Plainly Jane -- Vadim's Circle Exerted Left-Wing Influence Over His Young Wife

Jane Fonda married French film director Roger Vadim in 1965 and, while living in Paris, encountered Vadim's circle of radical left-wing friends. Part two of a five-part excerpt from ``Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda,'' by Christopher Andersen.

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When the Pentagon named her ``Miss Army Recruiting of 1962,'' Jane Fonda gave an impassioned acceptance speech to officers and enlisted recruiters, praising the armed forces and defending the need for a well-prepared military to discourage America's Communist enemies.

Later in the decade, while living in Paris with her husband, French film director Roger Vadim, Jane was drawn into the debate raging among French intellectuals concerning America's involvement in Vietnam. Vadim's cinematic colleagues tended to be decidedly left-wing in their outlook.

Having long sung the praises of China's Mao and Cuba's Castro, they now had a new revolutionary hero in Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Communist North Vietnam. But what really tied all these disparate leftist groups together was an overriding hatred for the United States or at least the ``oppressive'' American government that they now held responsible for most of the world's ills.

At first, Jane was resolute in her defense of the United States. She insisted that it was unfair to compare America with the colonial powers of the past, and argued forcefully that American troops were in South Vietnam only to help that country defend itself against Communist aggression.

Predictably, this did not sit well with Vadim's left-wing friends, including such leading French film notables as Jean-Luc Godard, Yves Montand, and Montand's wife, Simone Signoret.

Jane was no match for them. While certainly possessed of a keen natural intelligence, she was ill-read on historical and political matters. In truth, the ``facts'' as stated by Vadim's sophisticated friends were nothing more than propaganda from the pages of Pravda embraced as gospel by the French ``New Left.'' In the face of such virulent and seemingly unanimous anti-Americanism, Jane stopped objecting and started listening. After months of this, her will to resist vanished.

Jane fell under the influence of constant house guests Roger and Elisabeth Vailland. Though they had severed ties with party leaders who still toed the Moscow line, the Vaillands remained dedicated Communists. They felt it was their mission to open Jane's eyes to the ``evils'' being visited on the world by her homeland.

``I began by being defensive,'' Jane says, ``but then I saw Americans at home protesting the war by the hundreds of thousands, and soldiers deserting. I began to study

and read.

``I suddenly realized to what degree the country had changed since I'd been away. I watched women leading marches. I watched women getting beaten up. I watched women walking up to bayonets . . . and they were not afraid. It was the soldiers who were afraid. I will never forget that experience. It completely changed me . . . it began my searching for what was behind it all.''

Jane's search started with a simple question. ``The words, `What am I doing in France?' were brewing around inside me,'' Jane says of that time. ``With every visit I made to America, I felt more and more that that is where I belonged.''

In 1970, the Black Panthers were the darlings of the Left. In his best-selling book ``Radical Chic,'' Tom Wolfe described a cocktail party held in the Panthers' honor at the Manhattan apartment of conductor Leonard Bernstein. One of the Panthers' most outspoken admirers was a man Jane had yet to meet - Tom Hayden - who praised the Panthers as nothing less than ``America's Viet Cong.''

Jane read about the pitched battles between the Panthers and the police and instantly sided against authority. ``I immediately contacted the Panthers,'' she recalls. ``People were saying, `You can't do that! It's going to ruin your career, you're going to get killed.' And I was frightened. But I wanted to find out, so I talked to Panther leaders in Los Angeles. I was very impressed, extremely moved, and it was the first time I met black people who were going to the fundamental problem, the root problem of the system, and they were saying that black capitalism isn't going to change anything.''

Jane's life quickly became a blur of marches, meetings and speeches on behalf of a bewildering array of causes. ``Wherever there was a rally,'' recalls one observer, ``there was Jane.''

In Santa Fe, Jane rendezvoused with Peter, who had come to New Mexico to film ``The Hired Hand.'' She checked into her hotel just in time to watch Richard Nixon announce in a special televised address to the nation that he was sending U.S. troops into Cambodia.

By stepping up military pressure on Hanoi, the Republican administration was convinced it could force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table. While polls showed that the American people approved of the incursion 2 to 1, antiwar forces saw the invasion of Cambodia as nothing less than a betrayal.

Jane took it personally - as if the president were speaking directly to her. Watching the broadcast, she wept with rage. Hastily she called a press conference of her own for the next day, barely able to contain her anger as she denounced the president as a ``warmonger.'' Nixon responded by calling antiwar demonstrators ``just a bunch of bums.''

At a rally across from the White House on May 9, Jane launched into her speech with a rousing ``Welcome, fellow bums!'' After blasting America's ``immoral'' foreign policy, she ended by raising her hand in the now-familiar clenched-fist salute and shouting ``Power to the people!'' The throng responded with a chorus of ``Right on!''

Following the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings, outrage turned to frenzy. A new wave of protest swept the nation, and Jane rode its crest as the movement's most visible and controversial spokesperson.

Jane wanted passionately to convert her father. She routinely dragged fellow activists to Henry's New York townhouse or to the estate in Bel Air to try and sway Dad. Veterans from the G.I. coffeehouses that antiwar protesters had established outside army bases all over the country told of G.I. atrocities. She also brought home Angela Davis to meet her father.

Hank would not be easily swayed. More sophisticated than his daughter, he argued forcefully and intelligently against the half-truths Jane had accepted as gospel. ``Dad and I would fight,'' she recalls. ``And he was worried. Obviously, he thought, `What foreign agent is manipulating my daughter?' ''

That was, in fact, precisely his concern. When unsmiling FBI agents in dark suits began showing up at both of his residences to question Jane, he decided it was time to confront her. Standing on the terrace off the den of the East 74th Street townhouse in New York, Hank and his daughter were watching the sunset when suddenly he turned to her and blurted out what he had long wondered. ``Jane, if I ever discover for a fact that you're a Communist or a true Communist sympathizer, I, your father, will be the first to turn you in . . .'' and, Henry recalled, ``tears trickled down her cheeks. She shook her head, `No.' ''

Jane does not recall the incident.

(From the book ``Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda.'' Copyright, 1990, Christopher Andersen. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc. A Donald Hutter Book. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.)

Tomorrow: Hanoi Jane.