By Robert Heilman

Frances Farmer’s eyes were big and blue and incredibly round today and, although she smiled infrequently, she smiled broadly and happily.

Beside her on a sofa sat Alfred H. Lobley, who flushed with a little embarrassment as he discussed their marriage, to be performed Saturday.

Frances Farmer is 40 years old now, and the fans and admirers who thrilled at her beauty and acting ability almost two decades ago would feel the same thrill at the sight of this older woman, who has felt the hardest blow Hollywood has to offer – professional oblivion.

Farmer Farmer didn’t want to want to talk about her starring and ill-starred career today. Her triumphs of another era must be buried deep in her heart.

Actress’ Instinct Revealed

Miss Farmer snuggled into the embrace of her fiancée for the benefit of a photographer. Instinctively, she knew she was hiding part of Lobley’s face.

"I’m upstaging you, darling," she murmured and then laughed. It was the only theatrical phrase she used.

As she spoke, the deep little lines above her nose disappeared and the gray that shoots through the thick bronze of her hair seemed to recede.

Lobley took up the conversational ball, for the most part – as befits a man who toils hard, physically, for a living.

"I’m a heavy-equipment operator," said Lobley. "Bulldozers, and that sort of thing."

Lobley has been an employee of the City Engineering Department for the past two years.

‘Contentedly Happy’

"We’ll be happy, but to say ‘deliriously happy’ as some people do – would be absurd," said Lobley, laughing. "We’ll be – contentedly happy."

Surely, contentment is something for which everyone searches. It is an emotional state that for years eluded Frances Farmer, talented actress, former University of Washington student, winner of a trip to Russia through a subscription contest sponsored by a radical periodical.

Turmoil and upheaval have studded Miss Farmer’s career as much as stars once studded her professional crown.  For the past ten years, she has been treated at one sanitarium after another, but last July she was declared completely cured.

These things, too, Frances Farmer has put behind her.  Since last August, she has worked in the valet department of a Seattle hotel, a job she's liked.

"But she'll quit just as soon as we're married," said Lobley, protectively.  "Or anyhow, in a couple or three weeks."

Intimate Ceremony

The wedding ceremony will be performed about 2 o'clock Saturday afternoon, with only a few friends in attendance.

Lobley and his blue-eyed bride will be married at the home of her mother, Mrs. Lillian V. Farmer, 2636 47^th Ave. S.W.

Miss Farmer and her fiancée met through mutual friends.

"We met in West Seattle, here," said the former actress.

This will be the second marriage for both Lobley, 45, and his fiancée. They are of the age where contentment is a far more desirable thing than the "deliriously happy" goal sought by honeymooners of Frances Farmer’s age when she set out to conquer the stage world, and won – for a time.