Born May 16: Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda, who was born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, Neb., was the 11th film star to be featured in the United States Postal Service's Legends of Hollywood commemorative series.

The portrait of Fonda on the 37¢ stamp, which was issued May 20, 2005, to commemorate Fonda's birth centenary, was created by the prominent entertainment artist Drew Struzan.

Fonda appeared in close to 100 movies during an acting career that spanned nearly half a century. In his final feature film, On Golden Pond (1981), Fonda played aging retired professor Norman Thayer Jr., and won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance.

He starred in a remarkable sequence of now-classic films, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Mister Roberts (1955), War and Peace (1956), Twelve Angry Men (1957), Fail-Safe (1964), Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) and Midway (1976).

Fonda also served his country during World War II, enlisting in the Navy as a seaman and serving aboard the destroyer USS Satterlee, and later, the USS Curtis. He was discharged in 1946 after earning the rank of lieutenant junior grade.

Fonda was married five times and had three children: actors Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, and adopted daughter Amy Fonda Fishman.