FRANCES FARMER

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

FRANCES FARMER

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

“Peter,” said Frances Farmer. “I never had a lobotomy.
A lot of ‘Shadowland’ was pure bullshit. But you know that, already.”
Her head, covered in soft, curly blonde hair, spoke to me from the swirling mist
On the Other Side.
That’s all I could see of her.

The Frances Farmer saga has fascinated me since I read
“Will There Really Be a Morning?” when I first left home in 1973.
I worked at a slave place, with a cruel boss, washing hair
And giving blow dries in a trendy hair salon for about $1.50 an hour.
I loathed it.
I was not in the best frame of mind and reading the book
Threw me into a tailspin of depression.

“Peter. I had such a horrible life, really,” Frances whispered to me,
As if in a dream.
“I had everything: beauty, brains, fame and money.
It all got washed away in a sea of booze.
Listen to me, baby. Steilacoom was as horrible as all the books said.
A hellhole of rape and abuse. We lived like pigs in the back rooms.
It’s an old story, told too many times.”

Frances was just a floating apparition, wafting in the ether.
“Darling, there was no conspiracy against me.
I was a woman with a lot of rage and an alcohol addiction.
I wish I could go back and do it again.
I never got a fair shake.
Being a movie star sucked, actually.
The scripts stank and the hours were the pits.
Who wants to get up at 4:30 in the morning
And spend hours getting your hair and makeup done, every day?
Not me.”

Her story makes me very sad.
Every time I watch the movie “Frances”,
I get so angry that I have to turn it off.
Then I put it on, again, because the tale is so compelling
And Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley are so wonderful in it.

Does everyone know the story of Frances Farmer,
The actress who allegedly went crazy and ended up in the looney bin
For almost a decade?
After her release, she got a job sorting dirty laundry in a hotel in Eureka, California.
Then she ended up having some dumb afternoon TV show in Philadelphia
Introducing old movies.

Gorgeous is a word to describe her.
Talented, mercurial, tortured, idealistic, not really loved.
A heartbreaking saga but the stuff that great drama is made of.
“Frances” gave a great role to the legendary Kim Stanley
Who played her mother in the movie bio.
Stanley was another alcoholic with a monumental talent.
She only made 5 movies, if you count the narration for “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Two of them garnered her Oscar nominations.
Kim would always quit a Broadway show before the run ended.

Talent equals genius equals torture equals trouble and strife,
At least some of the time.
Was I just daydreaming?
Did Frances really talk to me?
Farmer made a lot of crappy movies.
She didn’t die alone.

Luscious features, the body of a sex symbol,
The mind of an Orson Welles.
She drifts through infinite time,
Weeping softly and sometimes laughing till tears fill her eyes.
Watch “Come and Get It” on the late show
If you want to know what I’m talking about.
Frances Farmer was a saint,
A rabble-rouser, a goddess and a lush.

Her voice drifted off into the cosmos.
“We’ll speak, again, my dear,” she murmured.
I know I will contact her, again, sometime.
Vincent Van Gogh, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift.
I’d love to have their talents but I wouldn’t want to live their lives.