Thursday Minute
No. 165 | September 23, 2010

On a First-Name Basis

Our theme this week
Film titles that are first names of women

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Laura (1944)
Tuesday         —   Gilda (1946)
Wednesday    —   Lolita (1962)

Frances (1982)

Frances is Frances Farmer.  We had a Frances Farmer in our family.  She was a nun.  This is definitely a movie about a different Frances Farmer.

Frances Farmer the actress was a rising star in the 1930s.  For a time she was one of the hottest names in Hollywood.  She played the love interest of Bing Crosby in Rhythm on the Range in 1936, and that same year costarred with Joel McCrea, Edward Arnold, and Oscar winner Walter Brennan in the adaptation of Edna Ferber’s Come and Get It.  Some of her other starring roles were in The Toast of the Town (1937), with Cary Grant; Flowing Gold (1940), with John Garfield; and Son of Fury:  The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942), with Tyrone Power.  She was known for her beauty and her talent, and as time went on, for the increasingly erratic behavior that led to the early demise of her career.  It was over by the time she was 30.   She spent most of the 1940s committed to psychiatric institutions and was subjected to electroshock therapy, among other treatments.  After her release, she married a couple of times and moved to Indianapolis, where for six years she hosted a popular program on local TV, introducing movies and interviewing celebrities.  She died in 1970.  Her life was the subject of several films—today’s feature, the best known—and she was an inspiration for Kurt Cobain (“Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle,” from Nirvana’s 1993 album, In Utero).

The 1982 film isn’t a biography.  It’s a film based on the life of an enigmatic actress, illuminating some parts of her story, embellishing others.  The most noticeable inventions are the character of Harry York, Farmer’s lifelong friend, well played by Sam Shepherd, and the lobotomy the actress undergoes for mental illness.  Though her treatment was awful, even inhumane, apparently she never did have a lobotomy.

That said, the story of her life is riveting, and the acting especially.  Jessica Lange, as Farmer, and Kim Stanley, as her mother, give a couple of very powerful performances.  Both won raves and were nominated for Oscars.  (Lange won Best Supporting Actress that year for another role, in Tootsie.) 

Not only does Frances provide a great portrait of a rebel soul, it shines some light on Hollywood in the old days.  The studio system was a factory for churning out films, and the studios created stars too, bigger and more glamorous than ever.  But stars paid a price for their fame.  They traded their freedom for their careers, in many cases, with the studios controlling every detail of their lives.  It was not a kind world for anyone who didn’t play the game.  Frances fights to have it her way.  She fights to maintain control and for her dignity.  In the end she was lucky to survive with her life.

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Frances (1982)
Graeme Clifford, director
Eric Bergren, Christopher De Vore, Nicholas Kazan; writers
László Kovács, cinematographer
Trailer

More from Frances here.

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Movie Legends — Frances Farmer
Photos from her brief career

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Quote of note
Sergeant:  Your name?
Frances:  You jerks drag me down here in the middle of the night and you don’t know who the hell I am?
Sergeant:  Your name lady?
Frances:  Frances Elena Farmer.  Want me to spell it?
Sergeant:  And your address?
Frances:  Put me down as a vag, vagrant, vagabond.  What is this, a joke?  It’s a joke?  Assault and battery?  Huh?  I barely touched that bitch.
Sergeant:  Occupation?
Frances:  Cocksucker.
—Sergeant (Vincent Lucchesi), Frances Farmer (Jessica Lange), Frances (1982)

…58…59…60.