Frances
(1962)
IMDB
summary
by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)
Frances is a tale of two actresses:
Jessica
Jessica Lange was a latecomer to acting, having made her
first appearance in a movie at age 27. Since she'd
probably like to forget that one ("King Kong"), she
never really did anything substantial before her 30th
birthday. Once she got goin', though, there was no
stoppin' her. I think of Jessica as the anti-Brando, in
one sense.
Brando probably had more talent than any actor who ever
lived. Pauline Kael used to tell the story of the
epileptic fit that Brando feigned in his early stage
career. It stopped the show many times. And I mean it
literally stopped the show. The audience thought it was
an actor having an epileptic fit, and not part of the
play, so medical professionals in the audience would try
to help him.
Unfortunately, Brando got lost after about five great
performances, and had nowhere near the career his talent
merited. How many great performances did he give after
the fifties? I suppose only one (Last Tango). How many
good performances? Maybe a half-dozen, many of those
debatable - Countess from Hong Kong, The Godfather, Don
Juan de Marco, Bedtime Story, maybe One-Eyed Jacks,
maybe Apocalypse Now, maybe The Score. That's it for 40
years! Somewhere in there, his overwhelming talent
was swamped in a tidal wave of self-indulgent portrayals
where the director should have simply kicked his silly
ass off the set and hired a real actor. Missouri Breaks,
Mutiny on the Bounty and the Dr Moreau remake come
immediately to mind.
Jessica Lange has probably had a better career than
Brando, despite the fact that she didn't have one lick
of natural talent. Her performance in King Kong is a
sample of legendary atrociousness. She made Kathy
Ireland look like Meryl Streep. And yet, through a
combination of hard work, serious study, and
intelligence, she became one of the best actresses of
her generation. The Frances Farmer biopic was the first
of Lange's six Oscar nominations. Actually, I guess
that's not exactly correct. I guess it was tied for
first, since she was nominated twice that year, for both
Frances (lead - lost) and Tootsie (support - won).
Frances
This film is a disturbing, true story about a rebel
whose individuality was seen in Hollywood as emotional
instability, and even as mental illness.
Frances Farmer was a rebellious actress in the late 30's
and early 40's. She didn't like the Hollywood system,
and just didn't fit in. She was sympathetic to
Communism. She was an athiest. She was an intellectual
who had been a top student, but she had the bad luck to
end up in a profession in which her brains had no value,
and her far left radicalism was viewed as dangerous,
possibly demented. It's hard to imagine anyone
with a brain not being angry at being treated like a
brainless and interchangeable prop by the filmmakers of
that day. Viewed through the prism of today, she seems
more like us than the others of her day who kowtowed to
the system. Yet in those days her attitude was seen as a
mental condition serious enough that she was held
against her will in mental institutions for a decade,
and eventually lobotomized.
Of all the Hollywood columnists, only John Rosenfeld
came to her defense:
"The Frances Farmer Incident should never
have happened at all. This actress was no threat
against law and order or the public safety. Something
that began as merely a traffic reprimand grew into a
case of personal violence, a serious charge, and a
jail sentence. And all because a sensitive high-strung
girl was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Miss
Farmer, who is no prodigy of emotional stability or
sound business management. needed a lawyer one unhappy
night last winter. A helping hand might have
extradited her immediately from nothing more than a
traffic violation. The terrible truth is that she
stood alone, and lost"
Maybe.
The truth is that the traffic violation was only the
kick-off. She received a suspended sentence after that
incident. That was mild enough treatment, but she was
supposed to report to her parole officer and failed to
do so, forcing the court to order her arrest. To
be fair, there was much more to her legal predicament
than a mere parole violation. Frances had enough
emotional baggage that I suppose one might call her
deeply troubled. She was filled with anger, and simply
did not have her emotions in check, partially because of
a drinking problem. In between her two court
appearances, Frances had broken her hairdresser's jaw in
a fight, and had streaked topless through traffic down
Sunset Strip.
This time, the police broke down her door in the dead of
night and hauled her to the station, kicking and
screaming and stark naked. As shown in the film, she
listed her profession as "cocksucker" at the police
station. When she came to court, she threw a tantrum and
actually threw an inkpot at the judge (accurately!),
oblivious to the impact it would have on her case. The
judge was not amused, and threw her in the slammer for
six months. Before the bailiffs got her into a
straightjacket, she floored a police matron and slugged
an officer. When she got into the calaboose, she refused
to do her work detail and caused trouble at every
opportunity. Things went from bad to worse.
Her mother eventually had her committed to a sanitarium,
where she was subjected to insulin shock. Within a short
time she was adjudged clinically insane by the State of
Washington, tossed in the loony bin for ten years, and
eventually lobotomized.
Essentially lobotomized for a traffic ticket.
The film doesn't really make clear that Frances sort of
"made her own bed." It is not possible to defend the way
she was treated, but if she had developed any networks
in Hollywood, there would have been studios or powerful
individuals coming to her aid. That did not happen
because she had alienated everyone. She was a
troublemaker who had bad-mouthed everyone and treated
everyone badly. While in Hollywood she had claimed that
the directors and scriptwriters were morons, and that
the producers were exploiters. She looked down on film
performers because she fancied herself a serious actress
who wanted to appear on stage in the classics. She was
often quoted as saying she hated everything in Hollywood
except the money. And they hated her right back.
"The nicest thing I can say about Frances Farmer is that
she is unbearable", as William Wyler put it. Frances had
proven so completely odious in Hollywood that many in
Hollywood saw her brutal treatment as deserved
comeuppance for her arrogance, her Communism, and her
atheism.
==========
Sidebar:
Frances is rated a solid 7.4 at IMDb, and received two
Oscar nominations, but its director, Graeme Clifford,
never directed a theatrical film before this one. He
didn't do much afterward, either, at least not in the
realm of theatrical movies. The rest of his career was
primarily focused on television. In fact his resume
includes only three other films which received
theatrical releases: Gleaming the Cube, Burke &
Wills, and the critically lambasted Ruby Cairo, which
essentially ended his career outside of the TV industry.
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