Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn both won Oscars (his first, her fourth) for their performances as Norman and Ethel Thayer, a couple entering their sunset years together with fortitude and good humor. He\u2019s irascible and a bit of \u201ca poop,\u201d she\u2019s one of those wives who\u2019s gotten good at handling everything while letting her husband think he\u2019s running the show. They have such a comfortable rapport together it\u2019s surprising to learn that this wasn\u2019t just the first time the two screen icons had ever worked together, but that they\u2019d never even met before the production. (Hepburn gifted Fonda with one of Spencer Tracy\u2019s hats, which he wears during the movie.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film has often been referred to as a lifetime achievement award ceremony for these two performers, whose outsized Hollywood histories dwarf anything in Thompson\u2019s screenplay. We can\u2019t help but bring decades of our own associations with Fonda and Hepburn to this quaint little cabin. At the time, Boston Globe<\/em> critic Michael Blowen complained<\/a> \u201cHenry is never Norman, Katherine is never Ethel.\u201d I would argue that\u2019s the film\u2019s entire appeal. A movie about Norman and Ethel would be pretty boring. The power of the picture is that we\u2019re watching Henry Freakin\u2019 Fonda and Katherine Goddamn Hepburn realize that their time is running out. It\u2019s twilight not just for the Thayers, but for an entire era of Hollywood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However thin the material, these are fantastic performances. At first it\u2019s shocking to see Fonda so frail. After all, this is Wyatt Earp, Tom Joad, and Abraham Lincoln we\u2019re looking at here \u2014 and those are just the John Ford films! But we\u2019re quickly reassured that Norman is still wily and always ready with a one-liner, tormenting the poor mailman for yuks. Fonda occasionally lets us glimpse something behind the script\u2019s curmudgeon schtick, not just a fear in his diminishment but an anger as well. Hepburn makes us privy to flashes of the same as perpetual caretaker Ethel, a starchy old Yankee who acts like everything is okay, until it\u2019s not. The then-74-year-old actress even did her own stunts, jumping into the lake and swimming to her husband\u2019s rescue in a boating accident sequence. Take that, Indiana Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Golden Pond<\/em> is about as sappy as the title makes it sound, beginning with a tinkly piano and idyllic nature shots that look like paintings from a dentist\u2019s office waiting room. (The film was shot on New Hampshire\u2019s Squam Lake, with Lake Winnipesaukee doubling for some of the boating scenes.) Few credits inspire more dread than \u201cMusic by Dave Grusin,\u201d and the film\u2019s lachrymose score is slathered over scenes like lard. Yet this very phoniness is what makes the picture so palatable. An honest film about the ravages of old age would have to be a horror movie \u2014 or Michael Haneke\u2019s \u201cAmour\u201d \u2014 and nobody wants to watch that. Especially not with Hank Fonda and Kate Hepburn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The processed cheese of the production is why it\u2019s so pleasant to watch these icons of the screen going gently into that good night. When the Thayer\u2019s daughter Chelsea \u2014 played by Fonda\u2019s own daughter and fellow Hollywood legend Jane \u2014 arrives for a visit dragging a new boyfriend (Dabney Coleman) and his teenage son in tow, the stage is set for some family therapy amongst the loons on the lake. Entire lifetimes of resentment are resolved with easy, symbolic gestures, like Chelsea finally being able to impress her dad with a backflip dive she could never pull off as \u201ca little fat girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (I\u2019ve always assumed that bit of backstory was thrown in as explanation for how much of the film the younger Fonda spends parading around in a bikini and cutoff little denim shorts that made an indelible impression on this young critic during the film\u2019s incessant HBO airings. She was a year away from establishing her fitness empire, in the kind of peak physical condition you can\u2019t blame someone for wanting preserved forever on film. Audiences certainly didn\u2019t mind.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her 2005 memoir My Life So Far<\/em>, the actress writes quite movingly about optioning Thompson\u2019s play as a way to work with her father and force an emotional connection that had eluded them in real life. Unlike his warm, avuncular screen persona, the elder Fonda was famously cold and aloof. Her plan didn\u2019t quite work out, as according to Jane, their characters\u2019 catharsis remained a strictly onscreen phenomenon. But something does happen in that scene, something undeniably moving that feels like more than just a matter of an actor\u2019s craft. Amid all the schmaltzy Hollywood trappings of On Golden Pond<\/em>, it feels like we\u2019re witnessing something real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “On Golden Pond” is streaming on Amazon Prime<\/a>, Peacock<\/a>, Kanopy<\/a>, and several ad-supported streamers<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/on-golden-pond-still-1024x667.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n