Born in 1914, Farmer was a drama student at the University of Washington in Seattle, and in the mid-1930's gained some local fame as one of thet heature scene's budding stars. The future looked bright for Farmer, with the New York stage and Hollywood films beckoning. But controversy that would hound her the rest of her life began when, as a college student, she wrote an anti-religious essay for a leftist magazine and won a trip to Moscow. She survived the bad press that the incident provoked, eventually making it to New York. She did well in some Broadway productions and went on to success in Hollywood. Between 1936 and 1942, Farmer appeared or starred in 14 films, including Come and get it, Flowing Gold, Among the Living, and Son of Fury.

Unfortunately, the pace of her work took its toll on her and she was further broken by the dehumanizing Hollywood star machine. She began to drink heavily and, after several drunk-and- disorderly arrest, was committed by her mother to a mental institution. Rather than help her, the institution depressed and unhinged her even further - she was very likly driven insane by the conditions under which she was forced to live. Upon her realese she did battle with her alcoholism and addicted to pain killers and sedatives, which she'd picked picked up as a "patient". She could not resume her career, and many in the press continued to gloat that her sorry state was just punishment for her heretical political beliefs. Her mother, along with a string of unsympathetic judges, continued to find reasons to have her re-committed to a series of institutions and mental hospitals. She later claimed that she had been raped almost every night she was confined.

Legend has it that Farmer was lobotomized during one of her final hospital stays, but in 1958 she became active in show business again, with parts in a movie (The Party Crashers), a play and a long-running soap opera on a local television station in Indianapolis. She died in 1970, and her auto-biography, Will There Ever Be a Morning? was published in 1972.