Introduction
Afdera Franchetti (born c. 1931) is an Italian baroness, descended from an old Jewish family of Venice which intermarried with the Rothschild family and who eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. She is most famous for being the fourth wife of American actor Henry Fonda.
Family
The Italian Jewish Franchetti family, from the 18th century, was one of the wealthiest families in the Mediterranean.
Afdera Franchetti was the daughter of Baron Raimondo Franchetti, a famous explorer who traveled extensively in Ethiopia and charted hitherto unexplored territories (Dancalia) during the 1920s. Raimondo's grandmother was Sara Louise de Rothschild (1834-1924). Baron Franchetti died in a plane crash in 1935, when Afdera was three years old.Her brother, the Baron Raimondo Nanuk Franchetti, was a friend of author Ernest Hemingway, who hunted with him in San Gaetano.
Marriage to Howard Taylor and Henry Fonda
Afdera Franchetti was married to Howard Taylor from 1954 to 1957. They met in Italy on a vacation. Afdera Franchetti was married to Henry Fonda from 1957 to 1961; they met in Italy while he was filming War and Peace with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer. Franchetti was roughly 23 years old when she married Fonda; his eldest child, Jane, was 18 years old.
Later life
She was once arrested for drug smuggling, as detailed in her autobiography, for one "joint", which she brought in her luggage for a friend without knowing that possession of this small amount of marijuana was a serious offence.