meant.) With its musical smorgasbord
soundtrack from groups like
Steppenwolf, the Byrds and the Jimi
Hendrix Experience, the film might
have become, as one Hollywood
historian noted, an anthem for a
generation, but for Fonda it was also
an act of personal catharsis.
By co-starring in Easy Rider, he was
striving to break free from his famous
actor-father Henry and superstar sister
Jane. At 29, he remained troubled by
unhappy memories of his childhood
and the home life created by his cold,
distant father while head of the Fonda
acting family.
In 1950, when Peter was 10, his
mother committed suicide. Less than
a year later the boy severely injured
himself playing with an antique gun
that went off, damaging his kidneys
and liver, and suggesting to some that
this act was itself suicidal.
Years later, Peter Fonda complained
about being excluded from the life of
his family, and blamed his disillusion
on his experiences with his father.
Never comfortable with the
Hollywood machine, he believed that
challenging the industry norms with
Easy Rider would point him towards
success on his own terms.
The film having made him rich,
Fonda could afford to spend theensuing decades picking projects that
largely kept him out of the limelight.
But his film choices proved
uninspired, his first marriage failed,
and by the 1990s his career seemed to
be in terminal decline.
In 1998, however, came his Oscar
nomination for his role in the small-
scale drama Ulee’s Gold that signalled
his return to the Hollywood glare.
The New York Times called his
performance “quietly astonishing” and
the finest work of Fonda’s career.
Peter Henry Fonda was born on
February 23 1940 in New York, but had
a peripatetic upbringing as the family
moved with his father’s acting career.
When Peter was seven, the Fondas
settled in Greenwich, Connecticut,
and the lad attended several boarding
schools in New England, spending the
holidays with his maternal
grandmother as his mother, Frances,
was mysteriously absent.
Henry Fonda told his son that she
was in a hospital, but Peter later
realised that “hospital” meant
“asylum”, and that the heart attack that
supposedly killed her was in fact
suicide. Before her death, Henry
Fonda had told Frances that he
intended to divorce her to marry
another woman, Susan Blanchard.
While the newly-weds were away ontheir honeymoon, Peter shot himself
with a .22 calibre pistol and nearly died
on the operating table, but insisted
later that it was an accident rather
than a suicide attempt.
Soon after his stepmother moved
out five years later, Peter, now 15, was
sent by his father to live with relatives
in Omaha. He thrived at school and
was accepted at the University of
Omaha, where he began seriously to
consider an acting career. Emerging
after his third year like “a hand-
grenade with the pin pulled”, he joined
a summer stock (repertory) company
in upstate New York before landing a
part in a Broadway play. New York
drama critics named him the most
promising new actor of 1961.
On the strength of that accolade,
Fonda moved to Hollywood and
appeared in a string of unmemorable
teen flicks including Tammy and the
Doctor (1963). Determined to overcome
the expectations of the Fonda name,
he worked on and off Broadway and
in edgy, experimental films such as
Lilith (1964) and The Wild Angels (1966)
directed by Roger Corman, the guru
of low-budget, underground
filmmaking, in which Fonda played
a leather-clad biker.
By the time he starred in The Trip
(1967), Fonda was a keen user of the
fashionable psychedelic drug LSD, and
it was in the prevailing acid-fuelled
spirit of peace and love that he
conceived Easy Rider and developed it
with Dennis Hopper. Although Hopper
claimed otherwise, it was Fonda and
not his renegade friend who thought
up the story and put it together. “I
called and hired him,” Fonda insisted.
“I think he resents that fact, but I will
say, I can’t think of a director who
would have been better.”
It was also Fonda’s idea to hire
a young unknown named Jack
Nicholson to play the stoned lawyer
the two protagonists in Easy Rider
meet on their cross-country
adventure. Nicholson was cast only
because Fonda’s first choice, Rip Torn,
demanded too much money.
As producer, Fonda raised $350,000
to make the film, which grossed a
phenomenal $60 million at the box
office. Although hailed a cult hero, he
earned a reputation for being difficult
to work with, and following his
involvement in Dennis Hopper’s
virtually incomprehensible The Last
Movie (1971), found that in conservative
Hollywood, he had squandered all his
artistic capital.
Of his many indifferent road movies
and one-dimensional cameos, only
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), in
which he played a renegade motorist
opposite Susan George, proved of any
enduring interest. By the time he
appeared in the terrible Escape From
LA in 1996, Fonda’s name had slipped
to 11th on the credits.
As well as a ranch in Montana,
Fonda bought an 82ft ocean-going
yacht Tatoosh on the proceeds of Easy
Rider and sailed it extensively in the
South Pacific.
His memoir Don’t Tell Dad appeared
to favourable reviews in 1998.
Peter Fonda married first, in 1961,
the model Susan Brewer. The marriage
was dissolved, and in 1975 he married
Becky Crockett, a descendant of the
frontiersman Davy Crockett
(dissolved). In 2011 he married
Margaret DeVogelaere, who survives
him with the two children of his first
marriage, including the actress Bridget
Fonda, as well as two stepsons and
a stepdaughter.Peter Fonda, born February 23 1940,
died August 16 2019Actor whose reputation was assured by a defining film of the 1960s counterculture, Easy Rider
Peter Fonda
Officer with the Gurkha Rifles praised for his courage during actions in Borneo and other regions
Brigadier Christopher Pike
H
UGH NORTON, who
has died aged 83, was
a classical scholar
who became BP’s head of
exploration – and one of the
first British oilmen to
recognise the
environmental issues that
would confront their
industry in the modern era.
Norton was an Arabist
and geopolitical expert –
rather than a geologist or
commercial specialist – who
spent his early BP career in
the Middle East, Libya and
southeast Asia. Though
modest and scholarly in
demeanour, there was an
intrepid side to him
inherited from his father,
Edward Norton, an army
officer and mountaineer
who led the third British
Everest Expedition in 1924,
climbed without oxygen to a
height of 28,126 ft (a record
which stood for half a
century) and coped with the
deaths of his fellow climbers
Mallory and Irvine during
their failed bid for the
summit.
Hugh Norton became a
director of BP international
and head-office policy
adviser in 1980 – concerned
with projects in the North
Sea and North America as
well as the Arab world. He
was chief executive of BP
Exploration from 1986 to
1989 and thereafter group
managing director until his
retirement in 1995.
In the boardroom he was
valued for an analytical turn
of mind that enabled him
calmly to cut to the nub of
complex problems. He was
ahead of his time as a
leading cautionary voice in
internal discussion of the
risks and responsibilities
implied by a growing body
of climate-change science –
a debate that would become
public in the subsequent era
of BP’s leadership by John
(Lord) Browne, to whom
Norton was a mentor.
Hugh Edward Norton was
born on June 23 1936, the
third and youngest son of Lt
Gen Edward Norton and his
wife Joyce (née Pasteur). At
the time of Hugh’s birth, his
father was commanding a
Royal Artillery division at
Aldershot; he went on to
be acting governor and
commander-in-chief in
Hong Kong until 1941,
shortly before its fall to the
Japanese.
Hugh was a scholar at
Winchester and did National
Service in the Royal Horse
Artillery before going up to
Trinity College, Oxford,
where he took a first in
Greats in three years, having
chosen (because he was
eager to get out into the
world) not to do thefour-year Mods & Greats
course. In his final year, as
president of Trinity Players,
he had to draft in a Hamlet
at short notice from another
college when Trinity’s
leading actor was sent down
on the eve the summer
production.
Contemporaries thought
Norton might make a career
in academia or follow his
elder brother Bill into the
Civil Service. But a mildly
rebellious streak drew him
towards the adventure
offered by British
Petroleum, formerly the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. He
joined the company in 1959
and was detached in 1962 to
study Arabic at Mecas, the
celebrated Foreign Office
language school at
Chemlane in the Lebanon.
After retiring from BP,
Norton was a non-executive
director of Inchcape, the
international motor
distributor, and Standard
Chartered Bank. He was also
a trustee of Shelter, the
homeless charity, and a
board member of the
Schumacher Sustainability
Institute in Bristol.
Norton was a talented
club-level chess player and,
like his father – of whom he
published a biography,
Norton of Everest, in 2017 –
he enjoyed climbing,
walking, birdwatching and
watercolour painting. In his
later years he kept sheep at
his home in Somerset and
involved himself in an
organic community farm.
He became especially fond
of the island of Lundy in the
Bristol Channel, where he
celebrated his 80th
birthday.
Hugh Norton married
first, in 1965, Janet Johnson,
who died in 1993. He
married secondly, in 1998,
Joy Harcup, whom he had
met on a walking holiday in
Bhutan and who survives
him with their son and
daughter, and a son of the
first marriage.Hugh Norton, born June 23
1936, died August 11 2019Hugh Norton
BP’s head of exploration who
highlighted climate change
Norton: far-sighted in warning
of challenges for the oil industryP
ETER FONDA, who has died
aged 79, co-starred, with
Dennis Hopper, in Easy
Rider (1969), the low-budget
cult film that captured the
mood of the American
counterculture at the end of the 1960s.
Cast as Wyatt, aka Captain America,
astride a Harley Davidson motorbike,
Fonda was the more laconic of the
long-haired pair as he and his spaced-
out hippie friend Billy (played by
Hopper, who also directed) hit the
road from California to Florida via
New Orleans blowing the proceeds of
a big drugs sale.
Having made two earlier anti-
establishment films, The Wild Angels
(1966) and The Trip (1967), Fonda was
lionised as an idealistic emblem of an
America in the throes of profound
social upheaval.
Although a scion of a Hollywood
dynasty, headed by his father Henry,
with his sister Jane and daughter
Bridget, Fonda had suffered a bruising
childhood against which he rebelled.
Now, after Easy Rider he found himself
typecast in low-budget films as a
drug-taking biker. “I was Captain
America, and where can you go with
that? You can only ride so many
motorcycles and smoke so many
joints,” he mused.
It was almost 30 years later that he
reclaimed his place in the limelight,
winning a Golden Globe and an Oscar
nomination for his portrayal of a
remote, uncommunicative beekeeping
grandfather trying to keep his family
together in Ulee’s Gold (1997), a role he
modelled on his father.
That success provided a certain
symmetry in a life that had been
dominated by, and at odds with, Henry
Fonda. But they were closer than they
realised. For, as one critic pointed out,
Easy Rider fitted into the American
legend of its own idealism that Henry
had done so much to incarnate.
Much ink has been spilt over the
significance of Easy Rider, which has
been identified along with the
Woodstock festival as one of the
defining American cultural landmarks
of the late 1960s. Acclaimed by critics
and (mainly young) audiences around
the world, it certainly represented the
highlight of Fonda’s pinballing career.
It was his own idea, one that
occurred to him in 1967 while
promoting The Wild Angels, the “biker
flick” that had made him a star and
which had done spectacularly well at
the box office.
Fonda realised that such road trips
were the new Westerns, “two cats just
riding across the country ... ”, and –
having hatched the notion of two
drug-dealing bikers setting out from
Los Angeles for retirement in Florida
after a cocaine deal – cast himself as
producer before telephoning Hopper
at 4.30 in the morning to invite him
to direct.
Terry Southern, who had written
The Cincinnati Kid and Dr Strangelove,
would script it (although he dropped
out at an early stage, and authorship
was the subject of extensive litigation).
Filming was fraught. There were
screaming matches, and with the
pugnacious Hopper out of his mind on
drugs, Fonda locked himself in his
trailer and supposedly became so
paranoid about Hopper’s capacity to
enforce his director’s writ with
violence that he hired bodyguards.
It was only after the wrap party that
they realised they had forgotten to
shoot the vital closing campfire scene- in which Fonda famously declared:
“We blew it!” – and had to film it later.
(There was an extensive press debate
later over what the remark actually
Peter Fonda, in the
stars-and-stripes
helmet, with Dennis
Hopper and Jack
Nicholson in Easy
Rider and, right,
with his sister Jane
Fonda in 2001B
RIGADIER CHRISTOPHER
PIKE, who has died aged 85,
was an outstanding frontline
commander who saw action
with the Gurkha Rifles in Malaya,
Borneo, Hong Kong and Cyprus.
In March 1966, during the
Confrontation with Indonesia, Pike
was commanding D Company 1st
Battalion 10th Princess Mary’s Own
Gurkha Rifles (1/10 GR) in North
Borneo.
He was ordered to find out whether
the enemy had infiltrated during a lull
between unit handovers, and a
reconnaissance in strength established
that they were building a new base
near the junction of two rivers. Pike
calculated that an ambush close to an
enemy base would not be expected,
and deployed his three platoons
accordingly.
When they were in position, a large
landing craft carrying 35 Indonesian
troops and stores approached. Heavy
fire at point-blank range resulted in
considerable losses to the enemy. The
engine stopped, the boat canted over
and slewed into the bank downstream.
When the Indonesians retaliated
from the opposite bank with machine
gun and mortar fire, Pike ordered one
platoon to withdraw. Two others
remained in position and, four hours
later, two small enemy boats were
sunk, again with heavy losses.
His commanding officer,
Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major
General) Ronnie McAlister paid tribute
to the impudent daring, cold courage
and immaculate planning of an
operation which laid claim to beingthe most successful single action in the
whole of the conflict.
Three weeks later, patrols reported
to Pike that several new enemy bases
had been set up within 800 yards of
his company hide. He decided to make
a night withdrawal from this
precarious position, and under cover
of darkness his men clipped an exit
route through thick secondary jungle.
Knowing that the Indonesians
would come looking for him, he laid
ambushes along the tracks they were
likely to use leading to the border.
Having wrested the initiative from
the enemy, his force had very much
the better of the fierce engagement
that followed the next morning. He
was awarded a DSO. The citation paid
tribute to his courage, coolness,
leadership and tactical sense.Christopher James Pike was born on
November 10 1933 at Graaff-Reinet in
Eastern Cape Province, South Africa,
and was educated at Hilton College,
Natal, and at Sandhurst, where he
excelled at sport. He was
commissioned into the 10th Gurkhas
and joined 1/10 GR in 1954 in South
Johore during the Malayan
Emergency. Regimental and staff
appointments followed.
In July 1967 Mao’s Cultural
Revolution threatened to spill over
into Hong Kong, and in the border
village of Sha Tau Kok several police
were killed and wounded by Chinese
militia. As a result, 1/10 GR was
ordered to clear British territory of
armed infiltrators. Two companies,
one led by Pike, together with
armoured cars, set off to relieve the
beleaguered police, who were pinned
down at the border post.
A machine gun opened up from
Chinese territory but, given the
danger that the intervention would
lead to full-scale conflict, the battalion
did not return fire. Pike was the first
into the border post, and later that day
the police and their casualties were
evacuated from Sha Tau Kok and the
village was back in British hands.
In 1974 Pike commanded 1/10 GR
when it was deployed to protect the
Eastern Sovereign Base in Cyprus
during the Turkish invasion of the
island. He was appointed OBE for his
leadership and professionalism during
the battalion’s seven-month tour.
He subsequently instructed at the
National Defence College, Latimer,
and was then General Staff Officer,Grade 1 (Adviser) to the Dhofar Brigade
in Oman.
On promotion to colonel he
commanded British Gurkhas at Dharan
in Nepal. On further promotion he was
Brigadier Brigade of Gurkhas, Hong
Kong, and in these two last
appointments he worked selflessly to
improve the well-being and conditions
of retired and serving Gurkhas.
Approachable and good-humoured,
Pike cared deeply about those under
his command and took a close interest
in the soldiers, their families and their
futures.
“Enjoy your soldiering,” he used to
say, “and if you can’t, then quit.” He
played cricket, tennis and squash well,
and even when he was CO he was in
the battalion hockey side that won the
Infantry Cup and were runners-up in
the Army Cup.
Long leaves were spent in South
Africa with his parents and his brother,
fishing in Kwa-Zulu, Natal, and
game-watching in the Kruger National
Park. One leave was spent with a
scientific expedition in Kenya
researching the effects on elephants
of their overpopulation.
After leaving the Army in 1988, he
was the administrative director for a
group of solicitors in Norwich. In
retirement he enjoyed time with his
family and gardening, golf, fishing,
ornithology and sailing.
Christopher Pike married, in 1967,
Prue McDermid, who survives him
with their daughter and two sons.Christopher Pike, born November 10
1933, died July 15 2019Pike circa 1967:
‘Enjoy your
soldiering, and if
you can’t, then quit’SILVER SCREEN/GETTY/REUTERS/BRAD RICKERBYObituaries
The Daily Telegraph Monday 19 August 2019 *** 25
RELEASED BY "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws