By Ben Maddox
Everything about this gifted youngster is new and different – especially her marriage to another promising newcomer, Leif Erikson
Frances
Farmer’s love story began exactly a month after she arrived in Hollywood, and she
didn't want it to start.
She
had no engagement ring, no trousseau, no guests at her wedding. There were no showers and the courtship was
carried on as a deliberate test of each other's tastes. Leif Erikson, her bridegroom,
never once took her to a swanky nightspot or a premiere.
But she wouldn't have gone, anyway, because she wouldn't buy an evening gown. Even though both were moving picture names, the
honeymoon trip was an overnight stop in an auto camp and they returned to begin their
married life in her one-room apartment.
Although
they have finally moved into a house, Leif doesn't expect Frances to, be domestic. Hers is a marriage that is not going to be built
around a home. If it had meant giving up her
career, Frances wouldn't have married.
It
is, you see, a very "different" type of love, but then everything about this
Farmer girl is as distinctive and different as is her new and startling personality.
The
true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise in the movies is exciting enough in itself.
Everywhere you go now in Hollywood you hear it repeated.
For this girl who was an usher in a Seattle theater has, because of her work in
only three pictures, "Too Many Parents," "Rhythm on the Range," and
her smashing hit as Lotta in "Come and Get It," become one of the most promising
girls ever to enter the movies.
But
her love story in which she has been secretly starring is the still more surprising thing
which has happened to her. I want to tell you
of it, for the very first time.
She
has guarded it even from the publicity department of her studio, Paramount. It's hers, she says. Hers alone, and Leif's.
Yet,
knowing Frances and her husband and their experiences, I believe you should learn how
these two are living in a seventh heaven of their own design, right in Hollywood. So rarely do people dare to follow their
intuition!
Her love story isn't
according to either Emily Post or Hollywood. She
hasn't paid attention to the regular rules for brides nor indulged in the pretentious
front that is the standard formula for picture brides.
In fact, everything about this great private-life
romance which came to Frances Farmer almost simultaneously with her big screen chance is
unconventional to the extreme degree. Only a
genuine sophisticate,
only one as wise as unfettered, and as gifted with foresight as she is could be courageous
enough to thumb her nose at traditions which mean nothing in her case, could be brave
enough to live in Hollywood as she and her proud husband are living.
When she said she would marry him, just one year
ago, she was a traitor to the stern resolution she had made before setting foot in
Hollywood. As far as she was concerned, she
disagreed with the whole idea of matrimony. She
realized that an actress is a pawn of destiny, and she understood that she was forsaking
the safety of domesticity when she entered her chosen profession. But she wished it this
way and she had no intention of giving any man the opportunity to spoil her splendid plan
for success.
Right
after the brief marriage ceremony the groom - Leif Erikson, a blue-eyed, blonde modern
Viking who stands six-feet-three-and-a-half - glanced down at the slim young wife he had
acquired and then once and for all he, too, forgot that he had broken his own oath to stay
single. Frances wouldn't have attempted marriage if Leif hadn't had notions that coincided
precisely with hers; nor would he have proposed if he hadn't been equally satisfied with
her ideals.
Both
of them are career-mad. They talk, eat, dream
and exist for achievement. Frances is blessed
with a terrific vitality which keeps her constantly working towards her goal, and Leif has
this same energy. And in their respective
charts emotion towards the opposite sex was classified as an absolute luxury. After they were tops they figured they might dabble
at love. But one point was certain. They wouldn't be trapped by an erratic eroticism; they
wouldn't be tied down, chained to a stolid, ruinous routine! Each of them had looked with
discerning eyes at the unions around them, and the monotony and unhappiness they glimpsed
intensified their desires for a stark freedom. They
steeled themselves to be coldly calculating.
Then the irresistible flame of love caught them up.
Frances was a newcomer to Phyllis Laughton's
acting classes at Paramount. Leif was an old
veteran of four months. Paramount had
important hopes for both, but assumed they could do with some coaching from the studio
drama teacher.
"I cast them together,"
declares Miss Laughton, "because I was impressed with the special earnestness both
displayed. They were so determined to make good!"
The
Eriksons would die before admitting that they are the least bit sentimental. They scorn presents on official remembrance days. But three days before Leif's last birthday I ran
into Frances with her arms full of packages. "I'm
in a rush to get these over to Leif's dressing-room today," she explained. And she
fancied I didn't detect the hidden ecstasy in her voice.
And
so, this being the way they are, they won't tell of their romance in terms of the usual
extravagant adjectives. They try very, very
hard to be most realistic about it all - but it is young and very modern love,
nevertheless.
Frances declares she
wasn't bowled over by Leif. Still, her
indifference to men faded rapidly when she met him. Each
sensed the seriousness of the other about work and that was pleasing. Rehearsals consumed four hours daily. They consoled each other when they had to make
film tests with aspirants for parts, reassuring one another that the executives would
shortly recognize their unappreciated talent being thrown in. They decided they could improve more quickly if
they rehearsed away from the studio, too. Nothing
would have made them admit they wanted to see more of each other.
They
started those after studio rehearsals in Frances’ tiny apartment. The script Miss Laughton had assigned them called
for a fiery dispute between husband and wife and they didn’t spare themselves. The dialogue was climaxing magnificently when the
manager imperiously leaned on the doorbell. Frances
had to produce the script to prove that she and Leif weren’t about to kill each
other, that their “quarrel” had all been in the line of duty!
After
that, moonlight drives along the crescent beach of Santa Monica afforded a more attractive
locale. They’d rattle down the broad
silver highway in Leif’s Ford coupe, gesturing and speaking potent pages for all they
were worth. They pretended they didn’t
notice the moon. They ignored their own youth
and loveliness.
Leif
suggested they intersperse their scenes with some fishing; he kept a small boat moored at
Santa Monica. Picture actresses customarily
are fond of exclusive yachting parties, but how many have you ever heard of who’d be
a sport on a two-by-four dingy that reeks of mackerel?
Frances is that rare creature, a beauty who isn’t a devotee of the make-up
table. Away from cameras she wears no makeup,
and so she could gayly go along and haul in fish without any furtive qualms.
Next
he mentioned hiking. Riding is the
fashionable Hollywood recreation, but Leif was bored with fashionable folk and he wanted
to find out if she was also. Frances retorted
that she’d adore to go and she’d put up a few sandwiches if he’d tote some
pop. She scoured the Boulevard for a bargain
in high boots and they proceeded to have high times.
They still said they did all these things for their work. They didn’t suspect for an instant that they
were falling in love.
Nor
did Hollywood in general. Here is a couple
that doesn’t care for the showy restaurants, or for the Troc. When they sought the sun in the desert they headed
for plain oases instead of Palm Springs. They
weren’t mysterious, but they simply went about like two normal people who aren’t
tempted by paraders. And so no one noticed
them.
They
discovered, soon, that their outlooks were truly alike.
It developed that neither would sacrifice individuality to marriage. Strangely, Leif hadn’t the remotest
inclination for the accepted sort of home, either. He
didn’t yearn to settle down and that made Frances glad. He anticipated the bewildering responsibilities
which are bound to come with success. Possessions
seem like jailors to Frances; she isn’t anxious for a large wardrobe, for jewels, or
for property. And Leif thought this way, too.
He enjoyed living quietly and
inconspicuously, but emphatically living to the hilt.
He was on the go. Frances’ extra money went for dancing
lessons, his for singing. What they could
save could be used to advance their careers.
They
had discovered all this in each other when, in the middle of a clinch before Miss Laughton
and the rest of her pupils, they didn’t stop. They
went ahead and kissed. They hadn’t
schemed to; but they couldn’t help it!
The
onlookers clapped. Frances and Leif
didn’t blush. The shock of so suddenly
solving the answer to the loneliness which had always engulfed them was so strong that
they just turned and bowed, the contact of their hands burning a message of surrender. Finally they managed to slip from each
other’s arms, to mumble to the drama coach excuses as to why they had to rush to
appointments elsewhere. Outside, on the steps
of Paramount’s rehearsal building, they hesitated and looked into one another’s
eyes. Smiles swept them. They ran like kids to the studio gate, clambered
into Leif’s old car and drove madly away.
They
still don’t know how far or where they drove. Finally
Leif, so masculine and so thoroughly everything that Frances had supposed the impossible,
remarked casually, “Doing anything tomorrow?”
She shook her head sideways. “You’ll
drive to Yuma?” She nodded.
So
early the next day they rushed through the city traffic and fairly skimmed over a desert
that had never been so breathtakingly majestic. Frances
didn’t inform the studio what she was up to, nor did she wire her family. The responsibility was hers and Leif’s alone. Three college boys trailed them in Yuma and
campaigned desperately for them to be married in three different churches. But whereas gravity and a sense of
forever-and-ever binds the average pair, casualness links these two in an infinite trust. Frances and Leif ignored the sales chatter and
searched out the justice of the peace to read the ceremony that united them.
It
was Saturday so they just had that fleeting weekend to be away from Hollywood. They had never planned to honeymoon at a ritzy
hotel and they didn’t. Impetuously they
drove to San Diego and registered at an auto camp!
On
their return to Hollywood there was a tentatively sad reaction to the congratulations
which were heaped upon them. They had been
such arguers against matrimony that they became self-conscious with each other with the
fuss that was made. But that passed.
Frances’
one-room apartment proved so crowded that they moved to a three-room suite. The streetcars were so noisy that they resolved to
retire to a house. “All we want,”
they chorused, “is a fireplace a room to eat and sleep!”
In
wooded Laurel Canyon they stumbled upon their retreat.
It is a little rustic cottage of studio design, nestling up a dirt road under giant
evergreen oaks. They haven’t gone
shopping for furnishings – they don’t want to own any! In the nonchalant living room there are an
old-fashioned davenport
and a couple of armchairs beside a Hungarian peasant fireplace. There are a
one-tone brown rug, a piano hardly in the mode, a comfortable squashy couch and an
overburdened magazine rack. It's just as the
landlord left it, except for the books here and there, and you don't have to be fussy. Whichever one of them is near a wood yard orders a
sack of wood tied onto the Ford - Frances has a yesteryear's model which she drives -
and thus the heating problem is handled. If
the lone fire threatens to fade, Frances calmly picks up the bellows and peps it up.
At
first they were determined to do their own cooking, or eat out. But you can't prefer modest restaurants
indefinitely and you can't do all the housework and play moving picture leads at the same
time. So they inherited a maid of all
duties from a friend. They haven't bought
dishes, silverware, or service plates, so it's a cook's paradise.
While
Frances has demonstrated that it isn't necessary to behave like an orthodox
bride, not long ago she did get her first evening gown. An
invitation came to a formal supper and they couldn't get out of attending. So Leif, who isn't a bit sentimental either,
you'll recall, stole down to a Boulevard store and selected a gorgeous gold bracelet that
teams with Frances' unadorned gold wedding ring. "'The
long dress' had to have something to set it off," he grins. He invariably refers to her formal satin as
"the long dress!”
They
revel in studying humanity. Frances evolved
her hard-boiled character for "Come and Get It" by dropping into a Western
Avenue beer parlor with Leif. The Eriksons,
in ordinary attire, had only a quarter with them. The
hostess felt sorry for them when they'd spent their fun allowance and insisted upon
treating them. They went back several
evenings, Frances absorbing the woman's attitude. "She
claimed she could cook a marvelous spaghetti dinner and we asked her to come up and prove
it. But she never did. We guess she didn't consider us worth
cultivating!"
Frances
and Leif assuredly are worth cultivating and not merely because they are in pictures.
Although Frances did usher in a theater, she also is an outstanding graduate of the
University of
Washington.
She was born in Seattle, the daughter of a
lawyer, and she worked her way through college. She
didn't waste her time in the jolly whirl of sororities, but concentrated on the drama
course in which she majored. The constant
training she secured is why she has scored so promptly; she was already familiar with the
technique of acting.
When
she got her diploma she had no money to finance an attack on Broadway. A newspaper aided her. It wanted a representative college girl of known
intelligence to make an inspection tour of Russia. And
so when she departed on the bus it was en route to the land of the Soviet. She went alone. "And
why not?" she queries, her superb sapphire blue eyes reflecting her wonder at anyone
presuming that she might have been frightened.
On
the Atlantic, returning, she met a doctor, who, being acquainted with theatrical
folk, listened to her tale of acting ambition. In
New York he introduced her to a friend who immediately escorted her to the Paramount
scouts. She was obviously a natural.
In
the meanwhile Leif, a native Californian and son of a North Pacific skipper,
had quit U.C.L.A. to sing with Ted Fio Rito. He
enacted a repertoire of principal roles in Reinhardt's road version of "A Midsummer
Night's Dream," and was singing in vaudeville when Paramount signed him as a leading
man bet.
So
you see this is a marriage of minds as well as emotions. Frances
doesn't have to pretend to like what her husband likes. She
hasn't been betrayed into a routine because they haven't infringed upon each other's
individuality. They haven't stooped to
jealousy. Each of them is just twenty-two.
With
their first year together nearly a matchless memory, the Eriksons have maneuvered a
vacation to celebrate - even if they won't wait for the proper date and won't call it a
celebration. Yes, and in spite of their Hollywood position, they are blithely stopping at
auto camps!
Are
they kidding themselves when they say they do not want the staid bulwarks of conventional
marriage?
Or
is Frances smarter than most women in completely understanding herself and not letting
the prescriptions of others badger her?
Article appeared in Movie
Mirror - 1937