In 1977, the new film starring Jane Fonda was “Julia”. It’s about the writer Lillian Hellman’s lifelong friendship with Julia, a wealthy American who fought against the Nazis when they invaded the university she was attending in Vienna. I worked at KRE radio in Berkeley and it was rare for me to land an interview with an A level celebrity. The publicist had told me to meet Ms. Fonda at the Stanford Court Hotel on Nob Hill, in her suite. Jane Fonda was not only an actress at the time but a major anti-war activist and environmentalist. That’s what gave her hero status for me.
I was nervous as I knocked on the door of her suite. Twenty-three year-old me, about to interview Jane freakin’ Fonda. She answered the door herself, wearing jeans and a sweater – like a normal person. Whoa. I’d expected a whole staff or at least a personal assistant. She seemed to be alone as she welcomed me in, so warmly it was like we were longtime friends. The space was gorgeous but stiffly formal, with silk upholstered Louis IV style furniture in a range of beige tones. I got the sense that she’d be more comfortable in a big burgundy velvet arm chair. As soon as we sat down, and I started setting up my cassette player and microphone on the mahogany end table, she asked, “Joanne, do you by any chance have a cigarette?”
“Actually, I do,” I said, flabbergasted that she needed something from me.
‘Would you mind if we shared one? I barely smoke and I don’t buy my own but every now and then…like right now…I just want to have a few puffs.”
“Happy to,” I said, pulling my pack of Marlboros out of my purse. It was the hard pack I loved – at least at that moment in my smoking life. We shared a cigarette, which I lit with a match before smelling the Sulphur, a habit I maintain to this day ….it smells so good…. It was like two high school girls, sneaking a cig before class. With every puff, I tried not to physically pinch myself. Am I really sitting here, in an extravagant San Francisco Hotel suite, chit chatting with the Jane Fonda.
“One more thing” she said, before I hit record to start the actual interview. “Can this cigarette be our secret? I have a reputation to uphold!”
“Absolutely,” I said.
The statute of limitations on that secret is surely up by now, don’t you think?