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Revision as of 00:51, 21 January 2006 editWyss (talk | contribs)13,475 edits rv edit by blocked user, I do have a source for the 1935 date btw← Previous edit Revision as of 01:14, 21 January 2006 edit undo67.42.212.86 (talk) Yes, your source is "Shadowland," which is incorrect.Next edit →
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==Early life, career and marriage== ==Early life, career and marriage==
Farmer was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1931, at age 17, she entered and won a writing contest sponsored by '']'' with with her controversial essay ''God Dies''. In 1935, as a student at the University of Washington, she won a subscription contest for the leftist newspaper '']''. First prize was a trip to the ], which she took despite her mother's strong objections. These two incidents led to accusations that Farmer was both an ] and a ]. In 1935 she starred in a production of ''Alien Corn'' at the University of Washington, for which she received rave reviews. Farmer was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1931, at age 17, she entered and won a writing contest sponsored by '']'' with with her controversial essay ''God Dies''. In 1935, as a student at the University of Washington, she won a subscription contest for the leftist newspaper '']''. First prize was a trip to the ], which she took despite her mother's strong objections. These two incidents led to accusations that Farmer was both an ] and a ]. In 1934 she starred in a production of ''Alien Corn'' at the University of Washington, for which she received rave reviews.


==1936== ==1936==

Revision as of 01:14, 21 January 2006

Frances Farmer

Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913, Seattle, Washington – August 1, 1970, Indianapolis, Indiana) was an American film actress.

Early life, career and marriage

Farmer was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1931, at age 17, she entered and won a writing contest sponsored by Scholastic Magazine with with her controversial essay God Dies. In 1935, as a student at the University of Washington, she won a subscription contest for the leftist newspaper The Voice of Action. First prize was a trip to the Soviet Union, which she took despite her mother's strong objections. These two incidents led to accusations that Farmer was both an atheist and a Communist. In 1934 she starred in a production of Alien Corn at the University of Washington, for which she received rave reviews.

1936

Farmer moved to Hollywood in 1935 and her striking good looks and distinctive voice resulted in a 7-year contract with Paramount Studios. She had top billing in two well-received 1936 "B" films and that same year was cast opposite Bing Crosby in Rhythm On The Range. Also in 1936 she was loaned to Samuel Goldwyn to appear in Come and Get It, based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Her portrayals of both the mother and daughter were praised by the public and critics, some of whom wrote of her potential to become a major star. She also married her first husband, actor Leif Erickson, in 1936.

A rebellious star

Farmer was not entirely satisfied with her career, however. She felt stifled by Paramount's tendency to cast her in films which depended on her looks more than her talent and her naturally outspoken demeanor made her seem uncooperative and contemptuous. In an age when the studios dictated every facet of a star's life, Farmer rebelled against the studio's control and off-screen, she resisted every attempt they made to glamourize her life, refusing to attend Hollywood parties or to date other stars for publicity purposes. At the time, she was sympathetically described as being indifferent about the clothing she wore and was said to drive an older-model "green roadster," which according to a columnist, once broke down on Melrose Avenue, blocking traffic as Farmer pushed the stricken car to the side, much to the consternation of the studio's publicity department.

Hoping to enhance her reputation as a serious actress, she left Hollywood in 1937 to do summer stock on the East Coast. She attracted the attention of Harold Clurman and Clifford Odets and joined the Group Theatre, appearing in Odets' play Golden Boy. However, critics noted her inexperience and some speculated that she had been miscast. She also had an affair with Odets but he was married to actress Luise Rainer and didn't offer Farmer a commitment. Farmer felt betrayed when Odets suddenly ended the relationship, believing he had used her drawing power to further the success of his play. She returned to Hollywood, somewhat chastened, willing to continue her movie career but still on her terms. She arranged with Paramount to stay in Los Angeles for three months out of every year to make motion pictures, freeing up the remainder of her time for theater activities. However, her two subsequent appearances on Broadway had short runs and she found herself back in Los Angeles, often loaned out by Paramount to other studios for starring roles, while at her home studio she was consigned to costarring appearances, which she often found unchallenging.

By 1939 her temperamental work habits and drinking had resulted in fewer calls from Paramount. In 1940, after abruptly quitting a Broadway production of a play by Hemingway, she starred in two major films but a year later she was again relegated to co-starring roles. Her performance in Son of Fury (Fox, 1941) was critically praised but in 1942 Paramount cancelled Farmer's contract, reportedly because of her alcoholism and increasingly erratic behaviour.

The spiral

In October 1942 she was arrested for driving with her headlights on bright in the wartime dimout zone which affected most of the west coast. The police suspected her of being drunk and she was jailed overnight. Farmer was fined $500.00. She immediately paid $250.00 and was put on probation. When she failed to pay the rest of the fine, in January 1943 a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. At almost the same time, an assault charge was filed against her by a studio hairdresser who alleged Farmer had dislocated her jaw. The police found her at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood and she did not surrender peacefully. At her hearing the next morning she behaved erratically, making claims about her civil rights and demanding an attorney, then threw an inkwell at the judge, who immediately sentenced her to 180 days in jail. Through the efforts of her sister-in-law, a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles county at the time, Farmer was transferred to the psychiatric ward of L.A. General Hospital.

Farmer was found mentally incompetent and sent to a private sanitarium where she received insulin shock therapy, without her family's consent (according to her sister's self-published book Look Back in Love and court records). Farmer walked away from the sanitarium and appeared at her half-sister's house miles away. When her mother was alerted and found out about the insulin therapy, she successfully won legal guardianship and Farmer was released to her. Three subsequent stays in a state mental institution followed (the longest from April 1946 to March 1950) during which she received electro-convulsive shock treatment (ECT). In 1950, her parents requested that the state review her case, declare her competent and parole her. Her mostly ghostwritten autobiography (see below) stated that her parents needed her to take care of them in their old age. At the time Farmer believed her mother could have her institutionalized again, as she had in the past. Farmer later legally secured competency for herself.

Throughout this entire period press reports about Farmer were generally sympathetic and not sensationalized.

Second career and death

In 1954, after a brief second marriage to a utility worker, Farmer moved to Eureka, California where she worked anonymously for almost three years in a photo studio as a secretary/bookkeeper. In 1957 she was recognized by a radio promoter and talent agent who helped her move to San Francisco and get work as a receptionist in a hotel, where he arranged for a reporter to recognize her and write an article. This led to renewed interest in her and two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, where Sullivan treated her with dignity. Farmer also appeared on the TV show This Is Your Lifeduring which she was asked about her alcohol abuse and mental illness. Farmer said she did not believe that she had ever been mentally ill and did not believe it at the time, but "if a person is treated like a patient, they are apt to act like one." Reviewers described her responses as highly intelligent, noted her brusque but forthcoming reactions to some of the more personal questions and suggested that she sometimes seemed to be on the verge of losing her patience.

Farmer appeared in several live television dramas and one modest Paramount film that exploited her famous name but Hollywood lost interest in her comeback.

She finally found security in Indianapolis, where in 1958 she was given her own afternoon show, Frances Farmer Presents. Farmer made a success of this for several years but by 1964 her alcoholism had made her unreliable and she was fired. A rival television station offered to hire her but Farmer reportedly broke off contact after one telephone call.

Farmer had made friends in Indianapolis who treated her as family, something she claimed she had never experienced before. She lived the remaining few years of her life in contented obscurity. A heavy, lifelong smoker, she died from esophageal cancer at the age of 56 in 1970.

Frances Farmer is interred in the Oaklawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Fishers, Indiana.

Her autobiography Will There Really Be A Morning was published posthumously and previously unknown details about Farmer's life became public for the first time. Although Farmer worked on it until illness overwhelmed her, much was written by her friend Jean Ratcliffe.

Biographical films

Jessica Lange played Farmer in the 1982 feature film Frances and was Oscar-nominated for her role. Lange has maintained her compassion and empathy for Farmer's plight and in interviews remains an ardent supporter (however, this film contains a now discredited, fictional scene which depicts Farmer undergoing a transorbital lobotomy). Susan Blakely also portrayed Farmer, with Lee Grant as Farmer's mother Lillian, in a television production which used the title of the autobiography.

Farmer's medical treatment

Sensationalized autobiography

In the years since Farmer's death her treatment in institutions has been the subject of serious discussion and wild speculation. A sensationalized chapter relating to her breakdown is included in Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. Her own ghostwritten autobiography described a brutal incarceration and claimed she had been raped, beaten, doused in freezing baths and forced by a warden to eat her own feces. However, Farmer's friend and ghostwriter Jean Ratcliffe admitted she had written the book specifically to create a saleable and filmable property. Ratcliffe later conceded that she had deliberately exaggerated Farmer's torment and that most of the finished work was not contributed by Farmer.

The false lobotomy claims

A further biography, Shadowland (1978) by William Arnold asserted for the first time that Farmer had been subjected to a transorbital lobotomy performed by the notorious Dr. Walter Freeman. This claim was repeated in a 1982 biography by David Shutts entitled Lobotomy, Resort to the Knife, which cites Frank Freeman (Dr. Freeman's eldest son), who claimed his father did perform a lobotomy on Farmer and offered what he purported to be a photograph of the procedure as evidence. However, the photograph was later shown to be from a July, 1949 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about Walter Freeman and was one of a series of photos of a patient who, in other photos from the series where her face is completely visible, is clearly not Farmer (cf. Shedding Light on Shadowland, linked below, which includes the photos).

Although Walter Freeman's younger son disputed the Farmer story, the alleged lobotomy was widely accepted as fact for several years and fictional scenes of Farmer being subjected to the procedure were used to shocking effect in the film Frances. In a court case he brought against Brooksfilms, producers of the film Frances, author William Arnold admitted his intention had never been to create a true biography of Farmer and that much of his story had been "fictionalized" (as he put it), including the lobotomy.

Moreover, the complete medical records for Western State Hospital (where Farmer was a patient) detail all the lobotomies performed during her time there. Because lobotomies were considered a ground-breaking medical procedure at the time, the hospital did not attempt to conceal their work and kept extensive records. Although hundreds of patients underwent the procedure, no evidence has ever been presented to support the claim that Farmer was among them. Farmer's own medical records show she was never operated on for any reason while she was institutionalized. Former staff members, including all the lobotomy ward nurses who were on duty during Frances' years at Western State and who were still alive years later, confirmed in 1983 interviews with Seattle newspapers that Farmer did not receive a lobotomy. Moreover, Freeman's private patient records contain no references to Farmer. Dr. Charles Jones, who was Psychiatric Resident at Western State during Frances' stays there and was personally trained by Freeman to perform transorbitals, is also on record stating that Farmer was never given a lobotomy. As Jack El-Hai has reported in his biography of Walter Freeman, The Lobotomist, his son Frank Freeman later hedged his earlier statements and was no longer willing to assert unequivocally that his father operated on Farmer.

Associates who knew Farmer during her later years in Indianapolis described her as a woman capable of unreasonable or temperamental behavior who could sometimes be confrontational and difficult. They recalled emotional outbursts similar to those attributed to Farmer during her Hollywood years. They also described a woman who was able to establish a comfortable lifestyle and a successful career (nevertheless hampered by alcoholism) in which she was required to display creativity and intelligence, communicating and interacting effectively with a variety of people, especially during her 6 year role as a popular local television host. These comments do not support earlier biographical descriptions of her as a "lobotomized zombie."

All of these sensational and inaccurate claims seem to have been motivated by a desire to sell book and film properties after her death. With the arrival of the Internet age and wider access to medical archives and court records, most researchers have concluded Frances Farmer never received a lobotomy and was not subjected to significant abuse during her periods of institutional care in Washington state.

Quote

"It's a nuthouse . The other day a man phoned and wanted me to endorse a certain brand of cigarettes. I had nothing against them and in fact will smoke them or anything else that comes along, but I didn't know why he was bothering me. I thought maybe if I was nice they'd give me a carton as a thank offering, so I rather tentatively broached the matter of remuneration. What was the endorsement worth, I asked, and he said three thousand dollars. What are you going to do in an atmosphere like that?"

Trivia

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