Herb Edelman as an announcer for Armed Forces Radio, he enrolled in Brooklyn College as a theater student, but eventually dropped out. He later worked as a hotel manager and as a taxicab driver. One of his fares was director Mike Nichols, who in 1963 cast Edelman in his breakthrough Broadway role, as the bewildered telephone repairman in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park". Edelman reprised his role in the 1967 film version (starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda). He appeared in the movie versions of Simon's "The Odd Couple" (1968) and "California Suite" (1978). He also appeared in an installment of
Jane Fonda 1908–1950), and actor Henry Fonda (1905–1982). According to her father, their surname came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1500s. There, he intermarried, and the family began to use Dutch given names, with Jane's first Fonda ancestor reaching New York in 1650. She also has English, Scottish, and French ancestry. She was named for the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother's side. She has a brother, Peter, who is also an actor, and a maternal half-sister, Frances de Villers Brokaw (aka "Pan"), whose daughter is