Frances Farmer

Frances Elena Farmer was an American actress and television host. She is perhaps better known for sensationalized accounts of her life, especially her involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. Farmer began her career as a stage actress, performing stock theater in New York and later appearing on Broadway. She made her film debut in Too Many Parents , and was subsequently featured in a starring role in the musical western, Rhythm on the Range opposite Bing Crosby, and The Toast of New York with Cary Grant.

Farmer was born Frances Elena Farmer on September 19, 1913 in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Lillian , a boardinghouse operator and dietician and Ernest Melvin Farmer, a lawyer. Farmer was the youngest of four children she had two older sisters, and one older brother. At age four, Farmers parents separated, and her mother relocated with the children from their home in North Seattle to Los Angeles, where her sister lived. Two years later, Farmer and her siblings were sent back to Seattle to live with their father. Her mother returned to Seattle the following year, and the family shared a house, although Lillian and Ernest remained separated. In the fall of 1929, when Frances was sixteen, Lillian and Ernest divorced, and Lillian relocated to a cottage in Bremerton, Washington.

Source: Wikipedia