Jane Fonda (Photo courtesy lifescript via Flickr Commons)
The Los Angeles-based Stonewall Democratic Club is honoring iconic screen star and antiwar activist Jane Fonda on Sunday, April 10 at their annual Stoney Awards at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. Stonewall says Fonda will attend the event in person.
A note here for LGBTs who may only know Jane Fonda from playing opposite JLo in Monster-in-Law. This extraordinary actress, activist and writer has lived more lifetimes in her 73 years than most of us could ever imagine. A student of famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, her first major movie was Tall Story in 1960 with closeted actor Anthony Perkins. She showed a flare for comedy in the 1965 western Cat Ballou where she transforms from a school teacher-wanna be into an outlaw. It was the first of many roles in which her character would range from transformed mild-manner conformist into a strong independent woman: Barbarella ( the camp 1968 sci-fi in which women enjoy pleasure), Julia in 1977 in which she played playwright Lillian Hellman, The China Syndrome about a nuclear meltdown, 9 to 5 about feminism in the workplace with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton and Coming Home - about an injured returning Vietnam Vet – to women at their wits end, such as in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Klute, for which Fonda won an Academy Award, as she had for Coming Home.
In the 1980s, she became a fitness guru, producing work out videos a la Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical;” she retired in the 1990s but reemerged in 2005 with an autobiography entitled My Life So Far in which she reveals that she had a threesome to please her then-French husband director Roger Vadim.
But as extraordinary as is her body of work, Fonda’s life as an activist is equally captivating.
In the 1960s, Fonda supported the civil rights movement, the Black Liberation movement and the struggle of Native Americans and became an outspoken feminist in the 1970s. But it’s her activism against the Vietnam War that will forever be her greatest moral achievement and her albatross. She stood early on with Vietnam Veterans Against the War and spoke out strongly and often against the US government. “Our government was lying to us and men were dying because of it, and I felt I had to do anything that I could to expose the lies and help end the war,” Fonda said in a 2005 interview with 60 Minutes about a broadcast she did on Radio Hanoi. However she did regret and apologize for sitting atop an anti-aircraft gun with North Vietnamese troops – a photo used for propaganda that has followed her ever since.
More recently, she has focused on feminist causes from supporting The Vagina Monologues, the play that launched the movement to stop domestic violence against domestic violence, to helping women oppressed in Afghanistan and African girls who are forced to suffer genital mutilation.
In 2004, Fonda supported the all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues on Feb. 21, 2004 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, for which playwright Eve Ensler wrote a trans monologue. The performance was also produced as a documentary called Beautiful Daughters, with Calpernia Adams as one of the stars.
It will be interesting to hear where this icon activist thinks we are in the world today.
Also honored at the Stoneys: the post-Prop 8 group Latino Equality Alliance is receiving Organization of the Year Award; Bamby Salcedo, the tireless transgender activist, is receiving the Sheila J. Kuehl Trailblazer Award; Torie Osborn, a candidate for the Assembly from the 41st District, is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award; and LA City AIDS Coordinator Stephen Simon is receiving the Member of the Year Award.
Here’s the Stonewall press release:
Stonewall Democratic Club presents:
The 2011 Stoney Awards
To Purchase Tickets Online, click here
Sunday, April 10, 2011
5:30 pm5 5:30 pm VIP Reception
6:00 pm Silent Auction and No-Host Bar
7:00 pm Dinner and Program
Honoring:
Jane Fonda
(Anne Marie Staas Ally Award)
Latino Equality Alliance
(Organization of the Year Award)
Bamby Salcedo
(Sheila J. Kuehl Trailblazer Award)
Torie Osborn
(Lifetime Achievement Award)
Stephen Simon
(Member of the Year)
Sheraton Universal Hotel
333 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, CA 91608
To Purchase Tickets Online, click here
- OR -
For Sponsorships, Commemorative Journal Ads or to purchase tickets by mail, please download our event form here
For more information call: (323) 650-8190
Sunday, April 10, 2011; 6:00 pm
Universal Sheraton Hotel
333 Universal Hollywood Drivw
Los Angeles, CA
To Purchase Tickets, please visit www.stonewall-dems.org
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
My brother recommended I would possibly like this web site. He used to be entirely right. This submit truly made my day. You can not believe just how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
You’re in point of fact a good webmaster. The web site loading speed is incredible. It seems that you’re doing any unique trick. Moreover, The contents are masterwork. you’ve done a magnificent job on this subject!