127- The Bad Girl of West Seattle (Frances Farmer)

The History Of The Evergreen State

From the mid 1930's to the late 1950's, few were as famous as Seattle's own Frances Farmer. Born on the 19th of September, 1913, Frances had a rocky childhood and found various ways to cope with it, including writing. This skill led to her penning the award winning essay "God Dies" in her senior year of high school at West Seattle.
This eventually led to Frances enrolling at the UW to study journalism. After discovering the theater while there, Frances went on to star in numerous university plays, and by the time 1935 rolled around, she made the fateful decision to move to New York to further pursue her stage dreams.
Farmer would eventually sign a seven year contract with Paramount Pictures and quickly went on to star in several B-Movie comedies for the studio. Her meteoric rise to fame really took off in 1936 when she starred in a western, Rhythm on the Range, alongside fellow Evergreen State born actor, Bing Crosby.
Farmer was gifted and attractive, but she was also self-destructive, troubled, and willful. Her tragic life story is what people remember her for more than her once bright career.
She was institutionalized and proclaimed legally insane in 1944 after exhibiting more erratic conduct; in contrast to popular belief though, she never had a lobotomy.
Frances was largely forgotten for the remainder of her life after her 1950 release. That being said, since her passing in 1970, she has gained a somewhat cult following. She has been the focus of three novels, three films (the most well-known being the 1982 film Frances, starring Jessica Lange), numerous off-Broadway productions, countless magazine articles, and a song by Kurt Cobain called "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle," features the line "She'll come back as fire, to burn all the liars, and leave a blanket of ash on the ground."
A special thank you goes out to Al Hirsch for providing the music for the podcast, check him out on YouTube.
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