An odd couple
Charles Foley
Santa Monica One of the more curious turns in the American political circus is the Tom and Jane Show. It stars those famous Vietnam veterans Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda in a tale of how two 'wild-eyed' revolutionaries met, married, mellowed and merged into the American mainstream. Or did they?
Are the Haydens mad Marxists still, concealing their plans to 'overthrow the country' beneath a facade of moderation and Democratic Party membership? Or are they, as others insist, a pair of capitalist carpetbaggers, enjoying a free ride on the Leftist bandwagon, secretly panting all the while for publicity and public office? They're certainly a very odd couple. Americans, hot for certainties as ever, don't know what to think.
On one hand, conservative hard-liners see them as — to quote the president of Dow Chemical — 'Communist subversives'. Dow recently cut off funds it was giving to Central Michigan University ($44,000 last year) because it paid Fonda $3,500 for talking to its students about the evils of Big Business: 'corporate tyrants,' as she puts it, 'invisible to us'.
On the other hand, old comrades see their conversion to the system as a sell-out. Fred Gardner, an old pal from anti-war movement days, says Hayden wasn't even much of a front-line fighter in 'Chicago 7' trial days. That he sent a kid into the Chicago Hilton during the 1968 convention fracas with a tape of his own voice. The student was to play it from a window to the mob outside. 'This is Tom Hayden! I've made it inside the Hilton. It's your revolutionary duty to charge!' A lot of people would get hurt, but not Hayden, who was elsewhere.
Another erstwhile ally, David Harris, ex-husband of Joan Baez and a leader of the California left since the 'sixties, says Hayden's current efforts to build a political organisation are grounded solely in personal ambition. It's an oft-heard complaint against the man who helped found Students for a Democratic. Society (SDS), that seminal force in the anti-war and student movements of the 'sixties. But Tom was twenty-two when he drafted the famous Port Huron Statement. He's thirty-eight now. Jane Fonda, just turning Iforty, has been married to him for almost five years. They met in 1971 at a Detroit anti-war rally and discovered not only a mutual relish for political activism but also for the cinema. 'Tom taught me to think about films in a new way. He respected the movies more than I did. He appreciated their power and their ability to influence people's minds.' . They live in Santa Monica, near the beach, with their children Troy and Vanessa in what is habitually described as a 'modest $40,000' house. In fact, it's worth about three times that sum, and Fonda has a second, £300,000 penthouse in Newport Beach, overlooking the yacht harbour, where Sen, Barry Goldwater is among her neighbours. The couple also own a 120-acre ranch near Santa Barbara— a tax-deductible 'retreat centre' for workers in Hayden's 'Campaign for Economic Democracy' (CED), purchased by Fonda with a halfmillion dollars from her film earnings.
And when Hayden, perhaps prompted by the successful 1974 gubernatorial campaign of Jerry Brown, decided to run for state senator last year, Fonda chipped in another $400,000. He lost. Supporters of Hayden's Democratic rival John Tunney complained that Jane had violated election laws limiting individual contributions to $1000 per candidate. Not so, ruled the Federal Election Commission: under Californian law, the combined assets of a married couple are held in common. Thus the money was his as much as hers, and a candidate can spend as much as likes on his own behalf.
Fonda can afford it: her services as an actress are in great demand, and she can ask $400,000 a picture. The most recent is the highly successful Julia, in which she plays Lillian Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave Hellman's friend Julia, who gives up all to fight facism in World War Two. Fonda has also formed her own film company, to further promote her socio-political notions.
It has already completed its first movie, Coming Home, in which the actress plays the wife of a paralysed war veteran. 'The central theme is the redefinition of power and manhood,' Fonda explains.
Whatever enemies on left and right may say, the mainstream media has warmed to Fonda once more. The Vassar-educated Hollywood starlet who grew up to be a• counter-culture queen, excoriated for her anti-war activities, has recently been the subject of laudatory articles and cover stories in Time, Newsweek and elsewhere. She's won an Oscar; her husband wants to go to Washington; Watergate — as Hayden remarks — 'has exposed the old Nixon gang, the Agnews and the J. Edgar Hoovers, as a bunch of crooks'. Both the Haydens have recently been able to obtain details of the elaborate and costly surveillance conducted against them by CIA and FBI in the Nixon years, and Torn Hayden claims that Hoover invited suggestions as to 'how I could be done away with — murdered, I suppose.' What do they seek in today's America? Well, Hayden seems first and foremost to want office. He's considering a run for the State Controller's job — a budgetary post where one can gain a great deal of attention by complaining about the traditionally outrageous expense accounts of fellow politicos. And he's thinking about a try for the US Congress, should a Suitable Vacancy occur. Leslie Curtis, wife of film star Tony C., and a Hayden fund-raiser, says, quite seriously, 'Tom will be Presiden,t one day. He's got the guts and the ability. When I visited the Haydens at their Santa Monica beach-house it was quickly made clear that one thing they didn't want for the US was 'British socialism, with tile Government helping out capitalist industry every time it got in trouble'. Did they want socialism at all?
'Socialism,' says Jane Fonda, 'means still more power concentrated in the US. A lot of so-called leftists who go around talking about slashing military budgets never give a thought to the jobs that'll cost.' An astonishing statement from exrevolutionary Jane; and husband Tom is more cautious: 'The word means all sorts of things. But maybe Americans are ready to talk about it, for the first time.'
Is America ready for Tom and Jane?
'More than a million people voted for him in last year's election,' says Jane Fonda. 'I think that's the greatest vote for fundamental change in any post-war election. I can see the sort of progressive movement we envisage gaining power within the decade.' Well, no one can say they don't have the will to win.
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