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Frances Farmer
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===1942–1949: Legal troubles and psychiatric confinement=== On October 19, 1942, Farmer was stopped by [[Santa Monica, California|Santa Monica]] police for driving with her headlights on high beam in the wartime [[blackout (wartime)|blackout]] zone that affected most of the [[West Coast of the United States|West Coast]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1983&dat=19421020&id=JQJgAAAAIBAJ&pg=4309,4104387|title=Frances Farmer, Actress, Jailed|date=October 20, 1942|work=San Jose Evening News|location=San Jose, California|via=Google News|page=8|access-date=August 26, 2014}} {{free access}}</ref> Some reports stated she was unable to produce a driver's license, and was verbally abusive to the officers.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=22}}{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=236}} The police suspected her of being drunk and she was jailed overnight.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=236}} Farmer was fined $500 and given a 180-day suspended sentence.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=22}} She immediately paid $250 and was put on probation.<ref name="petersburg">{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19430115&id=9SFPAAAAIBAJ&pg=7320,5089605|title=Actress Jailed But Only After Battle With Police|date=January 14, 1943|work=St. Petersburg Times|location=St. Petersburg, Florida|page=12|access-date=August 26, 2014|via=Google News}} {{free access}}</ref>{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=238}} With her vehicle impounded and her driver's license suspended, Farmer holed up in her Santa Monica home and denied the press interviews.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=22}} {{multiple images | width = 170 | align = left | direction = vertical | image1 = Frances Farmer arrest photo.jpg | alt1 = Woman with disheveled hair, staring to right | caption1 = | image2 = Frances Farmer restrained 1943.png | alt2= Woman being restrained by police officer, her legs kicked in front of her | caption2 = Farmer in widely publicized photos taken during a January 1943 court hearing }} In November 1942, her agent secured her a role in an independent film adaptation of [[John Steinbeck]]'s ''Murder at Laudice'', which was set to film in [[Mexico City]].{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=24}} Upon arriving in Mexico, she discovered that the shooting script was unfinished, and the production never reached fruition.{{efn|According to Farmer's sister Edith, she dropped out of the production after waiting two weeks in Mexico City for script rewrites to take place.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=29}}}} While in Mexico City, Farmer was allegedly charged with [[public intoxication|drunk and disorderly conduct]] and disturbing the peace, and was forced by authorities to return to the United States.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=24}} Upon returning to California, she found her Santa Monica home cleared of her possessions and inhabited by a strange family.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=24}} Farmer later contended that her mother and sister-in-law had stripped the house and stored her belongings while she was gone.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=24}} Her mother rented her a room at the [[Knickerbocker Hotel (Los Angeles)|Knickerbocker Hotel]] in Hollywood, where she temporarily took residence.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=24}} By January 1943, Farmer had failed to pay the remainder of her fine, and a [[bench warrant]] was issued for her arrest. At almost the same time,{{sfn|Bragg|2005|p=69}} a studio hairdresser filed an [[assault]] charge alleging that Farmer had hit her in the face and dislocated her jaw on set.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=238}} On January 13, 1943, police went to the Knickerbocker to arrest her,{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=238}} but she did not surrender peacefully.<ref name=Tmn /> At her hearing the following morning, Farmer behaved erratically. She claimed the police had violated her rights; demanded an attorney; and threw an [[inkwell]] at the judge.{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=25}}{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=32}} When asked about her drinking habits, Farmer told the judge: "I put liquor in my milk{{nbsp}}... in my coffee and in my orange juice."{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=25}} She also admitted to regularly drinking [[History of Benzedrine|benzedrine]].{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=25}} The judge sentenced her to 180 days in jail.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=32}} While being taken from the courtroom, Farmer knocked down a policeman and bruised another, along with a matron; she ran to a phone booth where she tried to call her attorney, but was subdued by the police.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|pages=32–34}} When they physically carried her away, she shouted: "Have you ever had a broken heart?"<ref name="petersburg"/>{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=32}} Through the efforts of her sister-in-law, a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles County, Farmer avoided jail time and was instead transferred to the psychiatric ward of [[Los Angeles General Hospital]] on January 21.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=32}} There, she was diagnosed with "[[manic depressive]] [[psychosis]], probably the forerunner of a definite [[dementia praecox]]."{{sfn|Commire|Klezmer|2000|p=390}} Days later, with assistance from the [[Screen Actors Guild]], she was transferred to the Kimball Sanitarium, a minimum-security psychiatric institute in the [[San Fernando Valley]].{{sfn|Agan|1979|p=26}} Psychiatrists there diagnosed her with [[paranoid schizophrenia]].{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=33}} She was administered [[insulin shock therapy]], then a standard psychiatric procedure, whose side effects included intense [[nausea]].{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=33}} Her family later claimed they did not consent to the treatment,{{sfn|Shelley|2010|pages=33–34}} as documented in her sister's self-published book, ''Look Back in Love'', and in court records; Farmer herself later alleged that she was given insulin treatments for 90 consecutive days.{{sfn|Bragg|2005|p=75}} After nine months at the Kimball Sanitarium, Farmer walked out of the institute one afternoon and traveled to her half-sister Rita's house, over {{convert|20|mi|km}} away. They called their mother in Seattle to complain about the insulin treatments.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|pages=33–36}} [[File:Frances Farmer with parents.png|thumb|upright=1|right|alt=Young woman (center) with older man and woman sitting on each side of her|Farmer was paroled into the care of her parents (pictured with her here in 1938) after her release from psychiatric confinement.]] Lillian traveled to California and began a lengthy legal battle to take formal guardianship of Frances from the state of California. Although several psychiatrists testified that Farmer needed further treatment, her mother prevailed. The two of them left Los Angeles by train on September 13, 1943.<ref name="shedding"/> Farmer moved in with her parents in West Seattle, but her mother and she fought bitterly. Farmer wrote in her autobiography: "Mamma and I had fought, argued, threatened, and screamed until it had finally come down to a climax of two exhausted women sitting across from each other in a small, cluttered kitchen. We were enemies who had grown tired of pretending."{{sfn|Farmer|1972|p=13}} After one violent physical attack, Lillian had Farmer committed to [[Western State Hospital (Washington State)|Western State Hospital]] at [[Steilacoom, Washington]].{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=40}} In a 1958 television interview by Ralph Edwards on his ''This is Your Life'' program, Frances recalled her experience: {{blockquote|It was very much like anyone else's that is admitted to a public institution. They don’t have means for individual psychiatric care, there’s only so many beds available. I stood in line with 15 or 20 girls like myself, in the hospital for one reason or another. We received shots, or hydrotherapy baths, or electric shock treatment. This was supposed to relax the tensions and keep us quiet, which it did. I don’t blame the hospital at all—I think that they did everything in their power to take care of the enormous number of people they had, but I really don’t think it helped me much.}} Three months later, in early July 1944, she was pronounced "completely cured" and released.{{sfn|Dunkelberger|Neary|2014|p=115}} Shortly after her release, on July 15, Farmer was arrested for [[Vagrancy (people)|vagrancy]] in [[Antioch, California]].{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=35}} In January 1945, Farmer's father took her to stay at her aunt's ranch in [[Yerington, Nevada]].<ref name=reno/>{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=35}} During her stay, Farmer ran away from the residence.{{sfn|Arnold|1978|p=138}} She was discovered several days later at a movie theater in [[Reno, Nevada|Reno]], and returned by police to her aunt's home.<ref name=reno>{{cite news|date=January 14, 1945|title=Reno Police Return 'Lost' Frances Farmer|page=8|work=Wisconsin State Journal|location=Madison, Wisconsin|publisher=United Press|via=Newspapers.com|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22759602/wisconsin_state_journal/}} {{open access}}</ref> Several months later, on May 18, 1945, Lillian filed for a [[Competency evaluation (law)|sanity hearing]] for Farmer after she ran away from their home in Seattle.<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle]]|location=Brooklyn, New York|title=Seeks Sanity Hearing For Frances Farmer|page=1|date=May 18, 1945|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22759623/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/|via=Newspapers.com}} {{open access}}</ref> The hearing was held on May 21, during which the court ruled that Farmer was to be recommitted to Western State Hospital.<ref>{{cite news|work=Los Angeles Times|title=Frances Farmer Sent Back to Hospital|date=May 21, 1945|page=10|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22759671/the_los_angeles_times/|via=Newspapers.com}} {{open access}}</ref> She remained an inmate of the hospital for the next five years, with the exception of a brief parole in 1946.<ref name="shedding"/> Throughout her internment, Farmer remained in the high-security ward for the hospital's "violent" patients.{{sfn|Shelley|2010|p=40}} Her treatment at Western State was subject to significant public and critical [[#Western State|discussion in the years after her death]].{{sfn|Dunkelberger|Neary|2014|p=115}}
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