A new movie rediscovers Hollywood's most troubled beauty
It was a life full of headlines and hard times. 1931: SEATTLE GIRL WRITES
"GOD DIES" ESSAY, WINS PRIZE. 1935: COED ON REVIEWING STAND FOR MOSCOW MAY DAY PARADE. 1936: FRANCES FARMER, A MOVIE STAR AT 21. 1937: HOLLYWOOD BLOND WINS ACCLAIM IN BROADWAY'S GOLDEN BOY. 1938: STAR CAMPAIGNS FOR SPANISH LEFTISTS. 1939: FARMER WALKS OUT ON ROLE IN HEMINGWAY PLAY. 1942: FRANCES FARMER "DEPORTED" FROM MEXICO. 1943: ACTRESS ARRESTED, PLACED IN INSANE ASYLUM. 1945: FRANCES FARMER DISAPPEARS AGAIN, IS FOUND. 1950: EX-STAR RELEASED AFTER YEARS IN VIOLENT WARD. 1958: FRANCES FARMER, THIS IS YOUR LIFE! 1970: FRANCES FARMER, ACTRESS, DEAD OF CANCER AT 56.
Great beauties of the 1930s must have dreamed of looking like Frances Farmer. Right arms all over Hollywood would be deposited in the gene bank if it returned eyes as crystal blue as hers, features and figures as smart and sensuous. Add a dusky voice and no little acting potential, and you have God's recipe for a movie star. But if Farmer was a blessed presence in Samuel Goldwyn's Come and Get It and a dozen B pictures, her life was one roiling curse. She was part of a movie age that glorified the strong-willed woman and punished the ac tresses who incarnated them. Hepburn, Davis, De Havilland were all mistreated by moguls who wanted their stars to behave like little women. Farmer was as willful as any of them—and far more troubled. The pressure drove her from the screen. It may have driven her mad.
Her fluttering tailspin—reaching bottom at a Dickensian snake pit where she was gang-raped by drunken G.I.s and subjected to every form of torture the psychiatric Establishment could devise, from shock treatment to massive doses of mind-bending drugs and, quite possibly, a transorbital lobotomy—is the stuff nightmares and film biographies are made of. Now a company of film makers is attempting just that: Frances, a $10 million movie starring Jessica Lange as the doomed actress and Kim Stanley as her wildly eccentric mother Lillian.
They are filming a scene that took place Oct. 19,1942, the night Frances was arrested for drunken driving. High on hauteur, Frances stands in the courtroom and taunts the judge with sarcasm. Then she realizes the consequences, asks to make a phone call and is dragged away screaming. Lange goes through the scene ten times—teasing, glaring, hating, crying, shrieking, allowing the camera to read the subtlest nuances on a face that remarkably resembles Farmer's. Graeme Clifford, Lange's editor on The Postman Always Rings Twice and her director on Frances, shouts "Cut! Print!" Lange goes limp; she has reason to feel exhausted, and pleased.