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On Golden Pond (1981)

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• The brown Fedora worn by Henry Fonda belonged to Spencer Tracy and was given to Henry Fonda by Katharine Hepburn on the first day on the set. Henry Fonda, overwhelmed with the gesture, painted a still life watercolor of the three hats he wore in the film and gave the original to Katharine Hepburn as a gift. He had 200 lithographs made of the painting and sent one to every person who worked on the film. Each copy was numbered and personally signed by Fonda thanking each person by name. In her autobiography, Hepburn wrote that she gave the painting to screenwriter Ernest Thompson. After Fonda's death, she found the painting to be a sad reminder of him and Spencer Tracy.
  
  
• Katharine Hepburn won her fourth best actress Oscar for this role. To date (2008) makes her the all-time record holder for that category. Considering his impressive body of work spanning almost six decades, it's astonishing that, except for an honorary Oscar in 1980, this was Henry Fonda's only best actor Oscar.
  
  
• Barbara Stanwyck was on call to replace Katharine Hepburn in the event Katharine Hepburn was unable to appear in the film due to surgery she underwent prior to production.
  
  

• Henry Fonda won the Oscar for best actor in a leading role for his role as Norman Thayer, Jr. At 76, he was the oldest actor to win this Oscar.
  
  
• This is the only film in which Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda appear together.
  
  
• Jane Fonda claims that the scene between Chelsea and Norman (Henry Fonda) where she tells him she wants to be his friend mirrored the real-life relationship between father and daughter. During one take when the younger Fonda unexpectedly grabbed her father's hand, Henry Fonda started to cry and ducked his head away from the camera, embarrassed by his tears. The take appears in the final film.
  
  
• Gertrude, the canoe featured in the film, was included in a lot of the estate of Katharine Hepburn during the two-day auction hosted by Sotheby's in 2004. The canoe was sold for $19,200 to entertainer Wayne Newton.
  
  
• Henry Fonda's last movie.
  
  
• Jane Fonda said she was able to cry in this movie because at the time of shooting, Katharine Hepburn was hiding in the bushes shaking her fists at Jane Fonda to get her to emote.
  
  
• When Katharine Hepburn comes drifting in to the marina on the Thayer's boat she had to get divers to direct her in to the dock.
  
  
• Charges were set at the front of the Thayer's boat so that it blew up prior to hitting the big rock in Purgatory Cove.
  
  
• There was and still is a boathouse on the Thayer's property but the film crew filmed around it so that it wasn't shown.
  
  
• Walter the Trout was brought over from a local trout pond at the Castle in the Clouds near Holderness, New Hampshire. Billy and Norman really threw him back into the lake. People still hope to catch him, but after all these years the fish would be a distant relative.
  
  
• Katharine Hepburn hurt her arm in a tennis match a few weeks before filming. She almost pulled out, but Henry Fonda convinced her to show up to start shooting on day one. One scene was omitted from the film in which you see her pick up a canoe by herself with her sore arm. She never forgave Mark Rydell for editing that scene out.
  
  
• The Purgatory Cove scene was shot in late September. To keep warm in the cold water both Doug McKeon and Henry Fonda had to wear wetsuits under their clothes. Katharine Hepburn was supposed to have a stunt double perform her "dive-in" scene for her, but instead she insisted on doing it herself. She dove into the frigid water without a wetsuit.
  
  
• The roles of Norman and Ethel were originally played onstage by Tom Aldredge and Frances Sternhagen.
  
  
• The movie's line "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!" was voted as the #88 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
  
  
• On Golden Pond opened at the New Apollo Theater on February 21, 1979 and ran for 126 performances.
  
  
• In the scene near the beginning of the film where Norman Thayer (Henry Fonda) calls the operator to see if the phone is working, he looks at a framed photograph on the desk and asks "Who the hell is that?" While the picture presumably is an old photo of Norman, his wife, Ethel (Katharine Hepburn), and their daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda), the photo (circa 1941) actually shows Fonda and four-year-old Jane with Fonda's real-life first wife (and Jane's real mother), Frances Seymour Brokaw.
  
  

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