Henry Fonda was a man of few vices, steadfast and disciplined, much like the iconic characters he portrayed on screen. Unlike many of his Hollywood contemporaries from the ‘Golden Age’, he wasn’t known for indulging in the excesses of booze, drugs, or the party lifestyle that was prevalent in Tinseltown at the time.
That said, Fonda was no saint. A well-known ladies’ man, he was married five times and frequently made headlines whenever one of his marriages ended, only to remarry shortly thereafter. While he enjoyed an occasional drink and smoked cigarettes, he didn’t partake in anything more dangerous or illicit. However, his family’s lifestyle, particularly that of his son Peter, couldn’t have been more different.
Peter Fonda, a key figure in the success of the counterculture classic Easy Rider, was the epitome of ‘New Hollywood’. Alongside Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, Peter reveled in the free-spirited and debauched culture of the time.
Then there was Charlotte Stewart, a far cry from the wild Hollywood scene. Known for playing the wholesome schoolteacher Eva Beadle Simms on Little House on the Prairie, Stewart was not exactly part of the party crowd associated with the 1970s. Nevertheless, she attended her share of social gatherings and, on one occasion, made an awkward misstep. At a party, she approached her co-star from Cheyenne Social Club, Henry Fonda, and asked him if he had any pre-rolled joints on him.
“I don’t know why I did that,” Stewart later recalled in an interview with Pop Culture Classics. “I thought maybe it would be a cool thing to ask, but I called him Mr. Fonda, not Henry. I stepped outside with him and asked, ‘Do you have a joint?'”
Fonda, clearly surprised by the request, replied with a dry humor: “You have the wrong Fonda.”
It was a well-known fact in Hollywood that if anyone in the Fonda family was likely to have a stash of marijuana, it wouldn’t be Henry—or even his daughter, Jane. The realization quickly hit Stewart that she’d made a huge mistake and embarrassed herself in front of one of Hollywood’s most respected icons. “What a dope I made of myself,” she admitted, acknowledging that asking Henry for a joint was rather inappropriate. Whether Peter was at the party is unclear, but if he was, Stewart likely had the chance to find what she was looking for later on.
