Henry Jaynes Fonda was a well-known American film and stage actor born in the early twentieth century. Initially, he was a short, shy boy who was keenly interested in Boy Scouting but avoided girls as much as he could. Towards the end of his school years, he suddenly grew tall and handsome. His aim in life was to become a journalist, but when he was twenty years old, his mother’s friend Dorothy Brando—who also happened to be Marlon Brando’s mother—was staging a play called You and I at the Omaha Community Playhouse in Nebraska. At her insistence, Fonda auditioned for the lead role and immediately fell in love with acting. He not only turned out to be a good actor but also began learning everything from stage production to set construction. However, it was not until he played the lead role in Merton of the Movies that he decided to pursue acting as a career. He first went to New York to try his luck on Broadway and then moved to Hollywood. Nicknamed "One Take Fonda," he soon became one of America’s greatest stars. In a career that lasted almost five decades, he acted in 106 films, TV shows, and shorts.