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| | Fonda at His Peak in 'On Golden Pond' |
 | | S a successful Broadway play, Ernest Thompson's ''On Golden Pond'' was processed American cheese, smooth, infinitely spreadable and bland, with color added by the actors. |
 | | As you watch him in ''On Golden Pond,'' you're seeing the intelligence, force and grace of a talent that has been maturing on the screen for almost 50 years, in everything from ''You Only Live Once,'' ''Jesse James,'' ''The Grapes of Wrath,'' ''The Lady Eve'' and ''My Darling Clementine,'' through ''Mr. |
 | | Miss Fonda, a brisk comedienne when her lines are good and a nononsense actress even when they aren't, survives her not-great role in ''On Golden Pond,'' even the kind of awful, family reconciliation scene that happens with far more frequency in second-rate domestic dramas than in life. |
| www.nytimes.com /1981/12/04/movies/04POND.html (788 words) |
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