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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. During several years of study with the University of Washington drama department Farmer starred in diverse productions including Helen of Troy, Everyman and Uncle Vanya. In 1935 she starred in the school's production of Alien Corn, speaking foreign languages, playing the piano and receiving rave reviews in what was the longest running play in the history of the university's drama department at the time.
1936
After returning from the Soviet Union in the summer of 1935 Farmer went to New York City, hoping to launch a legitimate theater career. Instead, she was referred to Paramount talent scout Oscar Serlin who arranged for a screen test. Paramount offered her a 7-year contract. Farmer signed it in New York on her 22nd birthday (September 19, 1935) and moved to Hollywood. 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
On October 19, 1942 she was stopped by the police in Santa Monica for driving with her headlights on bright in the wartime dimout zone which affected most of the west coast. Some reports say she was unable to produce a driver's license and was verbally abusive. The police suspected her of being drunk and she was jailed overnight. Farmer was fined $500.00 and given a 180 day suspended sentence. She immediately paid $250.00 and was put on probation. By January 1943 she had failed to pay the rest of the fine and 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 on the set of a low budget movie. The police traced her to the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood and, getting no answer, entered her room with a pass key. They reportedly found her in bed (some stories include an episode involving the bathroom) and made her dress quickly. By all accounts 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. Farmer responded by knocking down a policeman and bruising another along with a matron. She ran to a phone booth where she tried to call her attorney but was subdued by the police who physically carried her away (a famous picture of this survives) as she shouted, “Have you ever had a broken heart?” Some researchers have noted she had recently separated from her husband Leif Erickson.
Newspaper reports gave sensationalized accounts of her arrest, including claims she had walked down Sunset Boulevard naked and used profanities when speaking to police officers. 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 and diagnosed with "manic depressive psychosis."
Within days, having been sent to the San Fernando Valley and a sanitarium for screen actors in La Crescenta, Farmer was diagnosed as "paranoid schizophrenic" and received insulin shock therapy, a brutal and dangerous treatment which was later discredited, but accepted as standard psychiatric procedure at the time. Her family later claimed the treatment was given without their consent (as documented in her sister's self-published book Look Back in Love and court records). Farmer is reported to have complained so desperately to her mother Lillian about this painful treatment, which had side effects including nausea, that after about nine months Lillian arranged for Frances' release into her care on September 13, 1943.
Western State Hospital
Farmer moved back in with her parents in Seattle but she and her mother fought bitterly and within six months Lillian had her daughter committed as "legally insane" to Western State Hospital at Fort Steilacoom, Washington, where she was sometimes placed in a strait jacket and received electro-convulsive shock treatment (ECT). Three months later, during the summer of 1944, she was pronounced "completely cured" and released. While traveling with her father to visit at an aunt's ranch in Reno, Nevada, she ran away and was arrested for vagrancy in Antioch, California while reportedly looking for work as a fruit picker. The arrest received wide publicity and offers of help flooded in from Hollywood, San Francisco and New York, which she ignored. She went back to her parents but at her mother's request was returned to Western State in May 1945. The facility was woefully understaffed and has been described as "crumbling," "antiquated" and "dismal."
Claims of abuse
In the years following Farmer's death her treatment at Western State was the subject of serious discussion and wild speculation. A sensationalized chapter relating to her breakdown was included in Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. Farmer's ghostwritten, posthumously published autobiography Will There Really Be A Morning 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 she had deliberately exaggerated Farmer's torment and that most of the finished work was not contributed by Farmer.
These sensational and inaccurate claims seem to have been motivated by a desire to sell book and film properties after her death. Most researchers later concluded that, although conditions at Western State were indeed dismal during her periods of institutional care there, Frances Farmer was not a victim of criminal abuse such as rape or ritual humiliation.
The false lobotomy claims
William Arnold
In the fictional biography Shadowland (1978), published eight years after her death, William Arnold was the first to claim Farmer had been subjected to a transorbital lobotomy performed by Dr. Walter Freeman. This assertion was repeated in Lobotomy, Resort to the Knife 1982 by David Shutts, who cited Frank Freeman (Walter Freeman's eldest son) as saying his father performed a lobotomy on Farmer. As evidence he offered a dramatic photograph of a lobotomy procedure. This was later shown to be from a series of images included in a July, 1949 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about Walter Freeman. The same patient's face is completely visible in other photos and she is clearly not Farmer (a link below to Shedding Light on Shadowland includes the photos).
Walter Freeman's younger son disputed the lobotomy story but it was widely accepted as fact for several years. Wholly fictional scenes of Farmer being subjected to the procedure were used to shocking effect in the 1982 film Frances. In a court case brought by author William Arnold against Brooksfilms, the film's producers, Arnold admitted he had never intended to create a true biography of Farmer and that much of his story had been fictionalized, including the lobotomy.
Medical archives
Western State Hospital's medical archives record all of the lobotomies performed during her time there. Since lobotomies were considered a ground-breaking (and money saving) 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 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 during 1983 interviews with Seattle newspapers that Farmer did not receive a lobotomy. Nurse Beverly Tibbetts stated, “I worked on all the patients who had lobotomies, and Frances Farmer never came to that ward.” Freeman's own private patient records contain no references to Farmer. Dr. Charles Jones, Psychiatric Resident at Western State during Frances' stays there (and personally trained by Freeman to perform transorbitals) also stated that Farmer was never given a lobotomy. In The Lobotomist, a later biography of Walter Freeman, author Jack El-Hai reported that Freeman's son Frank ultimately hedged his earlier statements and was no longer willing to assert unequivocally that his father operated on Farmer. Her sister Edith Farmer Elliot said her parents were asked for permission to perform a lobotomy on Frances, but her father was “horrified” by the notion and threatened legal action “if they tried any of their guinea pig operations on her.”
Second career and death
On March 23, 1950, at her parents' request, she was "paroled" back into her mother's care. Farmer's mostly ghostwritten autobiography bitterly stated that her parents needed her to take care of them in their old age. She took a job sorting laundry at the Olympia hotel in Seattle. At the time Farmer is said to have believed her mother could have her institutionalized again. In 1953, ten years after her arrest at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, a judge legally restored Frances Farmer's competency and full civil rights at her request.
In 1954, after a brief second marriage to utility worker Alfred H. Lobley, Farmer moved to Eureka, California where she worked anonymously for almost three years in a photo studio as a secretary/bookkeeper.
Comeback attempt
In 1957 she met Leland C. Mikesell, an independent broadcast promoter from Indianapolis who helped her move to San Francisco and get work as a receptionist in a hotel, where he then arranged for a reporter to recognize her and write an article. This led to renewed interest. She told Modern Screen magazine, “I blame nobody for my fall... I think I have won the fight to control myself.” She made two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and also appeared on the TV show This Is Your Life, during which she was asked about her alcohol abuse and mental illness. Farmer said she did not believe she had ever been mentally ill and did not believe it at the time but remarked, "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.
After a 15 year hiatus, in August 1957 Farmer returned to the stage in New Hope, Pennsylvania for a summer stock production of The Chalk Garden. The wry irony of her role has been noted: The play's protagonist works to rebuild her life after being away for 15 years.
Through the spring of 1958 Farmer appeared in several television dramas and made her last film, The Party Crashers, produced by Paramount for the teen market in an apparent attempt to capitalize on her name. During this period she divorced Lobley and married Mikesell, but her third marriage was also brief. By the summer of 1958, offers for television and theater appearances had fallen off. Her comeback ended with a six day performance of The Chalk Garden in Indianapolis, where she accepted an offer to host afternoon movies on a local TV station.
Indianapolis
She made a success of Frances Farmer Presents, was in demand as a public speaker and was actress-in-residence at Purdue University during the early 1960s, appearing in some campus productions. However, by 1964 her behaviour had turned erratic again (some commentators have implicated her alcoholism), she became unreliable and temperamental, was fired, re-hired and fired again. A rival television station reportedly offered her a job but Farmer is said to have broken off contact after one telephone call. Her last acting role was in The Visit at Loeb Playhouse on the Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, which ran October 22-30, 1965. During this engagement she was arrested for drunk driving.
She subsequently attempted two small businesses with her friend Jean Ratcliffe but both failed. She was arrested again for drunk driving and her license was suspended for a year. Farmer also reportedly gave dramatic readings during this period until illness made it too difficult for her to speak. A lifelong heavy smoker, she began work on her autobiography in 1968 but it was uncompleted when Farmer died from esophageal cancer in 1970 at the age of 56.
Six female friends and acquaintences were pallbearers at her funeral. Frances Farmer is interred at Oaklawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Fishers, Indiana.
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?"
Biographical films
- Jessica Lange played Farmer in the 1982 feature film Frances and was Oscar-nominated for her role. However, this film contains a discredited, fictional scene which depicts Farmer undergoing a transorbital lobotomy. Lange maintained her compassion and empathy for Farmer's plight and in interviews remained an ardent supporter.
- Susan Blakely portrayed Farmer with Lee Grant as Farmer's mother Lillian in a television production which used the title of the autobiography.
References in popular culture
- French superstar Mylene Farmer took her last name as an homage to her favorite actress.
- Farmer is the subject of a song by Nirvana entitled "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle." The song is featured on the band's album In Utero.
- "The Medal Song" by Culture Club was written about Farmer. The single release featured a photograph of Farmer with the caption "From Here to Eternity" and is included on the 1984 album Waking Up With the House on Fire.
- "Lobotomy Gets 'em Home" by The Men They Couldn't Hang is about Farmer.
- Farmer is the subject of the song "Ugly Little Dreams" by Everything But the Girl on their album Love Not Money.
External links
- "Shedding Light on Shadowland" - Essay debunking many commonly believed myths about Farmer, with a wealth of previously undisclosed information about her
- Frances Farmer fansite
- Frances Farmer's Essay "God Dies"
- Frances Farmer at IMDb
- Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Frances Farmer