Frances Farmer - Actress Frances Farmer held a deep disdain for Hollywood's superficiality, studio control, and the rigid expectations placed on actors.
At the age of 16, she entered an atheistic essay called God Dies into a magazine contest, winning $100.
Because of her alcaholism, she was dragged from her bathroom to jail and denied a phone. The next day, when the judge asked her if she had started a fight, she answared: ''Yes, I was fighting for my country and for myself.'' When asked if she had been drinking, she answared: ''yes, I drank anything I could get, including benzidine.''
When the judge reminded her of the order to abstain from alcohol, she said: ''I get liquor in my milk, liquor in my coffee, liquor in my orange juice... what do you expect me to do, starve to death?''
After serving a six month sentence, she started asking questions, like where was her phone call, why wasn't she allowed a lawyer. When no answers came, she started throwing punches at anyone within reach. Officers piled on top of her, pinning her to the floor and wrestling her into a straight jacket. She would spend the next seven or so years in an asylum, where she claims orderlies lined up every day to take turns raping her: ''For 8 years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. In those years I deteriorated into a wild frightened creature intent only on survival. I was assaulted by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into straight jackets and half drowned in ice baths. The asylum itself was a steel trap and I was not released alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone, but I survived.''
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