During her lifetime, Frances Farmer created the image of being an aloof, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking woman who alienated many people in her path.
Her Indiana friends didn’t see her that way.
To them, she was a loving, giving person whose less desirable qualities surfaced only on occasion.
"Indiana had something to be proud of and didn’t know it," stated one of her long-time friends, William O. (Bill) Price. "Everyone should have a friend like her."
Bill Price played an important part in Frances’ peaceful years. As the owner of Nashville’s cabin-like Torch Light Inn, he provided her with gourmet food and good conversation when she came to Brown County to relax and ‘hide." Now a resident of Indianapolis, Price still is a chef on a contract basis. His recollections of Frances are warm and amusing, punctuated with bursts of laughter.
"Frances would come to Brown County nearly every weekend to eat my barbecued chicken," he said. "This woman was an excellent gardener and really knew her plants. She’d go out into the woods and collect enough herbs and spices for me to use for a whole week. She wasn’t a gourmet cook herself, but she certainly was a gourmet eater!"
Price remembers Frances as "being a loner when she wanted to be, who had to move at her own pace" and spent many hours hiking, horseback-riding and fishing in the woods. "Brown County was a very peaceful time in her life. She’d go off by herself to sit and think, perhaps to reminisce or re-evaluate her life," he said thoughtfully.
Theirs was a special friendship, going back to 1951, a year after she was released from Washington’s Western State mental hospital. Price was a Marine, stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., when they met through mutual friends at a Hollywood birthday party for Liberace.
"I knew she had just been released (from the hospital), but I couldn’t figure out why she was there in the first place. She was more sane than I was! Sure, she had a temperament, but that was no reason to lock her up,’ he mused.
"At that party, she was like a fish out of water, and I was too," he recalled. "Finally, she said to me ‘You don’t’ belong here either, do you?’ I admitted I didn’t, and she said, ‘Well, lets get the hell out of here!’ So we went to a movie."
Loved People
Price said he saw Frances for several weekends, but it was not a dating relationship. "Nobody ‘dated’ Frances," he chuckled. "She was several years older than I was. We’d go to art galleries, antique shops and Farmer’s market with her aunt and uncle."
When Price opened his restaurant in 1958, Frances had no idea he owned it when she showed up for her first meal there. She was delighted to see him after such a long time and "we picked up just like we were in California, not like there were years of separation…she never projected the image of being someone famous."
Frances had a very dry sense of humor he noted. "You never knew if she was joking or not. But she truly loved people, especially older people. She also was a gift-bringer – if she was your friend, she was your friend for life. I still have an amaryllis plant she gave me 20 years ago."
Another friend who admired Frances’ green thumb is Moselle Scheffer, whose rural Zionsville farm, Camel Lot, is filled with llamas, zebras, and two tigers who never made cat-lover Frances’ acquaintance.
"She was a marvelous gardener and introduced me to Swiss chard,’ said Ms. Schaffer. "And the heads of her sunflowers were so big she had to stake them on fishing poles."
Ms. Schaffer met Frances when she appeared at the Avondale Playhouse here, and again when she entered the decorating business after leaving WFBM-TV.
Frances, she said, usually wore baggy pants and no make-up, but could "get up from digging in her garden and half an hour later be all gussied-up."
"Frances was a very early riser and so am I. It wasn’t unusual for us to be chatting on the telephone at 6:30 in the morning."
She had a marvelous sense of humor, according to Ms. Schaffer, and was "extremely intelligent. She would quote Chaucer in one breath and Peanuts in the next."
No Bottle
She related one instance they shared in which Frances could have been unjustly accused of "hitting the bottle."
"Joe Stockdale (at Purdue) was having a critic’s preview of a show and invited Frances and me to go. We were in a big rush because we were running late. We got to the campus and I – being really clumsy – got out of the car and stumbled. Frances went to catch me, and both of us went down!
"Our clothes were a mess -- we were really bloody pigs. But we did get there on time. And I’m sure people said, ‘Oh look, is she stoned!’ But Frances thought it was very funny."
She also brought up an instance where several handicapped British visitors came to Indianapolis, and Frances saw them on the news. She thought, it would be a great idea to give them a party, but her bungalow at 5107 Park Avenue was too small for such an undertaking.
"So she called me and said ‘We’re having party – it’s at your house,’" Ms. Schaffer laughed. ‘Well, she organized what she called a powwow, and there were more entertainers than guests. They had the Shrine Horse Patrol and the Olympian basketball team – really sensational. There was country-western music and the people were square-dancing in wheelchairs."
Everyone has his favorite Frances Farmer story. An especially funny one related by Ms. Schaffer concerns an incident that happened in Brown County when Frances was drinking heavily. It seems she rammed her car into the Nashville jail, and caused quite a ruckus when they locked her up.
Several days after she was released, she attended a party where "everyone was too embarrassed to talk to her about it.’ Finally, Frances took a glass in her hand and said, "Would anyone like to see my impression of Frances Farmer drunk?"
"It broke the ice," she said with amusement.
Strongest Coffee
Friends became very important to Frances during her 12 years in Indianapolis. With her brother and sister thousands of miles away and a divorce pending between her and third husband Lee Mikesell, Frances acquired a surrogate "family" consisting of several friends.
At the nucleus of the group was Jeanira (Jean) Ratcliffe, a local woman who was her closest friend, and who shared her home. While Miss Ratcliffe refused to be interviewed by The Star, three of her friends – who also were close to Frances – gathered for an enlightening look at Frances’ private life.
Betty Whitaker was a partner with Frances and Miss Ratcliffe in the home decorating business. Farrell Floreancig is Miss Ratcliffe’s cousin, whose oldest daughter, Gina, was Frances’ favorite "niece."
Her undesirable image seen by many on the surface draws opposition by those who saw Frances in her private moments. This, the trio said, was a woman who nursed ailing kittens, was intellectually stimulated by TV game shows, played the piano while belting out "500 Miles of Bad Road" and spent a whole day blowing up balloons for a teenager’s birthday party.
She also could break any kitchen appliance within reach and made "the strongest coffee in the world. If you could drink that, honey, you could drink anything," said Mrs. Whitaker with a hearty laugh.
Frances was, initially, hard to get to know, according to Mrs. Whitaker. "She did warm up but it took her a long time. She was wary of people because she had been hurt so much in the past. She warmed up to you – you didn’t warm up to her. She didn’t act like a movie star or anything like that, but even when she was quiet you were always aware of her presence in the room."
Mrs. Whitaker said Frances was "always very gracious" and she never saw her rude or hostile in any way. "She was a very spirited woman, but she had her own pace. Frances didn’t talk fast, move fast – she didn’t do anything fast."
The infamous Farmer temper, she observed, showed more in her younger years. "She was a very opinionated person and would go to the wall on what she believed."
Sought Happiness
Frances never talked about he life at Hollywood or Seattle, according to Mrs. Whitaker, because "she was trying to find some happiness and didn’t need to relive all that. She wasn’t bitter (about her life), although most people would want to get back at society."
Frances' new-found family, including Mrs. Floreancig’s five daughters and Mrs. Whitaker’s two, enjoyed large get-togethers where Frances was often the life of the party when "She played ‘500 Miles of Bad road’ and sang at the top of her lungs!"
Mrs. Whitaker noted that Frances loved her church (St. Joan of Arc) and attended regularly. When she was in the asylum, she told Mrs. Whitaker, "I don’t know where God was. Didn’t He hear me at all?"
Mrs. Floreancig describes Frances as "a one-woman show" and remembers meeting her for the first time at a Christmas party. "I expected someone really fancy and every inch a star, but she was the most down-to-earth person. Sometimes her clothes were really worn, but she still looked elegant.
"When she had a temper, she really had it! But the nicest things about her was that she accepted such a large bunch of kids in her life. She wasn’t used to being around children up until then."
Gina Floreanicig, now 27, was only 14 when Frances died but fondly remembers her as "a very special person."
"When Frances and Jean moved to an old farmhouse on Moller Road (where Mrs. Whitaker now lives), my friends and I would have parties. If it got boring, Frances would advise us to play spin-the-bottle. On my 14th birthday, they had a party for me and Frances spent a whole day blowing up balloons."
Ms. Floreancig also recalled Frances and Jean serving her and her friends candlelight dinners. "We also held seances and we played with the Ouija board," she said.
"She knew she was going to die," offered Ms. Floreancig, "but she wasn’t afraid of it."
The Funeral
"The day breaks out of infinity. And across the stunning fire and blue of sunrise, death approaches."" -- From a poem by Frances Farmer.
Frances died on Aug 1, 1970, of cancer of the esophagus. The events surrounding her funeral and burial are just as puzzling as much of her life had been. Attendance was relatively small, and those who were there either "don’t remember it very well" or, it is suspected, are too embarrassed to talk about it.
Her friends held an old-fashioned wake in the parlor of Frances’ home followed by a service in St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church and interment in the Oaklawn Memorial Gardens mausoleum. The chapel service there has been called a "sideshow," with music by local entertainer Flo Garvin and readings from Chekhov plays. Six women friends were pall-bearers.
There is no explanation why Frances’ middle initial (E., for Elena) is missing from the crypt, or why an obituary was released saying she had no next of kin. Frances died nearly penniless, with medical care donated by friends. It was said she and Miss Ratcliffe used to collect pop bottles along the road for money during Frances’ final months, yet her burial was far from a pauper’s.
We may never know the answers, but certainly Frances Farmer now is at peace.
This
article appeared in The Indianapolis Star – January 26, 1983
Provided
by Jack Randall Earles