Frances Farmer
Frances Farmer
Frances Elena Farmerwas an American actress and television host. She is perhaps better known for sensationalized accounts of her life, especially her involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. Farmer began her career as a stage actress, performing stock theater in New York and later appearing on Broadway. She made her film debut in Too Many Parents, and was subsequently featured in a starring role in the musical western, Rhythm on the Rangeopposite Bing Crosby, and The Toast of New Yorkwith...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth19 September 1913
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
To have a good friend is the purest of all God's gifts, for it is a love that has no exchange of payment. It is not inherited, as with a family. It is not compelling, as with a child. And it has no means of physical pleasure, as with a mate. It is, therefore, an indescribable bond that brings with it a far deeper devotion than all the others.
For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive.
There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream.
I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God.
The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.
I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.
But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God.
I didn't think then, and I still don't, that I was actually sick.