American leading man of silent pictures who specialized in Westerns. His mother and father were, respectively, a singer and an actor, and he and his younger brother 'William Farnum' for three years, until his death in 1929 from kidney failure.
Brother of actor William Farnum
Brother of Marshall Farnum.
Daughter Estelle Farnum born 1925. She acted briefly under the name Dustine Farnum. She changed her name to Dustine Runyon following her mothers remarriage.
Buried in family plot, Bucksport, Maine, USA
Turned down the opportunity to invest $5,000 in the production of The Squaw Man (1914) , an investment that would have made him a millionaire. When he was hired to star in the film, he was paid partly in cash and partly in stock of the company formed to produce the film, headed by Cecil B. DeMille , the films director. Farnum thought so little of the stock that he gave it to his valet. When the film was released, its tremendous success resulted in the value of the stock soaring, and Farnums valet got rich almost overnight.
According to Dustin Hoffman s April 1975 Playboy Magazine interview, his mother named him after Farnum.
