She’ll Spend Week Or Two Here With Parents

By Walter Rue

Frances Farmer, gifted star of the stage and screen, lolled in a big easy chair in the family home at 2636 47^th Ave. S. W., yesterday afternoon, watching the warm, friendly flames of a log fire in the fireplace.

Her father, Attorney E. M. Farmer, sat in his favorite chair on one side of her, puffing contentedly at his pipe as he read the Sunday paper. On the other side was her mother, reliving days of old as she looked at family pictures.

"This is wonderful," said the blonde, blue-eyed beauteous Frances, who had popped up quite unexpectedly to spend a week or two with her folks. "You can’t imagine what a treat it is to come home like this after a long stretch of picture-making and stock performances."

Called From Hot Springs

The first the elder Farmers knew of Frances’ presence in the Northwest was when she called one day last week from Sol Duc Hot Springs on the Olympic Peninsula.

"What are you doing over there?" asked Mrs. Farmer, who answered the phone.

"Oh, I just took a notion to do a little hiking and camping in the mountains," her popular young daughter replied.

Yesterday Frances explained.

"I drove up alone from Hollywood in my car," she said, "and when I got to Portland I read in the newspapers about Secretary of the Interior Ickes spending a vacation on the Peninsula. Reading about the Peninsula brought back fond memories for me, so I headed straight for Sol Duc. I stayed there long enough to do a bit of hiking, then came home."

Miss Farmer discussed with enthusiasm her latest contributions to the cinema. In one "World Premiere," a farce built around the motion picture business, she plays opposite John Barrymore.

"In that one," she said, laughing, "I’m a temperamental actress, who wears a black wig and tries to look exotic. You should see me!"

Another of the late pictures is "Among the Living," a mystery melodrama, and another is "Calamity Jane," a rootin’-tootin’ Western in which our heroine wears pants, looks and acts like a toughie and handles a shootin’ iron with the dexterity of veterans like Bill Hart and Gene Autry.

Asked if her separation from Lief Erickson, to whom she was married for years, was complete and final, she nodded affirmatively, and added:

"There’s no new romance either. I’m too busy with my work to bother about such things."