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The Wampus. "I'm not so worried about Jane." says proud Henry Fonda, "but what about Peter? The day will probably come when he'll be stealing roles away from me." Peter's stage experience began in early boarding school days when he wrote, produced and performed in a play called Stalag 17½. In prep school (Connecticut's Westminster), he organized a sort of Young Vic called the Wampus Players. "A wampus," by his definition, "is a mythical cat. very large like a dragon, and he doesn't do anything but eat fair maidens." But despite all this extracurricular promise, he was miserable at Westminster. "When you are the son of a famous father," he points out, "there is a great deal of resentment. I think I was resented by everyone."
Before finishing his junior year, he quit Westminster, took special exams and got himself admitted to the Municipal University of Omaha. Things were rough there, too. in his father's home town: "There was a certain crowd always jeering at me." But he did form a permanent, hoops-of-steel friendship with a student named Stormy McDonald, son of the late president of the Zenith Radio Corp. "He became my brother," says Peter. "He gave me my philosophy: above all else, be true to yourself. Everybody who's been in contact with me knows Stormy." In 1960 he left without graduating and did summer stock in upstate New York.
Beers & Drags. Last fall, the favorable reviews for his performance in Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole gave him confidence. Three days later he got married. "Now I can stand on my own two feet," he says, "and disperse anybody who comes up to me and says, 'You are here because of who you are and not because of your talent.' " He also disperses a shower of eccentricities. He makes his own breakfast, tossing two bananas, three eggs, half a pint of milk and some Bosco into a Waring Blendor. He flies kites. He wears cowboy boots with his tuxedo. He drives a silver 390-h.p. Facel-Vega sports car. "I've had beers in every kind of bar in this country." he drawls, "and I've raced with every kind of hood on the road."
Lee Strasberg once asked him who his favorite actor was. "I hesitated," Peter remembers, "and said. 'A cross between Laurence Olivier and Lee J. Cobb.' If he asked me that today. I'd say my father. I think my father is the best actor I've ever seen."