Matheson played Fonda’s son in the 1968 film, which also starred Lucille Ball
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NEED TO KNOW
- Tim Matheson opened up about working with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball on the 1968 film Yours, Mine & Ours
- Matheson described Fonda as a gentleman and shared how he used needlepoint to quit smoking on set
- Matheson said Fonda’s acting philosophy emphasized simplicity and truth, which influenced his legacy
Tim Matheson is sharing his memories from working with the late Henry Fonda on the set of 1968’s Yours, Mine & Ours.
The film was a Desilu production, starring Fonda and Lucille Ball as Frank Beardsley and Helen North — widowers who cross paths on a Navy base, hit it off and hide that they each have a family back home. As their romance grows, so does the reality of combining Frank’s 10 children with Helen’s eight. It was a story that paved the way for other blended family comedies like The Brady Bunch.
Matheson starred in the project as Frank’s first son, Mike.
Speaking on the Monday, Aug. 3, episode of Still Here Hollywood Podcast with Steve Kmetko, Matheson, 78, said Ball and Fonda were “polar opposites.”
Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
“Back in the day, Lucy would go into her trailer,” Mathison said. “Back then, every actor stayed on the… You had a chair you stayed on the set, you know, and you just stayed until you were called.”
“And Henry was trying to quit smoking so he was doing needlepoint so he’d sit on the set you know but he was a totally different kind of actor. He wasn’t trying to do Lucy; he wasn’t trying to do broad comedy. He was just so centered and so real.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Matheson said of Fonda, “What a gent. I mean, you know, what a fine gentleman.”
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“I think one time we were talking about acting, and he said, ‘Well, you just, you know, you walk in the room, you hit your mark, you look them in the eye and you tell them the truth. And that’s acting. That’s what you do,” he added.
Fonda died at age 77 in 1982, one year after he won an Oscar for On Golden Pond, the 1981 drama in which his real-life daughter, Jane Fonda, played his daughter. He was also the father of actor Peter Fonda, Jane’s younger brother, who died in 2019 at age 79.
In a recent interview with PEOPLE about her documentary GASLIT, Jane said her late father helped guide her foray into activism.
“I come from a man who made movies like The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men, The Wrong Man and The Ox-Bow Incident,” she said. “My dad was Henry Fonda, and he made movies that showed a certain value, sticking up for the underdogs, protecting people that aren’t the strongest, fighting for fairness. It came into my DNA as a child, because I really respected my dad.”
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