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June 26, 2011
Frances Farmer
I was skimming through a bunch of tumblrs and stopped at this arresting photo.
It was the actress Frances Farmer being dragged out of court after throwing an ink jar at the judge when he sentenced her to 180 days in jail, screaming "Have you ever had a broken heart?"
Frances grew up in Seattle when at age 18, she won an writing contest with an essay titled "God Dies", her observations of a chaotic and godless world. Another writing contest awarded her a trip to the Soviet Union where she studied acting at the Moscow Art Theater.
Afterwards she went to New York and managed to sign a 7 year contract with Paramount. She had a couple minor film hits, including one with Bing Crosby, but a string of failed marriages and relationships coupled with the pressure of the acting business led her to alcohol and amphetamine abuse.
She was arrested for driving with her headlights on during wartime black out and charged with assault for breaking her hairdresser's jaw. In jail she was transferred to a psychiatric ward and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She was in and out of hospitals several times and was subjected to extreme therapy treatments and also rumored to have had a partial lobotomy.
Needless to say she never really recovered her acting career and died at age 57.
You can read more about her here, it's pretty fascinating. Nirvana even had a song about her, "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" and later named his daughter Frances Bean after her.
The studio photographs of her pre-hospitalization look so beautiful and haunting considering everything that happened after.
Posted by Finny at June 26, 2011 07:58 PM