Fonda

Baltimore's Santa Claus -- a gentle man named John Fonda whose gifts to local artists are too long for any list -- died of heart failure Thursday as his friends prepared to honor his life's work.A master of ceramics who co-founded the annual SoWeBo arts festival near the Hollins Street market, Mr. Fonda died at St. Agnes Hospital. He was 63.A memorial service for Mr. Fonda, a vehement opponent of censorship, will be held at 1:35 p.m. Monday in the square at the foot of Broadway in Fells Point.

My Life So Far By Jane Fonda. Random House, 599 pages. $26.95. Anyone old enough to remember the vitriol directed at Jane Fonda during the '60s and '70s -- some of it brought on by her own foolishness; most of it deeply ugly; none of it having anything to do with her abilities as an actress -- might be loath to add to the criticism. This is why it gives me no pleasure to report that her new autobiography, My Life So Far, is a very bad book. Forgoing the "and then I starred in ..." model of celebrity memoir, Fonda has chosen to write her story as a piece of self-examination, to find the narrative threads in her life.

It's billed as a "tribute" and "film retrospective." But "Fonda on Fonda," at 8 and midnight tonight on cable's TNT,is high-wire psychodrama.The show is one hour of Jane Fonda talking about -- or introducing clips of others talking about -- her late father, Henry Fonda. She starts out like a conventional host of a TV retrospective, talking about her father as an actor and what his public persona came to represent. But, by the end of the hour, she is in tears, clearly lost in personal memories.

Santa Monica -- When how-to video king Stuart Karl firs asked Jane Fonda to make an exercise tape, she was less than enthusiastic."I said, 'No way -- what is it going to do to my film career?' " Ms.Fonda recalled. "I was dragged every step of the way."But eventually she gave in and, 10 years after "Jane Fonda's Workout" made home-video history, it's the film career that is proving dispensable.During a series of interviews to promote her 16th and latest exercise video, "Jane Fonda's Step Aerobic and Abdominal Workout," Ms. Fonda revealed that she's retiring from acting to devote herself to other pursuits, including her flourishing health and fitness empire.

A new-age spiritual quest in the guise of an old film noir, the romantic thriller "Rough Magic" stars that enchantress Bridget Fonda as a sorcerer's apprentice who discovers she possesses true supernatural powers.If you like your magic realism hard-boiled, your spiritualism screwball or Fonda any way you can get her (and she is irresistible here), the awkwardly made fairy tale is appealing.But it is hard to imagine a stranger brew than Clare Peploe's love potion of a film set in 1950. This is a movie that is equal parts Lewis Carroll and Carlos Castaneda and as uneven as it is potent.

EVER SINCE Jane Fonda first began working out on video in our living rooms in 1982, she has been America's fitness guru.She seems to have always been a quicker study than most of us, recognizing the need for a healthy body when she became an actress more than 30 years ago and, as she puts it, "appearance became more important."Not only have we wanted to look like her, we've also wanted to feel as good as she said she felt."I never could understand why after a long 15-hour day on the sound stage everyone would be real tired," she said in an interview.

Peter Fonda narrates "American Stories: The American Dream" (6 p.m.-11 p.m., repeats 11 p.m.-4 a.m., Discovery), a five-part documentary recounting the generational history of 10 families since the dark days of the Depression. The programs revolve around men and women such as Endicott "Chub" Peabody, a blue-blood who became governor of Massachusetts in 1962, and Jewell Blankenship, a Dust Bowl survivor whose journey to California mirrors "The Grapes of Wrath" (the 1940 film adaptation of which starred Peter's father, Henry)

ATLANTA - Jane Fonda drives herself to interviews. No limo, no entourage, not even a Mercedes. Just a little silver Toyota Prius. When she pays the parking attendant, the woman doesn't even recognize her. Told she just took a couple of bucks from Jane Fonda, she gasps, "That was her? I love her movies." It is indeed her. devoted mother and grandmother, Oscar-winning actress, Henry's daughter, Ted's ex, political activist, entrepreneur, Braves fan. Fonda keeps re-inventing herself, in life as well as in her career.

Jane Fonda's last great performance - and one of the last before she retired - was as an alcoholic in Sidney Lumet's The Morning After in 1986. In Georgia Rule, the second movie in her highly dubious comeback, she does an about-face on her persona and her talent, playing a teetotaler and, what's worse, a pious bore. As Georgia, a righteous small-town matriarch, Fonda gets to embody clannish virtues already a feature of the next presidential campaign. Georgia Rule (Universal Pictures) Starring Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan, Felicity Huffman.

WASHINGTON -- In his new movie, "Ulee's Gold," actor Peter Fonda had to become Ulysses Jackson, a Florida beekeeper who was in every way Fonda's opposite: remote, taciturn, unforthcoming. Luckily, Fonda was familiar with the type. A man fitting that description sat at the head of the table during Fonda's upbringing. His name was Henry."I had been a kid to Ulee Henry," Peter Fonda said in a recent interview. "Reticent, nonverbal, nontactile, nondemonstrative. Knowing how that made me feel as a child gave me the areas to go through to become [Ulee]