[ProfessorM]

Frances Fonda (4/4/08 – 4/14/50) is best remembered as the second wife of actor Henry Fonda and mother of actors Jane and Peter Fonda. A descendent of a Colonial family, she came to New York as a young woman to work as a secretary and nab a rich husband. At age 22 she talked 51 year old George Tuttle Brokaw, a millionaire lawyer and sportsman, into marrying her. They had one daughter and then Brokaw died in 1935 of a heart attack.
The wealthy widow Frances met 30 year old actor Henry Fonda on a movie set when she was touring England with a friend in early 1936. She even had her Buick touring car shipped from the U.S. for their travels. After a short courtship they married in September 1936. Daughter Jane was born in 1937 and son Peter in 1940. Henry Fonda’s career in Hollywood flourished with an interruption for World War 2 service in the Navy starting in 1942. Frances managed their home and raised the children.

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. 43 year old Fonda wanted to marry Susan Blanchard, with whom he had been having an affair since sometime in 1948. She was 21 years old, the daughter of Australian-born interior designer Dorothy Hammerstein, and the step-daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II.

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.
Her final stay at a mental health care facility was at the Craig House Sanitarium in Beacon, New York. On a visit home to spend time with her family, she dashed upstairs to her bedroom and then came back down. It wasn’t known until after her death that she had retrieved a small Battersea enamel gift box that she kept a safety razor in for underarm shaving.
She committed suicide at Craig House on April 14, 1950, ten days after her 42nd birthday. Before her death, she had written six notes to various individuals, but left no final message for her husband. She left a note on the bathroom door for the nurse not to come in but to call her doctor. He found Frances dead on the floor in pool of blood. She had cut her throat from ear to ear with the blade from her safety razor. Frances was cremated and Henry 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."

In recent years daughter Jane Fonda obtained Frances’s old medical records. It revealed that she had been sexually molested as a child. Frances later became a sexually promiscuous young woman enduring nine abortions. Sexual abuse and abortion does indeed have an effect on a woman’s psyche. The first picture is at a 1949 family picnic. The second picture is at her 1936 wedding to Henry Fonda.

[Wren]

Great post.

[William May]

Thank you for the awesome details. This is the kind of write-up I love, detailed and covers everything. Sad she killed herself, especially over Henry.

[vagabond]

Never knew that about ole Henry... Tragic. Thanks for the excellent post!

[ProfessorM]

I wonder if even performed in a clean, safe facility an abortion has a lasting negative psychological effect on a woman?

[jesse]

Originally Posted by ProfessorM ↗

I wonder if even performed in a clean, safe facility an abortion has a lasting negative psychological effect on a woman?

Yes it does.

[BooBooKittyChris]

Originally Posted by ProfessorM ↗

I wonder if even performed in a clean, safe facility an abortion has a lasting negative psychological effect on a woman?

Depends on the person. There's no one specific answer, cause everyone is different.

But truth be told, she really should have either aborted those 2 bitch children she spawned, or offed herself before they were brought into the world. Jane and Peter are disgraces to humanity.

[houseoftechno]

Originally Posted by BooBooKittyChris ↗

Depends on the person. There's no one specific answer, cause everyone is different.

But truth be told, she really should have either aborted those 2 bitch children she spawned, or offed herself before they were brought into the world. Jane and Peter are disgraces to humanity.

Apparently, the children's worse traits are sourced from Henry. I like granddaughter Bridgette's work though. I have no idea what kind of person she is though.