ABSTRACT
This chapter also focusses on a single actress – Frances Farmer, whose extraordinary beauty led her to be chased by the Hollywood studio machine, despite her own desire to build a career in New York theatre. Refusing to comply with studio demands, Farmer became an increasingly notorious figure, subject to drunken outbursts and arrests before being committed to a psychiatric hospital for five years. I examine responses to Farmer in her lifetime and beyond, showing that, while her ‘madness’ remains the key aspect of her identity, the meanings of that madness have been re-conceptualised over time, so that Farmer can be claimed variously as cautionary tale, victim, and rebel.
