The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda by Devin McKinney Page A

fair amount of pain.
    Henry meets Margaret Sullavan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in April 1929, when they both appear in a musical comedy revue and she, as part of a synchronized production number, slaps him silly. “She intrigued me,” he says.
    That summer, Sullavan—whom friends call Peggy—appears in Falmouth at Leatherbee’s invitation, and joins the University Players. She and Fonda costar in the opening production of the 1929 season, The Devil in the Cheese. It is a debacle for the ages. A live, spiky fish displaces water from an onstage tank; a loose turtle swims off the stage and crawls up the aisle; attempts at thunder, fire, and hurricane turn the stage into a wet, chaotic smear; a monkey urinates on Sullavan’s shoulder. And at the end, the audience stands in ovation to see disaster so heartily engaged.
    The two are next costarred in The Constant Nymph, a tale of love and obsession in the Tyrol, whose tragic climax arrives when Sullavan dies in Fonda’s arms. All present are spellbound by the combined spectacle of her dying and his suffering—an omen of their performing futures.
    Hank and Peggy go on to costar in a dozen or so regional stage productions, one marriage, one divorce, one Hollywood movie, and innumerable offstage tumults. Margaret Sullavan, a society belle from Virginia—small in stature, delicate in inflection, with a voice always described as “husky”—blows across the plain of Fonda’s emotional life like a little twister, devastating the house of his mind.
    Her face is made for the soft dazzle of a movie camera—small, round, charmlike, with hints of sadness to the sloping eyes. Her body is compact, agile, a tomboy’s body, yet certain of every stance and movement; even tall, strong men appear timorous beside her. She enjoys acting and does it with apparent ease, while showing a blithe disdain for show business in her career calculations. “By the time I am thirty-five,” she is recorded as saying, “I will have a million dollars, five children, and I will have starred on Broadway.” At which point, she will set aside childish things and get on with the business of living. And that is pretty much what she does.
    Henry describes her as “cream and sugar on a dish of hot ashes.” At Falmouth, she becomes the third point in romantic triangles that hadn’t existed before, and her presence brings out tensions and truths. Charlie Leatherbee is in love with Peggy, while the sexually or at least sensually ambiguous Logan has an undeclared crush on Henry. (Desire informs his every description of Fonda’s body and face.) But their unrequited likes can only stand by and watch as Fonda and Sullavan become infatuated. The two even discover they share the same birthday.
    Their dynamics are in place immediately, Fonda alternately brooding and admiring, Sullavan whimsically following her mood of the moment. He is openly love-struck, more exposed in his devotion; Sullavan, the coquette, wields more power. “Hank was much in love with Peggy,” Houghton recalls, summing up the imbalance, “and Peggy thought she might be in love with Hank.” Where Fonda, like everyone else, calls her “Peggy,” Sullavan addresses him as “Fonda.”
    As they share their Falmouth triumphs, Sullavan is the only one to achieve success in the outside world. Where Henry returns to Omaha for a prodigal-son performance at the Community Playhouse, she returns to the family manse in Norfolk, Virginia, for her society debut. Where he gets a bit part in a short run, she understudies the lead in the southern road-company production of Preston Sturges’s Strictly Dishonorable, a big hit. Where he works odd jobs, cadges meals, and hunts for work, she gets the lead role and sparkling reviews in A Modern Virgin. By late 1931, Sullavan’s name buzzes on Broadway, and the movies come sniffing.
    During these years, she and Henry split and reunite multiple times. On June 2, 1931, they go as far as obtaining a marriage