Frances Farmer was a Hollywood and Broadway actress of the 1930's and 40's. While her career was brief and marred by controversy, her legacy as one of the first controversial and "troubled" actresses lives on today even as it is continually proven false by new information that is brought forward by her surviving relatives and doctors.

Early Life

Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1913, Frances grew up performing. Her first performance was in a church play at age 14 in which she both acted and sang. Her mother was a supporter of her activities, but her support of public issues such as the early feminist causes and anti-Communist activity was much stronger. As Frances got older and her career as an actress furthered, a severe falling out between her and her mother became inevitable. When she was a senior in high school, she won a statewide essay-writing contest with a controversial paper on her religious views entitled, God Dies! As you might expect, the paper did not showcase a very fundamental religious view, causing uproar among the more conservative members of the community. A local minister was quoted as saying that, "If the young people of this city are going to Hell, Frances Farmer is surely leading them there." It was at this point that she first got a taste of public life and celebrity, which she later admitted to relishing. In a 1937 interview with Collier's magazine, she stated that "[...] when they started calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it."

Acting Career

After the God Dies! controversy, Frances' public persona was beginning to form, and continued to do so after being accepted into the drama program at the University of Washington. She starred in multiple shows during her time there, most notably a drama about a women's college called Alien Corn, in which she played a German musical prodigy, requiring to both sing, play the piano, and speak German. The show was, at the time, the longest-running in the University's history, in no small part due to her performance. Local reviews were all glowing, one critic going so far as to call her the "next toast of Broadway." Around the same time, she was the winner of a contest held a left-leaning Seattle newspaper which awarded her a trip to Moscow by way of steamer departing from New York. Attacked by anti-Communists on all sides, including a public denial by her mother, Frances claimed that her only interest in seeing Russia was to study their theatre. She would admit later that, while she did enjoy Russia and learned a lot there, she really only wanted to go to New York, and that the Russia trip was little more than a pleasant coincidence. When she returned to New York, she stayed there instead of returning to Washington to finish school. Though she was unable to find immediate success on stage, she was soon offered a screen test by a Paramount Pictures representative, took it, and was signed. After making a few mildly successful movies in Hollywood, she was contacted by Clifford Odets and Harold Clurman to star in the Group Theatre's production of Odets' play Golden Boy. Breaking a previous commitment to a movie, Farmer soon joined the company, but her performance in Golden Boy was met with mixed reviews. Time magazine went so far as to say that she had been miscast, and did not have the stage experience necessary to carry the weight of her role. Regardless, she toured with the show until 1938 when the production moved to London. In 1939, Farmer acted in the Group productions of Thunder Rock and Quiet City, though neither caught fire in the same way as Golden Boy. At the end of the year she began work on The Fifth Column, which was being directed by Lee Strasberg, but due to some personality conflicts she was replaced during the rehearsal process.

Romance

While in Hollywood, Frances met and married screen actor Leif Erickson, though they were separated after only a year. While still technically married, she began work on Golden Boy and began a relationship with Clifford Odets (who was also married) that is almost universally referred to as 'tempestuous'. In her autobiography, Frances describes a letter he sent her as saying, 'I think it best if we never see each other again,' which may or may not have contributed to the decision to drop her from Golden Boy upon the trip to London. Speculation later arose that she had been romantically linked to Harold Clurman as well, although evidence for that is sketchy at best. The most concrete piece of information that can be attested to that is that, according to a Newsweek article at the time of her arrest in 1942 Clurman did owe her an undisclosed amount of money.

Arrest

After leaving New York in 1938, Farmer returned to Hollywood and began habitually using the drug Benzedrine, ostensibly to control her weight. By 1942 she had developed a dependence on them, and was beginning to show signs of alcoholism, and one night while she was driving around with her headlights on in a blackout zone, she was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Upon finding her to be drunk, police report that she became belligerent and abusive, a reputation she lived up to during her court hearing the next year. After making wisecracks to the judge about her drinking habits, she began to get violent until she was forcibly dragged from the courtroom, screaming, 'Have you ever had a broken heart?' (Here some believe she was talking about Clurman, but again, little evidence is presented.)

Institutionalization

While in jail in 1943, a psychiatrist diagnosed Farmer with 'manic depressive psychosis' and she was sent to La Crescenta sanitarium in California. Her mother, with whom she had temporarily reconciled, arranged for her release after only six months because of Frances's complaints about the treatment there. She claims to have been treated with insulin shock, which has now long been obsolete and considered ineffective in mental hospitals, though no hospital records exist that can prove this claim. She also claimed to have been raped by the male orderlies, but the records kept at La Crescenta show that at the time of her stay only female workers cared for female patients. Ironically it was her mother who, a few months later, arranged for Frances to be recommitted, this time at Western State Hospital for the Insane. In the biography of Frances Farmer, Shadowland, the author William Arnold alleges more mistreatment of Farmer, including more electroshock, and an unnecessary lobotomy procedure. Only one instance of electroshock used on Farmer was recorded at Western State, and the hospital denies that any lobotomy ever took place; and no real evidence for this claim seems to exist. However, many people still consider Arnold's version of the story (which was made into a movie called Frances in the 1980s with Jessica Lange in the title role) as the definitive facts. Even as more and more doubt has been cast on the supposed mistreatment Frances suffered at both of these institutions, the legend created by Shadowland has continued to be the perception of her life; it is even included on several public service groups' websites that advocate better treatment of patients in mental hospitals.

Later Life

Frances' career never recovered from the scandal surrounding her arrest, and even though she occasionally worked in television even after her eventual parole from Western State, she never regained the celebrity she had in the late 30s. She appeared a few times on The Ed Sullivan Show, and hosted a showcase of older movies called Frances Farmer Presents from 1958-1964. She moved out of Hollywood and lived in Indiana until she died in 1970.