Quote of the Day- Henry Fonda

We continue our series of quotes from actors who have played real-life presidents on film or television or both, with a quip from late Henry Fonda (1905-1982) who finally won an Oscar for "On Golden Pond" (1981) which co-starred his daughter Jane Fonda.

Henry Fonda is one of 20 actors (or perhaps more) who have played President Abraham Lincoln, including most recently Benjamim Walker who played the 16th president in "Abarahm Lincoln, Vampire Hunter."

Fonda played Lincoln in "Young Mr. Lincoln" (dir. John Ford, 1939), which is available from the Criterion Collection. Two of Fonda's other films will air on TCM this month. They are "The Big Street" (1942) and "The Fugitive" (1947).

Fonda and the late Marlon Brando, also a native of Omaha, Neb., both made their stage debut at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

Here is Fonda's quote:

"I've been close to Bette Davis for 38 years, and I have the cigarette burns to prove it."

http://www.tcm.com

http://www.criterion.com

We Are Postponing the Top 10 Entry (for the moment)

We are going to post our Top Ten list of very long names, but we think Mon., April 25 will be the better time for that as opposed to today since our last entry took as long as reading "War and Peace" would.

Since we knew we would mention Leo Tolstoy's epic 1,225 page novel which perhaps an inmate at the Birmingham, Alabama, city jail on 425 6th Avenue, South, is reading to pass the time, we will point out a few things we learned about the work here.

__ It was originally published in 1869

___Novel begins in 1805 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I and it details the years in which Russia was invaded by Napoleon starting in 1812.

___Made into 1956 Hollywood film with Henry Fonda and Audrey Fonda, as well as the more critically-acclaimed very long (we think it lasts like ten hours) version made in Russia in 1968.

_ "War and Peace" has also been adopted into an opera and stage play.

Elif Batuman, a fellow Turkish-American (I don't know her personally) wrote about her love for Tolstoy and other Russian authors in her recent memoir "The Possessed."

And, in all likelihood University of Virginia professor and author Sina Vaidhyanathan will make our hardest names in the world list. In his latest book "The Googlization of Everything," he states that the small town of Eu, France, actually considered changing its name so that it would not be confused with the EU (European Union) on Google search engines.

As for "War and Peace," one can probably find it at PackBackers (a student bookstore at North Carolina State) and the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colo.

This weekend is also Independent Record Store Weekend, and if one is in Athens, Georgia, they may want to visit Wuxtry Records where I found a rare cd from the late German New Wave pop artist Klaus Nomi when I was visited the town two weeks ago.