Frances Farmer: The actor who inspired songs by Deftones and Nirvana
The heartbreaking demise of Frances Farmer is a warning of the dark side of Hollywood, a gloomy and relatively unspoken realm with a tendency to eat up its most promising starlets. While Farmer never hit the heights that her talents commanded, intriguingly, both Nirvana and Deftones were inspired to write songs about her fate.
Farmer was born in Seattle in 1913, a location that birthed the grunge pioneers Nirvana decades later. Her first dive into acting came when she attended the University of Washington, and soon afterwards, Farmer was a prominent fixture in B-movies. However, the step up to the major leagues of Hollywood evaded the actor because of her harrowing battles with mental health issues.
In 1939, Farmer was lined up to appear in an Ernest Hemingway play, but depression led to her pulling out of the production. Tragically, this is a common theme throughout her career. Although she returned to Hollywood, Farmer’s fight against her demons persistently thwarted her from receiving a big break, and she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The medical knowledge surrounding mental health in Farmer’s age was incomparable with today. Therefore, she didn’t receive the necessary care she deserved. Although she attempted another go at the film industry, it only amounted to local productions in Indiana, where she also worked as a local television host. In 1970, Farmer passed away, aged 56, after a bout of cancer.
On Nirvana’s In Utero – which cited Quentin Tarantino as an inspiration – they dedicated the track, ‘Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle’, to the late actor. In the song, Cobain draws parallels between his difficult behaviour and Farmer. She was notoriously difficult to work with on set, and Cobain could also be a tough customer. However, they were both simply misunderstood rather than deliberately hostile people. In the first verse, Cobain sings: “It’s so relieving to know that you’re leaving, As soon as you get paid, It’s so relaxing to know that you’re asking, Wherever you get your way, It’s so soothing to know that you’ll sue me, It’s starting to sound the same.”
Despite being immortalised in the title of a beloved Nirvana track, Deftones frontman Chino Moreno stumbled upon Farmer’s story of his own accord. After delving down a rabbit hole reading about her tale, Moreno was inspired to write the song, ‘Rats’, and it wasn’t until later he discovered ‘Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle’.
Speaking to Kerrang (via SongFacts), Moreno said: “There’s a lot of aggression here. He spent whole weeks working on individual sections of this because the timing is really intricate. The song title is from a story I was reading about this old actress called Frances Farmer who went crazy. It was only afterwards that I realised Nirvana had also written a song about her.”
Musicians are often broken individuals who use their art as a vehicle to heal themselves. In all likelihood, both Deftones and Nirvana recognised part of themselves within Farmer, which is why they felt compelled to bring her story to life through their music.
