Frances Farmer

"I must relate the horrors as I recall them, in the hope that some force for mankind might be moved to relieve forever the unfortunate creatures who are still imprisoned in the back wards of decaying institutions". – Frances Farmer on her past experience as a mental patient

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" –Albert Einstein

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle - Nirvana
It's so relieving
To know that you're leaving as soon as you get paid
It's so relaxing
To hear that you're asking wherever you get your way
It's so soothing
To know that you'll sue me, this is starting to sound the same

I miss the comfort in being sad (x3)
In her false witness, we hope you're still with us,
To see if they float or drown
Our favorite patient, a display of patience,
Disease-covered Puget Sound
She'll come back as fire, to burn all the liars,
And leave a blanket of ash on the ground

I miss the comfort in being sad (x3)

Im crazy give me a lobotomy!
Frances Farmer, Hollywood Starlet, like lobotomized Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Coo Nest whispered. Why? He's tough, he smokes, he drinks, he spoke again, he was stubborn, mouthy. He does not fit the mold of womanhood 50.

Those damn crazy fuckers...
Different people are often punished, harassed, and sometimes killed, because people do not fit the mold. Close redneck hometown, is the city of Steilacoom. Here is a famous hospital that Frances Farmer was imprisoned for most of his life. Within the walls of this sanatorium, creative spirit Farmer dies, forever silencing the great minds.

Free to live?
I sometimes worry about what happened to "weird" and "crazy" in the community. My last post explained 3 teenagers convicted of murder is wrong based on "evidence" that they wear black clothes, read Stephan King, and listening to Metallica. Often times, people feel someone as crazy for creativity, intelligence and nonconformism.

Im melting .... Im melting ....
If I lived 200 years ago, would I have been burned at the stake for being a witch? If I lived in the 1950s I would have been institutionalized and given lobotomies? The answer may be yes to both.

Western State Sanitarium
Ruins of Old Western State Sanitarium about 40 minutes drive from my home town. Here Francis Farmer was among the thousands of "deviants" institutionalized and lobotomized possible. Deviants were manic-depressives, gay and lesbian, outspoken nonconformist, returned war veterans, and others.
Western countries sitting on the ruins of the old, with a steam engine room was left intact. According to folklore, was haunted by many former residents.

Frances Farmer (info stolen from the Web)
Born in Seattle, Frances Farmer studied drama at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 1936, he went to Hollywood where he secured seven-year contract with Paramount. In 1942, he was found guilty of 'mentally incompetent' and committed to a series of mental hospitals and public psychiatric hospital, where he finally received lobotomies. After eleven years he was released, and spent a few years of his life caring for parents who have done it and taking odd jobs. He appeared on "This Is Your Life" (1952), and ran his TV show itself, "Frances Farmer Presents" (1958) for six years. He died of cancer in 1970.

Lobotomies
This is par for the course for any "undesirable", a way to control someone who will not be controlled, how to cure "mental illness". As gruesome and barbaric as this may seem to us now, hundreds of thousands will be lobotomized between 1935-1960. Dr. Walter Freeman's lobotomies known as a pioneer, he made more than 3,000, some of the assembly line mass butcher.

Description lobotomies (from Web)
The procedure involved first knocked unconscious patients with two or three electric shocks from an electric therapy machine. After the seizure the patient lying down and numb, Walter Freeman lifted the patient's eyelid and inserted an ice pick-like instrument called leucotome through tear duct. A few taps with a hammer breaking a bone surgery. Freeman took a position behind the patient's head, pushing leucotome about an inch and a half into the frontal lobe of the brain of patients, and move the sharp tip back and forth. Then he repeated the process with the other eye socket.


King lobotomies met with Hollywood Starlet
In the late 1940s at Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, Wash., Freemen met film actress Frances Farmer, according to the Farmer's biography of William Arnold.

Farmers had been a patient there for five years, victims of intolerance family of unconventional behavior and wild. Freeman lobotomized him if he is still not clear, although Arnold said he was doing. Farmers relatives and staff of Western State psychiatrist at the time said it never happened, but said his father was Frank Freeman verified Farmer's operations and identifies himself as a patient who presented the world's most famous photo lobotomies, often reproduced shot showing Freeman with hairy and muscular arms leucotome hammer into the eyes of women in Western countries as a crowd watched. Farmers filmed interviews made after he came home from the hospital showed separate and flat demeanored (although obviously intelligent) women, the results are consistent with lobotomies

Western State Hospital
By any measure, Western State Hospital in the late 1940s was a bleak place. More than 2700 patients - 500 more than the official capacity - is crammed into the ancient hall. Many patients are housed in the elderly, turn-of-the-century buildings, similar to the one that had been destroyed by fire (killing two patients) in 1947. After the fire, emergency wards have been established in the corridor was originally used as a heating trial practice. Regions have been covered with canvas, but it provides little protection against wind, rain, and cold. PI found that it was still used as a ward two years later.

Because of shortage of staff, patients entered into bed around 4 pm and arrested there 12 hours. Inadequate salaries and poor living complex problems efficiently get help. Lived in the ward attendants stationed in a basement with sagging floors and cement walls collapsed. Dr. William N. Keller, hospital superintendent, said the hospitals needed about $ 8 million to improve facilities and expand the staff, a figure far greater than what the Legislature is willing to provide. "People seem more interested in how cheaply they can take care of their mental illness rather than how well," he commented (PI, 1949).

"Lobotomies Gets Them Home"
Given this condition, a hospital administrator who is naturally interested in new types of surgery that promises to help people leave institutions psychological disabilities and return to useful lives: transorbital lobotomies. The procedure involves inserting a thin, such as icepick leucotome tool called under the patient's eyelid and into the brain's frontal lobe, where he used to cut the nerves thought to cause severe emotional distress. This was developed by Dr. Walter G. Freeman, a prominent Washington, DC, neurologist and psychiatrist, whose motto is "lobotomies until they come home."

Freeman demonstrated the technique at Western State Hospital on August 19, 1947, operating in 13 patients. At one point, a photographer snapped his picture, producing what has become the world's most famous photo lobotomies. Which often shows reproduced images of his Freeman holds a coma leucotome in women. Before his death in 1972, Freeman reportedly told his son Frank that the woman in the photograph Frances Farmer.
said that he heard a woman on the ward "begging" for lobotomies, because "They have said the operation would chop up one of the nerves that control the sense of grief" (Indianapolis Star). But he reported to Kibbee and other friends that he did not have surgery.

The old Western State Sanitarium, Tacoma / Lakewood.
Tacoma - Lakewood - The Old Western State Sanitarium, feeling watched, panic and sadness. On some rainy foggy night when the moon is full, you can hear moans and footsteps in the end for the morning. Patients believed that there had been institutionalized. The place was in ruins now but still there and boiler room underground that is where most of the sound came. The fence around also shakes his head when no one else with you.

We will never forget you, Frances!