Hollywood’s Most Complicated Friendship
Henry Fonda and James Stewart became two of Hollywood’s most enduring stars, but their friendship began years before either man was famous. There was also another person woven tightly into their early lives: actress Margaret Sullavan. Fonda married her, Stewart quietly adored her, and decades later, their tangled history became one of the most fascinating chapters in the story of the two men’s friendship.
Before Any Of Them Were Famous
Fonda, Stewart, and Sullavan all passed through the University Players, an ambitious summer theater company that operated in Massachusetts from 1928 to 1932. The troupe also included future Hollywood and Broadway figures such as Joshua Logan and Mildred Natwick. For the young actors, it became both a training ground and the beginning of friendships that would last for decades.
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Margaret Was Hard To Ignore
Sullavan emerged from that theatrical world with a presence that made an impression on both men. Scott Eyman’s later dual biography of Fonda and Stewart describes her as a central figure in their early emotional lives. The publisher’s account of the book puts the situation simply: Fonda loved and married her, while Stewart pined for her.
Henry Got There First
Sullavan and Fonda became romantically involved while they were still young stage actors. They married on Christmas Day in 1931, before either had established the Hollywood careers that would make them household names. Their marriage, however, proved remarkably brief.
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The Marriage Fell Apart Quickly
The couple separated after only a short time together, and their divorce became final in 1933. Whatever had drawn them together did not translate into an easy domestic partnership. Still, their separation did not erase Sullavan from Fonda’s life or from the circle of friends surrounding him.
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Jimmy Was Watching From The Sidelines
Stewart knew Sullavan from the same early theatrical world, and later biographical accounts describe him as being deeply attracted to her. Unlike Fonda, however, Stewart never married Sullavan and apparently never established a conventional romantic relationship with her. His feelings became one of the enduring mysteries surrounding his famously private personal life.
It Wasn’t Exactly A Traditional Triangle
Calling the situation a love triangle can make it sound more scandalous than the documented story really was. Fonda and Sullavan had an actual marriage, while Stewart’s role appears to have been that of an admirer and close friend whose feelings were not returned in the same way. Later accounts nevertheless make clear that both men remained emotionally attached to her.
Henry And Jimmy Became Roommates
After Fonda’s marriage was already falling apart, he and Stewart became roommates in New York while pursuing acting work. Jobs were uncertain and money was tight during the Depression. Their shared struggle helped form the foundation of a friendship that eventually survived Hollywood careers, war service, marriages, political differences, and old age.
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Margaret Beat Them To Hollywood
Sullavan’s screen career took off rapidly in the 1930s. Her distinctive voice, emotional intensity, and ability to move between comedy and drama made her an unusual presence among Hollywood leading women. She eventually became known for films including Three Comrades, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Mortal Storm.
Screenshot from The Shop Around the Corner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
She Was More Than Someone’s Love Interest
Any retelling that focuses only on Fonda and Stewart risks underselling Sullavan’s own accomplishments. Her performance in Three Comrades earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress at the 1939 ceremony. She built a major career despite an uneasy relationship with Hollywood and a preference for returning to the stage.
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Then Jimmy Followed Her West
Stewart eventually made the move to Hollywood as well, beginning the film career that would transform him into one of American cinema’s defining stars. His connection with Sullavan did not disappear once both were working in movies. Instead, Hollywood gave them the chance to turn their unusual personal chemistry into screen romance.
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They Became A Memorable Screen Couple
Sullavan and Stewart eventually made four films together: Next Time We Love, The Shopworn Angel, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Mortal Storm. Their on-screen relationships ranged from romantic drama to sophisticated comedy. Their ease together inevitably encouraged later fascination with whatever Stewart may have felt away from the cameras.
Screenshot from The Shop Around the Corner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
Margaret Helped Jimmy’s Career
Their association was not merely romantic mythology created after the fact. Sullavan was already more established in Hollywood when Stewart was still finding his footing, and accounts of Stewart’s career emphasize the importance of their professional connection. By the end of the 1930s, he no longer needed anyone’s help becoming a star, but their partnership had become a valuable part of both actors’ screen histories.
Their Greatest Film Made The Fantasy Irresistible
In 1940, Stewart and Sullavan starred in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner. They played Budapest shop employees who irritate each other in person while unknowingly falling in love as anonymous pen pals. The warmth of their performances helped turn the film into an enduring classic.
Screenshot from The Shop Around the Corner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
Real Life Made The Movie Feel Different
Knowing about Stewart’s feelings for Sullavan gives the film another layer for audiences familiar with their history. TCM notes that biographers have speculated about whether Stewart’s unrequited affection for Sullavan contributed to his remaining unmarried until 1949. That remains biographical interpretation rather than a fact Stewart definitively established himself.
Screenshot from The Shop Around the Corner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
Henry Returned To Her On Screen Too
Fonda also acted opposite his former wife. The pair starred together in the 1936 comedy The Moon’s Our Home, playing celebrities whose romance becomes complicated by their clashing personalities. Their ability to work together after the collapse of their marriage suggests that the connection between them did not simply end with the divorce.
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Margaret’s Life Kept Moving
Fonda was only Sullavan’s first husband. She later married director William Wyler, with whom she had worked on The Good Fairy. Their marriage also ended in divorce, and Sullavan subsequently married powerful talent agent and producer Leland Hayward.
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She Built A Family With Leland Hayward
Sullavan and Hayward had three children, including writer Brooke Hayward. Their marriage lasted far longer than Sullavan’s marriages to Fonda or Wyler, but it too eventually collapsed. Sullavan later married British investment banker Kenneth Wagg, who remained her husband until her death.
The Old Circle Never Completely Disappeared
Hollywood success scattered the University Players crowd across different careers and households, yet many of the relationships forged in those early theatrical years endured. Fonda and Stewart remained especially close for roughly half a century. Sullavan continued to occupy a striking place in the history they shared.
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Her Career Became Increasingly Selective
Sullavan never embraced Hollywood with the enthusiasm expected of a major movie star. She repeatedly returned to theater and made comparatively few films. After Cry Havoc in 1943, she stayed away from movies for years before returning for what would become her final film appearance.
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Her Final Movie Had An Eerie Title
That last film was No Sad Songs for Me, released in 1950. Sullavan played a woman confronting terminal illness, a role that drew heavily on the emotional qualities for which she was admired. The film marked her first screen appearance since 1943 and ultimately became her cinematic farewell.
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She Was Also Losing Her Hearing
Away from the screen, Sullavan faced worsening hearing problems later in life. TCM notes that her personal difficulties included anxiety over increasing deafness. The condition complicated both her private life and a profession that depended so heavily on hearing fellow performers and responding to cues.
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Her Life Ended Suddenly
On January 1, 1960, Sullavan was found unconscious in a hotel room after barbiturate poisoning. She was 50 years old. Contemporary accounts of her life and later biographical references state that the death was ruled accidental.
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Her Death Did Not End The Story
What happened between Sullavan, Fonda, and Stewart became clearer through memoirs, biographies, interviews, and recollections published after her lifetime. Later writers examining Fonda and Stewart’s friendship repeatedly returned to Sullavan as one of the emotional bonds connecting their youth to their Hollywood years. She had become, in effect, an unseen third presence in the story of their friendship.
Screenshot from The Shop Around the Corner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
Biographers Revisited Jimmy’s Feelings
Donald Dewey’s biography of Stewart examined his complicated relationships with both Fonda and Sullavan, while Scott Eyman later made Sullavan a significant figure in his joint biography of the two actors. Reviews of Eyman’s extensively researched book specifically identify the men’s shared attachment to Sullavan as part of their intertwined history. That later scholarship helped popularize a story the famously private Stewart had never turned into public melodrama himself.
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Henry Never Really Forgot Her Either
Fonda went on to marry several more times and built an enormous career of his own, yet accounts of his friendship with Stewart describe Sullavan as possessing a lasting emotional significance for him. The Village Voice, discussing Eyman’s research, noted that Sullavan remained in Fonda’s orbit even after their marriage ended. Their youthful romance had been brief, but its memory was not.
The Two Men Somehow Stayed Friends
A shared attachment to the same woman might have destroyed some friendships. In Fonda and Stewart’s case, it did not. They remained close for approximately 50 years, surviving enormous differences in temperament, family life, careers, and politics before Fonda’s death in 1982.
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Peter Fonda Belonged To A Different Chapter
Peter Fonda sometimes gets mistakenly pulled into the Sullavan story because the Fonda and Hayward families remained connected. Peter, who was Henry Fonda’s son, developed feelings when young for Sullavan’s daughter Bridget Hayward. He later named his daughter, actress Bridget Fonda, in Bridget Hayward’s honor.
The Real Story Is Stranger Than A Scandal
There is no solid evidence that Sullavan secretly carried on simultaneous romances with Fonda and Stewart. What the record supports is subtler: she married Fonda, became one of Stewart’s closest colleagues and the object of his long-running affection, and remained important to both men after their youthful theatrical days were over. That complicated emotional history lasted far longer than Sullavan’s short marriage to Fonda ever did.
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Margaret Was The Link Between Two Legends
Fonda and Stewart would eventually be remembered as icons whose friendship survived almost everything Hollywood could throw at it. Yet before the fame, the wars, the Oscars, and the legendary film roles, there was Margaret Sullavan. Later biographies revealed just how deeply she had mattered to both men, turning what once looked like a footnote in Hollywood history into one of its most bittersweet personal stories.
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