Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Walking with Frances Farmer: of bad girls and good dogs

Today I walked Kai near the house here in West Seattle where Frances Farmer used to live. I've done that a number of times and didn't realize it until about an hour ago, when this commemorative post by Kim Morgan (a former DVD Journal colleague) informed me that
"the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist, the short lived Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts
died 40 years ago this past Sunday. Kim's fine remembrance jogged my memory that, oh yeah, Farmer used to live not far from where I'm typing now. Thirty seconds of Googling later, I've made it a point to give the house a particular notice and a nod next time Kai and I stroll by.

It's a good neighborhood for dog-walking and — thanks to the bar named Shadowland after one of her biographies — raising a glass to "the freak from West Seattle."

For more, here's a 2008 post from WestSeattleBlog.