Actress, Interrupted--'Frances'

I just re-read Frances Farmer's harrowing autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?" and the depressing story brought me back to the depressing film based on her life, "Frances." I love Frances Farmer. I love Jessica Lange. I wish I loved the movie.

If not for Jessica Lange, Frances (1982) would have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of Frances Farmer, the gifted but notorious actress of the 1930s. A chance to really tell her story was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and proven liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy — a fantasy Frances Farmer surely would not have appreciated.

Many fine films based on real lives or events stray from facts, add characters, or even re-invent history (JFK and Nixon are supreme examples), but the problems with Frances are twofold. First, suffering from a weak script, it's not an entirely focused picture, and it never creates a strong case about just why Farmer had to endure such torment. Secondly, the picture soft-pedals a harrowing tale about one woman's fight against both the indignities of Hollywood and the abuse of the mental profession. What happened to Frances Farmer is an abomination, and not because we'd never see her again shine as an actress but because her life was, in some cases, perversely and hideously stolen from her.

It's the ultimate irony that the story of "the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts, was under the control of a major studio who deemed her real life too depressing. As director Graeme Clifford states in the commentary on the DVD, you don't want to "nickel and dime the audience with facts." Too bad — Farmer's facts were never boring.

That said, in the hands of Lange Frances is a thoroughly watchable picture — an almost traumatizing experience that showcases Lange at her finest. Lange not only looks like Farmer, but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star: The understandable drinking (who didn't tear it up in Hollywood?), the rage (how many stars were under studio control? Farmer was just too strong-willed to take it), and the desperation to find freedom. But the powers that be — Mother, Hollywood, and the Mental Institution — helped keep this intelligent woman from reaching her goals.

Frances begins in 1931 when a 16-year old Farmer writes a high school essay entitled "God Dies." This is just the first of many cases where she enrages Seattle's moral majority, who later branded her a communist. A talented stage actress in college, Farmer lands in Hollywood, where she declares "I'm not glamour girl." Nevertheless, she marries a young actor and makes movies (mostly to her chagrin), including Howard Hawks' Come and Get It (a film she was proud of, despite what this movie wants us to believe).

Exasperated with Hollywood, Farmer ventures to New York and finds a home in the Group Theater, and (to her downfall) has a torrid affair with the married playwright Clifford Odets. After he dumps her, she returns to Hollywood and gets into the legendary trouble that would land her in horrifying mental institutions — where she underwent experimental medication, shock treatments, rape, disgusting facilities, and finally (and this is speculative) a lobotomy until her release in 1950.

Lange carries us through this hell with brilliance, but Frances decides to shift the focus of the relationship with Farmer's deranged, bitch mother (played by Kim Stanley) to the more romantic overtures of Harry York. According to the film, York tried to reach out to Farmer after her inconceivably unfair and colorful court appearance (well-documented in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in which we learn Farmer wrote her profession down as "cocksucker"). He also was responsible for Farmer's first escape from the sanitarium and the reason she was presentable for a hearing that excused from her first asylum (the film contends Harry sneaks into her ward and gets a doctor to inject her with a drug that would make her more lucid). He also asked her marry him when she was under the legal guardianship of her mother, and he loved her until the end of her days.

Yes sir, Frances wants us to believe that — despite everything written to the contrary — Farmer may have had a decent life had she just ran away with this Prince Charming. It's an ill-conceived cinematic conceit, and an insult to Farmer's memory at that. Jessica Lange should have directed this film — she's the picture's real auteur.

The gorgeous Frances Farmer. Why?

Comments

[Theron]

Why? You know why... She was but another cog in the wheel of Hollywoodland. The wheel that is well known for grinding away the souls of those that come seeking fame (and usually die still seeking it). Florid but true...

[Keith Demko]

Jessica Lange is definitely the ONLY good thing about this movie, I'm afraid

[Billychic]

Fabulous post. Thanks so much for writing this...I agree it was some of Lange's best work (I loved her in Sweet Dreams, too) and that the film could have been so much better had they stuck to more of the reality of that which was real life of Farmer.

[Danny]

Great post. Loved Jessica Lange, wished the film were better. It always amazes me when Hollywood takes such a compelling real-life story and then fictionalizes it to the point where it's far less compelling. But despite the so-so script, Lange was fantastic, I'll never forget that scene towards the end when Farmer is on the TV show "This Is Your Life." Just chilling. I think Lange is at her best when she's evoking some sort of mentall illness and I'm excited that her next film will be the feature film version of the documentary (is that a first?) "Grey Gardens." She'll play Jackie Kennedy's crazy first cousin, "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale. Should be a good one.

[JMK]

I hope you as an obviously ardent Farmer fan will read my essay (linked under the URL field). Most of the film "Frances" is absolute fiction, culled from an equally fictitious book. You might also want to read Washington Post reporter Jack El-Hai's authoritative biography of the infamous Walter Freeman, entitled "The Lobomist."

[JMK]

I of course meant "The Lobotomist," LOL. Link to my Farmer article:

http://jeffreykauffman.net/francesfarmer/sheddinglight.html

[hsad]

Jessica Lange MADE this movie. I don't care how bad the film was aside from her performance, it's worth watching if only JUST for her performance.

[Campaspe]

Just found your site and am really enjoying it, as well as your taste. Frances is an odd movie, sort of an endurance test. If it weren't for Lange, I agree with you, few could stand two hours of watching a beautiful, smart woman get brutalized.

The consensus seems to be at this point that Farmer was NOT lobotomized, as JMK points out. Another good site, with apparently pretty up-to-date info on Farmer, here:
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5058

[Christine]

I was disappointed in reading that
the film was not accurate, but rather titillating. I LOVED Jessica Lange's performance, but
don't care with tainting a true
tradgedy. Reminds of "Sybil"