Frances Farmer Tribute

The late Seattle-born actress (1913-1970) is honored with a Friday cocktail reception and talk by film historian Peder Andreas Nelson. Following is Come and Get It (1936), in which she plays dual roles as mother and daughter, the former being the lost love of Wisconsin timber baron Edward Arnold. (Joel McCrea and Walter Brennan provide support.) Sunday at 4 p.m. it's Rhythm on the Range, a 1936 musical with Spokane's Bing Crosby. Finally, the Oscar-nominated Jessica Lange stars in the 1982 biopic Frances, which basically made Farmer a Hollywood martyr and symbol of untreated (or mistreated) mental illness. That dubious distinction inspired kinship from none other than Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain (see: "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle"), whose daughter was named for the ill-fated starlet. Let's hope better for the kid than that. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
Fri., Nov. 7, 7 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 8, 4 & 8 p.m., 2008