I remember this show well, and as the show came on TV just after I got home from school, I was a regular. Ms. Farmer was an elegantly coiffed and dressed older woman who didn't just model the clothes provided by one of the sponsors (clothing provided by L.S. Ayres and Company, a local department store who's investment paid off.) She provided a complete contrast to the comparatively dowdy housewives of my small town, and I suspect they despised her because they thought that they could look like that, too, if someone gave them the clothes.
She had a lot more than the clothes. She had presence, and actually had something intelligent to say about the movies, some of them great but some awful.
She was at a minimum competent, and on her better days far better than that. I didn't know anything about her sad history at the time, and she was too good an actress to let anything show.