Show Business: The Flying Fondas and How They Grew

PETER, the youngest Fonda, denies it. Henry and Jane, older and wiser, know that talent, like blood type, is decided before birth; that the plainsman, the rebel and the runaway are all branches on the same family tree. It is more than the physical resemblance that unites them—the El Greco shanks, the narrow faces with too much jaw, and the pale, inquiring eyes of hunted animals. There is also a common quality of purpose, a mutual undertow of melancholy.

It is probably no accident that each player has reached...