Background
Frances Farmer was born on 19 September 1914 in Seattle, Washington, United States.
Frances Farmer was born on 19 September 1914 in Seattle, Washington, United States.
Educated at the University of Washington.
Frances Farmer went from the University of Washington on a trip to Soviet Russia, to the Group Theater and Hollywood, to an affair with Clifford Odets, and got the female role in the stage debut of Golden Boy, the cast of which included Flia Kazan, who saw “a special glow, a skin without flaw', lustrous eyes—a blonde you’d dream about. She also had a wrv and, at times, rather disappointed manner, a twist of the mouth, which suited the part.”
That was 1937. The year before. Farmer had been in Hollywood. She had made Too Many Parents (36, Robert McGowan) and Border Flight (36, Otho Lovering). Then she met Howard Hawks, who cast her in the challenging dual role of mother and daughter in Come and Get It (36, Hawks and William Wyler, after Hawks was fired).
She was marked as a leftist, she would talk back, she intimidated too many people, and she reckoned that the film work she was offered was lousy: Rhythm on the Range (36, Norman Taurog); The Toast of New York (37, Rowland V. Lee); Ebb Tide (37. James P. Hogan); Exclusive (37, Alexander Hall); Ride a Crooked Mile (38, Alfred E. Green); South of Pago Pago (40, Green); Flowing Gold (40, Green); World Premiere (41, Ted Tetzlaff); Badlands of Dakota (41. Green); Among the Living (41, Stuart Heisler); and Son of Fury (41, John Cromwell).
She was years in the state hospital at Steilacoom, Washington. She came to the surface again in the late fifties, on television, and she made a couple of TV movies, including The Party Crashers (58, Bernard Girard). Admirers regretted that she was not the same person—but on the screen forty-four is never the same as twenty-two. This is barely a career, yet it is one of the most poignant Hollywood lives, heavy with meanings.
Border Flight
1936Among the Living
1941Farmers life is “known” now—or understood; but there is a special mystery that clings to established history, the paranoia that knows one may be wrong. So Frances Farmer is celebrated as a victim: she was too intelligent, supposedly, too radical, too difficult, too determined to be an artist, an actress, a woman, a free spirit. You can hardly have a Jessica Lange play a Frances Farmer without that sense of victimization and lost greatness. And there has never been a problem in rounding up a crowd that wants to think badly of Hollywood and the show business system.
Hawks said “she went to pieces.” There was trouble with the law, with alcohol, with ... too many men as strong, alluring, and careerist as Odets, Hawks, Kazan, and her husband, actor Leif Erickson (they were married from 1934 to 1942). And perhaps it was too much for her to seem that lovely or poised on the brink of fame and greatness. Perhaps she was disturbed, or self-destructive—perhaps she was out of control.
One of the screen’s great lies is the way it sanctifies control and seems to make a unified image of passion and intelligence. Whatever, she was treated as if she were crazy. She was institutionalized and she had operations, a lobotomy.
Quotes from others about the person
Hawks believed she was the best actress he ever worked with. He recalled her playing a scene with the experienced Edward Arnold, and giving the pro some quiet help on timing. “Hey, look,” said Arnold to Hawks, “she’s pretty good.”
“She’s so good." Hawks replied, “that you’d better get right to work or she’s going to take it and walk off with it.”
She is so good in Come and Get It, you marvel that that’s the only good film she ever made. She was difficult, some say
—though not Hawks.