Hero, in which Fonda played a secondary role, and There Was a Crooked Man, about Paris Pitman Jr. (played by Kirk Douglas) trying to escape from an Arizona prison. Fonda returned to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. He starred in the ABC television series The Smith Family between 1971 and 1972. A television film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel, 1973's The Red Pony, earned Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, Ash Wednesday, he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, My Name Is Nobody, presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a "fan" of sorts.

Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, Clarence Darrow, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Fonda's health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion. After the appearance of a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by prostate cancer, he had a pacemaker installed following cancer surgery. Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After the run of a 1978 play, First Monday of October, he took the advice of his doctors and quit plays, though he continued to star in films and television.

Fonda appeared in a revival of The Time of Your Life that opened on March 17, 1972, at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles, where Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Gloria Grahame, Ron Thompson, Strother Martin, Jane Alexander, Lewis J. Stadlen, Richard X. Slattery, and Pepper Martin were among the cast with Edwin Sherin directing.

In 1976, Fonda appeared in several notable television productions, the first being Collision Course, the story of the volatile relationship between President Harry Truman (E. G. Marshall) and General MacArthur (Fonda), produced by ABC. After an appearance in the acclaimed Showtime broadcast of Almos' a Man, based on a story by Richard Wright, he starred in the epic NBC miniseries Captains and the Kings, based on Taylor Caldwell's novel. Three years later, he appeared in ABC's Roots: The Next Generations, but the miniseries was overshadowed by its predecessor, Roots. Also in 1976, Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster Midway.

Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films. The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacles and Rollercoaster, in which Fonda appeared with George Segal, Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. He performed again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and José Ferrer in the killer bee action film The Swarm. He also acted in the global disaster film Meteor (his second role as a sitting President of the United States after Fail-Safe), with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden, and the Canadian production City on Fire, which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in Wanda Nevada (1979), with Brooke Shields.

As Fonda's health declined and he took longer breaks between filming, critics began to acknowledge the value of his extensive body of work. In 1979, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Jimmy Stewart. In 1979, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame for his achievements on Broadway and received the Kennedy Center Honor. Lifetime Achievement awards from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards followed in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

Fonda continued to act into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions in which he was featured before his death were for television. The television works included the live performance of Preston Jones's The Oldest Living Graduate and the Emmy-nominated Gideon's Trumpet (co-starring Fay Wray in her last performance) about Clarence Gideon's fight to have the right to publicly funded legal counsel for the indigent.

On Golden Pond in 1981, the film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play, marked one final professional and personal triumph for Fonda. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, along with Fonda and his daughter, Jane. The elder Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life. Jane Fonda has said that elements of the story mimicked their real-life relationship and helped them resolve certain issues. She bought the film rights in the hope that her father would play the role and later described it as "a gift to my father that was so unbelievably successful."

Premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics and, after a limited release on December 4, On Golden Pond developed enough of an audience to be widely released on January 22. With 10 Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster. In addition to wins for Hepburn (Best Actress), and Thompson (Screenplay), On Golden Pond brought Fonda his only Oscar – for Best Actor (he was the oldest recipient of the award; it also earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor award). Fonda was by that point too ill to attend the ceremony, and his daughter Jane accepted on his behalf. She said when accepting the award that her dad would probably quip, "Well, ain't I lucky." Years later, Fonda's performance would be remembered as a "brutally honest portrayal of frightened old age."

Fonda's final performance was in the 1981 television drama Summer Solstice with Myrna Loy. It was filmed after On Golden Pond had wrapped and Fonda was in rapidly declining health.

Marriages and children
Fonda was married five times and had three children, one of them adopted. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 soon ended in separation, which was finalized in a 1933 divorce. Throughout most of 1935, Fonda dated actress/singer Shirley Ross;   by year's end, it had been widely reported—by, among others, then-syndicated columnist Ed Sullivan—that the couple was engaged, with wedding plans afoot. Reports notwithstanding, both parties evidently reconsidered and in January 1936 it was reported that Fonda was now seeing actress Virginia Bruce.

Later that year Fonda married Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, widow of a wealthy industrialist, George Tuttle Brokaw. The Brokaws had a daughter who had been born soon after the Brokaws marriage in 1931.

Fonda had met Frances at Denham Studios in England on the set of Wings of the Morning, the first picture in Europe to be filmed in three-strip Technicolor. They had two children, Jane (b. 1937) and Peter (1940–2019), both of whom became successful actors. Jane has won two Best Actress Academy Awards, and Peter was nominated for two Oscars, one for Best Actor. In August 1949, Fonda announced to Frances that he wanted a divorce so he could remarry; their 13 years of marriage had not been happy ones for him. Devastated by Fonda's confession and plagued by emotional problems for many years, Frances went into the Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in January 1950 for treatment. She committed suicide there on April 14. Before her death, she had written six notes to various individuals, but left no final message for her husband. Fonda quickly arranged a private funeral with only himself and his mother-in-law, Sophie Seymour, in attendance. Years later, Dr. Margaret Gibson, the psychiatrist who had treated Frances at Austen Riggs, described Henry Fonda as "a cold, self-absorbed person, a complete narcissist."

Later in 1950, Fonda married Susan Blanchard, his mistress. She was 21 years old, the daughter of Australian-born interior designer Dorothy Hammerstein, and the step-daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy Fishman (born 1953). They divorced three years later. Blanchard was in awe of Fonda, and she described her role in the marriage as "a geisha", doing everything she could to please him, dealing with and solving problems he would not acknowledge.

In 1957 Fonda married the Italian baroness Afdera Franchetti. They divorced in 1961. Soon after, in 1965, Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams (born in 1932) and remained with her until his death in 1982. Fonda's relationship with his children has been described as "emotionally distant". Fonda loathed displays of feeling in himself or others, and this was a consistent part of his character. Whenever he felt that his emotional wall was being breached, he had outbursts of anger, exhibiting a furious temper that terrified his family. In Peter Fonda's 1998 autobiography Don't Tell Dad (1998), he described how he was never sure how his father felt about him. He never volunteered to his father that he loved him until he was elderly, and Peter finally heard, "I love you, son." His daughter Jane rejected her father's friendships with Republican actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart. Their relationship became extremely strained as Jane Fonda became a left-wing activist.

Jane Fonda reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting days. In 1958 she met Lee Strasberg while visiting her father in Malibu. The Fonda and Strasberg families were neighbors, and she had developed a friendship with Strasberg's daughter, Susan. Jane Fonda began studying acting with Strasberg, learning the techniques of "The Method" of which Strasberg was a renowned proponent. This proved to be a pivotal point in her career. As Jane Fonda developed her skill as an actress, she became frustrated with her father's talent that, to her, appeared a demonstration of effortless ability.

Politics
Fonda was an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party and "an admirer" of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1960 Fonda appeared in a campaign commercial for presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. The ad focused on Kennedy's naval service during World War II, specifically the famous PT-109 incident. He supported Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 United States presidential election, and Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic Party primaries. He was initially a registered Republican, but switched parties.

On acting
The writer Al Aronowitz, while working on a profile of Jane Fonda for The Saturday Evening Post in the 1960s, asked Henry Fonda about method acting: "I can't articulate about the Method", he told me, "because I never studied it. I don't mean to suggest that I have any feelings one way or the other about it...I don't know what the Method is and I don't care what the Method is. Everybody's got a method. Everybody can't articulate about their method, and I can't, if I have a method—and Jane sometimes says that I use the Method, that is, the capital letter Method, without being aware of it. Maybe I do; it doesn't matter."

Aronowitz reported Jane saying, "My father can't articulate the way he works. He just can't do it. He's not even conscious of what he does, and it made him nervous for me to try to articulate what I was trying to do. And I sensed that immediately, so we did very little talking about it...he said, 'Shut up, I don't want to hear about it.' He didn't want me to tell him about it, you know. He wanted to make fun of it."

Death and legacy
Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982, from heart disease. Fonda's wife, Shirlee, his daughter Jane, and his son Peter were at his side that day. He suffered from prostate cancer, but this did not directly cause his death and was noted only as a concurrent ailment on his death certificate.

Fonda requested that no funeral be held, and his body was cremated. President Ronald Reagan, a former actor himself, hailed Fonda as "a true professional dedicated to excellence in his craft. He graced the screen with a sincerity and accuracy which made him a legend."

The home where Fonda was born in 1905 is preserved at The Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Fonda is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era. On the centenary of his birth, May 16, 2005, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) honored Fonda with a marathon of his films. Also in May 2005, the United States Post Office released a 37-cent postage stamp with an artist's drawing of Fonda as part of their "Hollywood legends" series. The Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, originally known as the Carter DeHaven Music Box, was named for the actor in 1985 by the Nederlander Organization.

In popular culture
In Joseph Heller's satirical novel Catch-22, there is a running joke that fictional character Major Major Major Major resembles Henry Fonda. Philip D. Beidler comments that "one of the novel's great absurd jokes is the character's bewildering resemblance to Henry Fonda". Taking into account when Catch-22 was written, this most likely refers to Fonda circa 1955, when he starred in the film Mister Roberts.

Filmography
From the beginning of his career in 1935 through his last projects in 1981, Fonda appeared in 106 films, television programs, and shorts. Through the course of his career, he appeared in many films, including classics such as 12 Angry Men and The Ox-Bow Incident. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath and won for his part in 1981's On Golden Pond. Fonda made his mark in Westerns (which included his most villainous role as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West) and war films, and made frequent appearances in both television and foreign productions late in his career.

Theatre
Broadway stage performances
 * The Game of Love and Death (November 1929 – January 1930)
 * I Loved You, Wednesday (October – December 1932)
 * New Faces of 1934 (Revue; March – July 1934)
 * The Farmer Takes a Wife (October 1934 – January 1935)
 * Blow Ye Winds (September – October 1937)
 * Mister Roberts (February 1948 – January 1951)
 * Point of No Return (December 1951 – November 1952)
 * The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (January 1954 – January 1955)
 * Two for the Seesaw (January 1958 – October 1959)
 * Silent Night, Lonely Night (December 1959 – March 1960)
 * Critic's Choice (December 1960 – May 1961)
 * A Gift of Time (February – May 1962)
 * Generation (October 1965 – June 1966)
 * Our Town (November – December 1969)
 * Clarence Darrow (March – April 1974; March 1975)
 * First Monday in October (October – December 1978)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Henry Fonda


text:
Beyond the Fringe

Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.

The show
The idea for Beyond the Fringe came from Robert Ponsonby, who was the director of the Edinburgh International Festival from 1956 to 1960. He felt that the Festival should put on a late-night revue "to beat The Fringe at its own game." By 1960, the Festival was so firmly established that "it required for its health some good-humoured self-mockery."

Ponsonby's idea was to bring together the best parts of the revues staged by the Cambridge Footlights and The Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Fringe in previous years. His assistant, John "Johnny" Bassett, recommended Dudley Moore, who had played with Bassett in a jazz band while at university in Oxford. Moore in turn recommended Alan Bennett, who had had a hit at the Fringe a few years earlier. Bassett also chose Jonathan Miller, who had been a Footlights star in 1957. Miller recommended Cook.

Bennett and Miller were already pursuing careers in academia and medicine respectively, but Cook had an agent, having written a West End revue for Kenneth Williams. Cook's agent negotiated a higher weekly fee for him, but by the time the agent's fee was deducted Cook actually earned less than the others from the initial run.

The majority of the sketches were by Cook and were largely based on material written for other revues. Among the entirely new material were "The End of the World", "TVPM" and "The Great Train Robbery". Cook and Moore revived some of the sketches on their later television and stage shows, most famously the two-hander "One Leg Too Few". Miller told the press in March 1960 that the show would "be anti-establishment, anti-capital punishment, anti-colour bar and anti-1960. But it will be all very serious stuff, sharp, bitter and to the point."

The show's run in Edinburgh was immensely successful. Before beginning its run in the West End, the show had great success at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, but a brief run in Brighton garnered a lukewarm response. When the revue transferred to the Fortune Theatre in London, opening in early May 1961, in a revised production by Donald Albery and William Donaldson and directed by Eleanor Fazan, it became a true sensation. This was helped in large part by a favourable review by Kenneth Tynan.

In 1962, the show transferred to the John Golden Theatre in New York, with its original cast. President John F. Kennedy attended a performance on 10 February 1963. The show continued in New York, with most of the original cast, until 1964, when Paxton Whitehead replaced Miller, while the London version continued with a different cast until 1966.

Controversy
The revue was widely considered to be ahead of its time, both in its unapologetic willingness to debunk figures of authority, and by virtue of its inherently surrealistic comedic vein. Humiliation of authority was something only previously delved into in The Goon Show and, arguably, Hancock's Half Hour, with such parliamentarians as Sir Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan coming under special scrutiny—although the BBC were predisposed to frown upon it. Macmillan—according to Cook—was not particularly fond of the slurred caricature and charade of senile forgetfulness (marked by a failure to pronounce 'Conservative Party' coherently) handed down on him in Cook's impersonation. Since Beyond the Fringe was not owned by the BBC, however, the quartet enjoyed relative carte blanche. The only protocol they were obliged to adhere to was that, by law, their scripts had to be sent to the Lord Chamberlain for approval prior to performance, a requirement abolished in 1968.

Most specifically, its lampooning of the British war effort in a sketch titled "The Aftermyth of War" was scorned by some war veterans for its supposed insensitivity. One British visitor to the Broadway performance was said to have stood up and shouted 'rotters!' at a sketch he found distasteful, before apparently sitting down again and enjoying the remainder of the show, while another, at the first performance in Edinburgh, allegedly stood up and declared that the 'young bounders don't know the first thing about it!' and promptly left the auditorium. In response to these negative audience reactions, the Beyond the Fringe team said that they were not ridiculing the efforts of those involved in the war, but were challenging the subsequent media portrayal of them.

Influence
Beyond the Fringe was a forerunner to British television programmes That Was the Week That Was, At Last the 1948 Show, and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

As with the established comedy revue, it was a series of satirical sketches and musical pieces using a minimal set, looking at events of the day and, with Shakespeare, the past. It effectively represented the views and disappointments of the first generation of British people to grow up after World War II, and gave voice to a sense of the loss of national purpose with the end of the British Empire. Although all of the cast contributed material, the most often quoted pieces were those by Cook, many of which had appeared before in his Cambridge Footlights revues. The show broke new ground with Peter Cook's impression of then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan; on one occasion, this was performed with Macmillan in the audience, and Cook added an ad lib ridiculing Macmillan for turning up to watch.

The show is credited with giving many other performers the courage to be satirical and more improvisational in their manner, and broke the conventions of not lampooning the Royal Family or the government of the day. Shakespearean drama was another target of their comedy. There were also a number of musical items in the show, using Dudley Moore's music, most famously an arrangement of the Colonel Bogey March which resists Moore's repeated attempts to bring it to an end.

The show prefigured the Satire Boom of the 1960s. Without it, there might not have been either That Was the Week That Was or Private Eye, the satirical magazine which originated at the same time, that partially survived due to financial support from Peter Cook, and that served as the model for the later American Spy magazine. Cook and Moore formed a comedy duo and appeared in the popular television show Not Only... But Also, and the 1967 film Bedazzled. Cook also launched his club, The Establishment, around this time. Many of the members of Monty Python recall being inspired by Beyond the Fringe.

The retrospective show Before the Fringe, broadcast during the early years of BBC 2, took its title from this production. It consisted of performances of material that was popular in theatrical revue before the advent of Beyond the Fringe.

International success
The show's success was not limited to the UK. In 1962, it also opened in South Africa. Next it arrived in the US. First the Broadway Company opened on 27 October 1962, then it was performed by the National Company in 1963. Subsequently, opening on 8 October 1964, the National Touring Company took it on a nationwide tour for six months as Beyond the Fringe '65 under the auspices of Alexander H. Cohen, with the cast consisting of Bob Cessna, Donald Cullen, Joel Fabiani, and James Valentine. Slight changes were made to adapt the show for American audiences, for instance the opening number (discussing America) was retitled "Home Thoughts from Abroad".

The show was revived in slightly altered form in Los Angeles in 2000 and 2001 by Joseph Dunn's ReEstablishment Theater to critical acclaim.

Legacy
The four original members of Beyond the Fringe feature prominently as characters in the play Pete and Dud: Come Again, by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde. Appropriately, that comedy-drama had a sellout run at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe before transferring to London's West End at The Venue, in 2006, in a version starring Kevin Bishop as Moore, Tom Goodman-Hill as Cook, Fergus Craig as Alan Bennett and Colin Hoult as Jonathan Miller. It subsequently embarked on a nationwide tour.

The creation, performance and aftermath of the show is covered in the 2004 film Not Only But Always.

Good Evening, Roy Smiles' play about the Beyond The Fringe team was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2008, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Dudley Moore.

In 2017, Beyond the Fringe was recreated for an episode of the Netflix TV series The Crown in which Prime Minister Macmillan is in attendance and singled out for abuse by Peter Cook (performed by Patrick Warner.)

Discography

 * Beyond the Fringe, UK, Parlophone, audio lp, mono, 1961, PMC 1145
 * Beyond the Fringe (Original Broadway Cast Recording), USA Capitol, audio lp, mono, 1962, W1792 – also stereo SW1792
 * Alexander H Cohen Presents Beyond the Fringe '64, USA Capitol, audio lp, mono, 1964, W2072 – also stereo SW2072
 * Complete Beyond the Fringe [Box set], EMI Audio CD, 21 October 1996, ASIN: B000006SW2
 * Beyond the Fringe, Acorn Media DVD, 5 October 2005, AMP 7990, ISBN 1-56938-799-0. "The complete 1964 gala farewell performance"
 * Beyond the Fringe Live at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, UK, EMI audio CD, 2011

General bibliography

 * Bennett, Alan (1994) Writing Home ISBN 0-571-17388-8
 * Bergan, Ronald, Beyond the Fringe ... and Beyond. London, Virgin Books (1989) ISBN 1-85227-175-2
 * Carpenter, Humphrey (2000) That Was Satire That Was ISBN 0-575-06588-5
 * Cook, William, ed. (2004) Goodbye Again ISBN 1-84413-400-8
 * Paskin, Barbra (1997) Dudley Moore ISBN 0-330-35322-5
 * Thompson, Harry (1997) Peter Cook ISBN 0-340-64969-0
 * Wilmut, Roger, From Fringe to Flying Circus: Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy, 1960–1980, London, Methuen (1980) ISBN 978-0-413-46950-2

title: Beyond the Fringe