Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,886

This is the grave of Glenda Farrell.

Born in 1904 in Enid, Oklahoma, Farrell grew up in a family that wanted her to succeed in the entertainment industry. Her father was a horse trader in Oklahoma Territory and part Cherokee. Her mother was white and a failed actress. But her mother wanted her kids to have a shot and so they moved to Wichita, Kansas in 1911. Soon, little Glenda was in stage productions, including playing Little Eva in the local production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was still a quite popular play at that time. This all led the Farrells to move to San Diego at the end of the 1910s. She worked mostly local theater, stuff like that.

Farrell’s big break came in 1928. She was cast as the lead in a serious play titled The Spider that got her positive attention. The film companies came calling. Of course, sound was just coming in and so voice was now important for film stars and Farrell had spent all those years on the stage. But she also had some Broadway producers calling and she took that first. She went to New York in 1929 and did a bunch of work there over the next two years. But Hollywood kept calling. She did a couple shorts and then was cast as the lead girl in Little Caesar, starring opposite Edward G. Robinson. This was a huge hit and did her career a ton of good. But really, Farrell would remain a reluctant Hollywood actress. She really did love the theater and thought it was where real actors worked. I of course completely respect that sentiment. On the other hand, no one really remembers theater actors because no one is watching stage productions from the 30s, they are watching movies from the 30s.

But in 1932, Farrell did so well in the lead of the play Life Begins that Warner Brothers wanted to make it into a film with her doing the lead again. She agreed and then signed a contract with Warner. She stayed in Hollywood until 1939. She did a lot of pretty high end pictures that received Academy Award nominations such as I’m a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, directed by Mervyn LeRoy in 1932, and Lady for a Day, directed by Frank Capra in 1933. For the most part, outside of this a lot of her films were fairly standard 30s action, which means pretty entertaining, often comedies. I think it’s a great decade for dialogue in films, if not so much in cinematography after the development of sound took some emphasis away from look for a decade or so. She and Joan Blondell became friends and they did nine movies together in the decade. Now, is there any movie not made better by Joan Blondell or Glenda Farrell? I’d say no, not all their movies were great but they were both always welcome presences that could take less than top material and make it one notch more entertaining. So they did films such as Ray Enright’s Havana Widows, in 1933; William Keighley’s Kansas City Princess, in 1934; Enright’s We’re in the Money, in 1935; and another Enright film, Miss Pacific Fleet, also in 1935.

One thing Farrell was really good at was one of the great character innovations of the 30s–the wise-cracking, fast-talking, witty female reporter for comedies. While Rosalind Russell might have perfected this particular character in 1940’s His Girl Friday, she built upon Farrell’s work. Farrell had already done a couple of these characters, in Michael Curtiz’s Mystery of the Wax Museum (a horror, not a comedy, but her basically playing that character) in 1933, and LeRoy’s Hi Nellie!, in 1934. But in 1937, she was cast in the Torchy Blane series, which was a bunch of films about a wisecracking female reporter who was funny and sexy and combined nearly every major genre of film to maximize audiences–adventure and comedy and romance all together! There were seven of these films for Warner Brothers between 1937 and 1939. This character became Jerry Siegel’s inspiration for Lois Lane in the Superman comics.

In 1939, Farrell left Warner (the studio tried to keep Torchy alive with Jane Wyman, but to less success). She felt typecast in the role and she wanted more money than Jack Warner was willing to fork over. She also wanted to do more theater. For the rest of her career, Farrell worked independently, doing what films she wanted while spending plenty of time on stage and doing some TV too when that became a thing. She didn’t do another film for two years, until doing LeRoy’s Johnny Eager. That same year, she married the army doctor Johnny Ross, which is why her grave looks like this. It’s a standard military grave and spouses are listed on the back. Ross happened to be seeing her perform in the play Separate Rooms and she sprained her ankle in the performance. There’s always a doctor in the house, it was Ross this day, and he treated her and they started talking and, well, things went as they go. Later, Ross would be the chief health officer on Dwight Eisenhower’s staff, so he wasn’t just some standard guy. They stayed married until her death.

Many of Farrell’s films were now pretty good since she did what she wanted without the burden of a contract. She was in Talk of the Town, in 1942, directed by George Stevens and which received Academy Award nominations. She was in Apache War Smoke in 1952, Girls in the Night in 1953, and Middle of the Night in 1959. The latter was a play anyway, so that was an easy one for her to yes to. She guest starred in dozens of TV shows through the years, including Bonanza and Bewitched. Too bad she didn’t live long enough to be on The Love Boat, she’d have been perfect. She did win an Emmy for her role in a 2-part episode of the medical drama Ben Casey, a show I have never of before writing this.

Farrell worked until the end of her life. She tried to quit in 1968, but found she just missed acting too much. Unfortunately, Farrell also loved her cigarettes like anyone else in this era and of course they killed her. She died of lung cancer in 1971, at the age of 66.

Glenda Farrell is buried in the United States Military Academy Cemetery, West Point, New York.

If you would like this series to visit any of the people Farrell worked with, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Joan Blondell is in Glendale, California and Paul Muni is in Hollywood, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.