Frances Farmer
Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913 – August 1, 1970) was an American actress. She appeared in over a dozen feature films over the course of her career, though she garnered notoriety for sensationalized accounts of her life, especially her involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals and subsequent mental health struggles.
For the law librarian, see Frances Farmer (librarian).
Frances Farmer
August 1, 1970 (aged 56)
Oaklawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Fishers, Indiana
39°55′48″N 86°03′49″W / 39.9301°N 86.0636°W
Actress
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A native of Seattle, Washington, Farmer began acting in stage productions while a student at the University of Washington. After graduating, she began performing in stock theater before signing a film contract with Paramount Pictures on her 22nd birthday in September 1935.[1] She made her film debut in the B film Too Many Parents (1936), followed by another B picture, Border Flight, before being given the lead role opposite Bing Crosby in the musical Western Rhythm on the Range (1936).[2] Unhappy with the opportunities the studio gave her, Farmer returned to stock theater in 1937 before being cast in the original Broadway production of Clifford Odets's Golden Boy, staged by New York City's Group Theatre. She followed this with two Broadway productions directed by Elia Kazan in 1939, but a battle with depression and binge drinking caused her to drop out of a subsequent Ernest Hemingway stage adaptation.
Farmer returned to Los Angeles, earning supporting roles in the comedy World Premiere (1941) and the film noir Among the Living (1941). In 1942, publicity of her reportedly erratic behavior began to surface and, after several arrests and committals to psychiatric institutions, Farmer was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At the request of her family, particularly her mother, she was committed to an institution in her home state of Washington, where she remained a patient until 1950. Farmer attempted an acting comeback, mainly appearing as a television host in Indianapolis on her own series, Frances Farmer Presents. Her final film role was in the 1958 drama The Party Crashers, after which she spent the majority of the 1960s occasionally performing in local theater productions staged by Purdue University. In the spring of 1970, she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, from which she died on August 1, 1970, aged 56.
Farmer has been the subject of two feature films and several books focusing on her time spent institutionalized, during which she claimed to have been subjected to systematic abuse.[3] Her posthumously released, ghostwritten, and widely discredited autobiography, Will There Really Be a Morning? (1972), details these claims, but has been exposed as a largely fictional work by a friend of Farmer's to clear debts.[4] Another discredited 1978 biography of her life, Shadowland, alleged that Farmer underwent a transorbital lobotomy during her institutionalization, but the author has since stated in court that he fabricated this incident and several other aspects of the book. A 1982 biographical film based on this book depicted these events as true, resulting in renewed interest in her life and career.
Life and career[edit]
1913–1935: Early life[edit]
Frances Elena Farmer[5] was born on September 19, 1913, in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Cora Lillian (née Van Ornum; 1873–1955), a boardinghouse operator and dietician[6] and Ernest Melvin Farmer (1874–1956), a lawyer.[7] Her father was originally from Spring Valley, Minnesota,[8] while her mother was from Oregon and a descendant of pioneers.[8] Lillian's maternal grandparents were John and Jemima (Skews) Rowe, who came to Waldwick, Wisconsin, from Truro, England, in 1849. Farmer had an older sister, Edith; an older brother, Wesley;[7] and an older half-sister, Rita, conceived during her mother's first marriage.[9] Before the birth of Wesley and Edith, Lillian had given birth to a daughter who died of pneumonia in infancy.[8] When she was four years old, Farmer's parents separated, and her mother moved with the children to Los Angeles, where her sister Zella lived.[10] In early 1925, the family moved north to Chico, California, where Lillian pursued a career in nutrition research.[11] Shortly after arriving in Chico, Lillian concluded that caring for the children was interfering with her ability to work.[12] The children's Aunt Zella then drove them to Albany, Oregon, where they boarded a train back to Seattle to live with their father.[12]
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Death[edit]
In the spring of 1970, Farmer was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which was attributed to a life of heavy smoking.[108] She was hospitalized for three weeks before being sent home for a brief period.[106] She died of the cancer at Indianapolis Community Hospital on August 1, 1970.[106][109] She is interred at Oaklawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Fishers, Indiana.[110]
In 1982, Jessica Lange portrayed Farmer in the feature film Frances; the film depicts Farmer undergoing a lobotomy, the veracity of which has been disputed.[118] The next year, a television adaptation of Will There Really Be a Morning? was released with Susan Blakely as Farmer.[119] Another feature film based on her life, Committed, was produced in 1984.[120]
In music, she is portrayed in the following songs:
French singer-songwriter Mylène Farmer chose her stage name in homage to the actress. She is mentioned in "Lobotomy Gets Them Home" (1989) on The Men They Couldn't Hang's album Silvertown. She was the subject of a stage play by Sally Clark, Saint Frances of Hollywood (1996).[122]
In the 2017 Netflix original series Mindhunter, the character version of Edmund Kemper erroneously says Farmer was lobotomized.[123]
Farmer was referenced in the 2022 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel episode "Billy Jones and the Orgy Lamps" with a character's mental breakdown being described as "full-on Frances Farmer."[124]
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