February 23

Peter Henry Fonda's Birthday
 


 

Peter Fonda has had a multifaceted  career as an actor, director, producer, and screenwriter and has appeared in approximately 80 films. He started his film career as a romantic leading man beginning with Tammy and the Doctor (1963), which he called "Tammy and the Schmuckface." He continued be in romantic leads until he appeared in the violent, drug-addled motorcycle film, The Wild Angels (1966).after which he grew his hair long, alienating the "establishment" film industry, and romantic leading man roles soon disappeared.

In the late1960’s, he teamed with Dennis Hopper and produced Easy Rider (1969) which starred Peter, Dennis, Hopper, and Jack  Nicholson as freewheeling, pot-smoking,  hippie counterculture iconoclasts. The film was a great commercial success and earned Peter an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. During the 1970s he appeared in movies such as Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) and Wanda Nevada (1979). In 1999 he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Ulee's Gold for which snared a Golden Globe. This helped him overcome his image as the black sheep of the Fonda acting dynasty.

According to a story in the book version of "The Beatles Anthology" (1995), John Lennon wrote the song "She Said, She Said" after meeting Peter at a party and listening to Peter talk on and on about his near-death experience in which he accidentally shot himself in the stomach with an antique pistol on his eleventh birthday .. The song lyric "I know what it's like to be dead" is supposedly what Peter kept telling everyone.

Much has been written about his father’s emotionally distance from Peter and his sister Jane. Peter once remarked to a friend, “I dig my father.  I wish he could open his eyes and dig me.”  In his autobiography Don't Tell Dad, he described how he was never sure how his father felt about him, and that he did not tell his father he loved him until his father was elderly and he finally heard the words, "I love you, son."

Peter's love of cycling has resulted been a mixed blessing. It helped him land his role The Wild Angels and eventually his induction  into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. However, two major accidents resulted  in serious back injuries. He revisited  his motorcycle icon image in 2007 in Wild Hogs as Damien Blade, founder of the biker gang Del Fuegos and in Ghost Rider as Mephistopheles. But it is his cyclist role as the American flag-adorned, leather-clad "Captain America" in Easy Rider that was our inspiration for Peter’s birthday celebration – the Easy Rider cocktail. Just don't drink one before getting on your hog. Statistics show that a biker is 83% more likely to be injured on the road as compared to anyone riding other types of vehicles. Sp let's toast Peter on his birthday with this classic biker's drink while watching him again in Easy Rider.
 

Easy Rider Cocktail 

Ingredients
 
0.5 oz beer
1 oz bourbon
 
10 oz Jolt cola

 
 
Instructions
 
Mix cola and bourbon into a beer glass. Then add the beer.
 

© 2011 Gordon Nary and Tyler Stokes