Whatever happened to teen starlet Mimsy Farmer?
By George Seminara
As we have discussed before, the life of a child actor is challenging. If I had my way, I would have all the children's parts done as puppets or CGI. Even the laws meant to provide a financial safety net for professional children must be more comprehensive and not so easy to skirt. Besides, who wants to sue their mom for fraud? Too often, these stories end tragically but bear with me. Not this time!
Mimsy Farmer has had quite a ride in the entertainment business. I say that because there is no industry like the film business to find different ways to keep working, even if you started as a kid actor. We all know transitioning from a child to an adult actor is virtually impossible. The names of the tragic ends of child actors could fill many volumes. For every Daniel Radcliffe, there are a hundred Bobby Driscoll's.
Note: #1 Bobby Driscoll was a Disney star, the voice of Peter Pan, the young boy Uncle Remus tells his stories to in Song of the South. He won a rare Juvenile Academy Award for outstanding performances in two films, So Dear to My Heart and The Window. The Academy only gave about twelve of those awards out over 26 years. He ended his time on Earth in a condemned Lower East Side tenement and was buried in Potter's Field on New York's Hart Island. (Soon to be a State Park so you can picnic over corpses of thousands of unnamed New Yorkers. "Call Warner Brothers! That's a great idea for a horror movie!" The smell of the hot dogs brought them back from the dead!
For a time Mimsy Farmer was the teenage ingenue du Jour appearing in THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET and MY THREE SONS; her pleasant attitude, professional manner, and, of course, her natural good looks, she became a very busy little actress. Before we go on, let's mention that Mimsy was born on February 28, 1945 - Leap Day. She shares that date with Gilbert Gottfried, Bubba Smith, and Tommy James and the Shondells' Organist, Ronnie Rosman. I mention this because these early baby boomers gave us Flower Power and Free Love. As Mimsy grew into adulthood, she began to hang out with the cool kids.
She was a looker, and I'm sure that she was in high demand as arm candy for older celebrities. While hanging out with the aforementioned cool kids, she tried LSD. Dropping acid that first time expanded her horizons, and she was with the right group of folks because she became fascinated with the possible therapeutic uses of the Drug. In 1967, she left Los Angeles and settled in Vancouver Island, where she worked as a nurse in a program founded by Al Hubbard, known throughout the counter-culture as the "Johnny Appleseed of LSD." According to legend, he turned Timothy Leary on at Harvard.
Hubbard, often referred to as the Captain, was often seen sporting a captain's hat or a Greek fisherman's cap on his head because he was actually a captain in the Merchant Marine. He did some of the earliest research on the Drug. By the time Timothy Leary and his colleagues were experimenting with psychedelic drugs in the psychology department of Harvard in the early 1960s, Hubbard had published the first papers on its possible therapeutic uses. Hubbard went there to meet Leary, wanting to swap not just knowledge but some Central Intelligence Agency grade pharmaceutical LSD in exchange for some psilocybin, the synthesized constituent of magic mushrooms identified and then produced by Switzerland's Sandoz Laboratories in pill form. Mostly because Magic Mushrooms taste horrible. Not peyote horrible, but horrible.
The Central Intelligence Agency was reputed to be one of Hubbard's employers. Under the auspices of the program MK-ULTRA, the CIA regularly dosed its agents and associates with powerful hallucinogens as a preemptive measure against what was alleged to be the Soviets' own chemical technology, sometimes with disastrous results. Hubbard had some links with the CIA, but he discontinued his association with the MK-ULTRA program because he felt it was bad science.
While working with Hubbard, she took LSD and administered LSD to a wide number of patients, there is a scurrilous tinsel town rumor that Cary Grant spent an exciting weekend tripping his brains out holding Mimsy's hand throughout. There are plenty of stories of Cary Grant's enthusiastic use of the Drug, but it is unverifiable if he used it in the Canadian woods. However, as many trips as Mimsy took, she never went anywhere, and being in the Canadian wilderness is nice, but it’s not Los Angeles in the swinging sixties,
She didn't wait long to return to Hollywood and almost immediately she got cast in a few B pictures. After a brief film career in the United States, mostly portraying party-girl types in films such as the Dana Andrews headliner Hot Rods to Hell (1967), Mimsy played the Party Girl. In the AIP expose on the counter-culture, Riot on Sunset Strip, In addition to Aldo Rey, the film featured two of my favorite rock bands of the era The Standells ("Dirty Water") and The Chocolate Watch Band ("Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)") The story is trash but, Mimsy again as the party girl gets dosed with LSD and performs a free form dance that must have elicited giggles in America. But in Europe, it was Great Art, and before you could ask, "Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)"
She was whisked away to star in Roger Corman's The Wild Racers (1968), which was directed by Daniel Haller. Her experience in that film was a pleasant one because it was her first trip to Europe, and she visited several countries and went to England to visit her older brother, who worked as a math tutor at a university in London. No sooner had Corman finished with her that she was snatched up by Barbet Schroeder for his Directorial Debut, starring in More as a tragic heroin addict on the Spanish Island of the endless rave, Ibiza!
Mimsy ended up in Italy where she was immediately snapped up by the Giallo horror master Dario Argento, for Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), as well as Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974), Armando Crispino's Autopsy (1975), and Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981). Italy kept her busy, and not just with horror films. In 1971, Farmer won a special David di Donatello film award for acting for her performance in Georges Lautner's thriller The Road to Salina (1970), which also starred Robert Walker and Rita Hayworth.
Note 2: Giallo - In Italian cinema, is a popular form of entertainment, part murder mystery, Slasher, Pop-psychology, Sexploitation, and a dash of the supernatural to make the gravy nice and spicy! It's usually a whodunnit that is generally revealed by the film's end. It is the Italian Grandpa of the slasher/splatter/and torture porn that are popular today. The Saw franchise? Anyone?
My favorite of her Gialli is Four Flies on Grey Velvet - Spoiler Alert it gives all the thrills above, but in lurid color and concludes with a shocking reveal, a decapitation, and a huge car explosion! In an American film that would be just enough to bring the killer back for the sequel. Thank god for the Italians! Fran Liebowitz, Manhattan Island's doyenne of pithy remarks, said in High Times magazine that it was the worst film she had ever seen.
Mimsy continued to act throughout the 1980s but lost some interest. She decided that she wanted to make art and set about becoming a painter and sculptor. She remarried Francis Poirier, a sculptor whose work can be seen in the Avengers films. With his assistance, Mimsy turned pro and, since 1992, began supplying props and large-size sculptures for theatre and opera in France and Italy. Her talent couldn't keep Hollywood away for long and she has worked on films such as Oceans, Troy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Marie Antoinette, Five Children and It, The Golden Compass, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Wrath of the Titans, Guardians of the Galaxy, Beauty and the Beast, and Pan's Labyrinth.
Mimsy Farmer continues to toil away behind the scenes and wouldn't be averse to a little acting if the right part showed up. But for now, she is satisfied with her art. It sure beats Potter's Field!
Well folks, in an attempt at brevity, I do go on a bit, I forgot to mention that the sound track for More was created by Pink Floyd who also released an album of the same name. Mimsy did not meet Syd Barrett and could possibly have helped him with his LSD induced Psychosis. Not But what ifs isn’t a reality and it was the first album Pink Floyd made without Barrett. Lead Vocals and Guitar were handled by the remarkable David Gilmour in his first recording as a member of the band. It is an underrated effort by the band and is one of my favorites after The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.