Barbara Payton

Barbara Payton
in Bad Blonde (1953)
Born	Barbara Lee Redfield November 16, 1927(1927-11-16) Cloquet, Minnesota, U.S.
Died	May 8, 1967(1967-05-08) (aged 39) San Diego, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1949–1955
Spouse	William Hodge (m. 1942–1942) «start: (1942)–end+1: (1943)»"Marriage: William Hodge to Barbara Payton" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Payton) John Payton Jr. (m. 1945–1948) «start: (1945)–end+1: (1949)»"Marriage: John Payton Jr. to Barbara Payton" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Payton) Franchot Tone (m. 1951–1952) «start: (1951)–end+1: (1953)»"Marriage: Franchot Tone to Barbara Payton" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Payton) George A. Provas (m. 1955–1958) «start: (1955)–end+1: (1959)»"Marriage: George A. Provas to Barbara Payton" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Payton)

Barbara Payton (November 16, 1927 – May 8, 1967) was an American film actress best known for her stormy social life and eventual battles with alcohol and drug addiction. Her life has been the subject of several books including Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (2007), by John O'Dowd, and L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times (2005), by John Gilmore.

Early life

Payton was born Barbara Lee Redfield in Cloquet, Minnesota, the daughter of Erwin Lee ("Flip") Redfield and Mabel Irene Todahl who were Norwegian immigrants. A son, Frank Leslie III was born in 1931 and in 1938, the family moved to Odessa, Texas. With financial assistance from his sister, Payton’s father was able to start his own business, a court of tourist cabins, “Antlers Court,” anticipating it would turn out to be a profitable enterprise in a city like Odessa whose population was booming due to the oil business. By various accounts, Payton’s father was a hard-working but difficult man, emotionally closed off, slow to express himself but quick to temper. His interaction with his children was minimal and child-rearing responsibilities were left to his wife Mabel who occupied herself with her homemaking duties and keeping problems out of her husband’s field of consciousness.

As Barbara was growing into maturity her good looks were also blossoming which garnered her attention. This type of attention was valued, even encouraged by her mother. Payton was known as a lively girl, willing to please and she learned early in life that she had a potent effect on the opposite sex.

In November 1943, the then sixteen-year-old eloped with her high school boyfriend William Hodge. The marriage seemingly amounted to nothing more than an act of impulsive, teen-age rebellion, and Payton didn't fight her parent's insistence that the marriage be annulled. A few months later, she quit high school in the eleventh grade. Her parents, who held to the belief that formal education wasn't mandatory for success in life, didn't object to their daughter leaving high school before obtaining a diploma.

In 1944, she met her second husband, a decorated combat pilot named John Payton, who at the time was stationed at Midland Air Base. The couple were married in 1945 and moved to Los Angeles where John enrolled at USC under the G.I. Bill. It was still early in their marriage that Barbara, restless and feeling confined by her life as a housewife, expressed a desire to pursue a modeling or acting career.

Payton officially launched her modeling path by hiring the services of a local photographer who shot photos of her sporting fashionable outfits. This portfolio attracted the favorable attention of a clothing designer, Saba of California, who signed her to a contract modeling a line of junior fashion. Her career progressed and in September 1947, the Rita La Roy Agency in Hollywood took her on as a client and brought her more work as a model in print advertising; notably in catalogs for Studebaker cars.

During this period in her life, the couple welcomed their son, John Lee, who was born in February 1947. Payton managed to combine the responsibilities of wife, new mother and professional model, yet the strains on the Payton marriage finally reached the breaking point and Barbara and her husband separated in July 1948. Payton's drive, fueled by her high-energy personality, had become focused on promoting her career and showcasing her beauty around the town’s hot spots. Her notoriety as a luminous, fun loving party girl in the Hollywood club scene ignited the attention of William Goetz, an executive of Universal Studios. In January 1949, he signed her, age twenty-one, to a contract with a starting salary of $100 per week.

Film career

Payton first gained notice in the 1949 film noir Trapped, co-starring Lloyd Bridges. In 1950, she was given the opportunity to make a screen test for John Huston's production of the forthcoming MGM crime drama The Asphalt Jungle. She wasn't chosen and the part of the sultry mistress of a mob connected lawyer went to Marilyn Monroe.

After being screen-tested by James Cagney and his producer brother William, Payton starred with Cagney in the violent noir thriller Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in 1950. William Cagney was so smitten with Payton's sensual appeal and beauty that her contract was drawn as a joint agreement between William Cagney Productions and Warner Bros. who together saw fit to bestow on Payton a salary of $5,000 a week; a large sum for an actress yet to demonstrate star power at the box-office.

For a relative newcomer, in "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye", Payton more than managed to hold her own among a cast of Hollywood veterans and alongside a super-star like Cagney himself. Her portrayal of the hardened, seductive girlfriend, whom Cagney’s character ultimately double-crosses, was critically praised in newspaper reviews of the movie. Her acting skills were recognized and her significant screen charisma widely acknowledged. “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” was the highpoint in Payton’s career, the moment in time she was christened as a player with bonafide star power.

Her other screen appearances opposite Gary Cooper in Dallas, and Gregory Peck in Only the Valiant, were lackluster productions where her roles were no more than window dressing for the hero and did little to highlight her skills as an actress. Payton's career decline began with the 1951 horror film Bride of the Gorilla, co-starring Raymond Burr.

Over time, her very public displays of excess partying, drinking and liaisons with men of dubious reputation, tarnished her credibility as an actress on a serious career track, and ultimately alienated the very Hollywood power brokers whose good will she needed to court in order to have a viable movie career. Through it all however, Payton held to a child-like belief in her Hollywood stardom, which in her mind had never faded. She was unable to acknowledge that her once promising career had crashed and burned, never to be resurrected.

Personal life

In addition to affairs with Howard Hughes, Bob Hope, Woody Strode, Guy Madison, George Raft, John Ireland, Steve Cochran, and Texas oilman Bob Neal, Payton was married four times as follows:

1. William Hodge: married 1943; marriage annulled
2. John Payton, Jr. (United States Air Force pilot): married 1945; divorced 1950; one child, John Lee Payton, born 1947
3. Franchot Tone (actor): married 1951; divorced 1952
4. George A. Provas (a.k.a. Tony Provas): married 1957; divorced 1958

In 1950, Franchot Tone met Payton at Ciro’s nightclub, where she grabbed center stage dancing in a Charleston contest and won first prize. For Tone, the sparks flew immediately and Payton was able to captivate Tone with their first introduction to each other.

In 1951 while engaged to actor Franchot Tone, Payton began having an affair with B-movie actor Tom Neal. She soon went back and forth publicly between Neal and Tone. Eventually Neal, a former college boxer, physically attacked Tone at Payton's apartment leaving him in an 18-hour coma with a smashed cheekbone, broken nose and concussion. The incident garnered huge publicity and Payton decided to honor her engagement to Tone.

After being married to Tone for 53 days, she walked out on Tone and returned to Neal. The Payton/Neal relationship, essentially ending their Hollywood film careers, lasted four years. During that time the couple capitalized on the notorious press coverage by touring in plays such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, based on the popular 1946 film of the same name. They would star together in The Great Jesse James Raid, a B-movie western barely released to theaters in 1953.

Later years and death

Payton's hard drinking and hard living ultimately had a decimating effect on her once enviable beauty, destroying her both physically and emotionally. From 1955 to 1963, her growing alcoholism and drug abuse led to multiple skirmishes with the law including the passing of bad checks and eventually an arrest on Sunset Boulevard for prostitution.

In 1963, she was paid $1,000 for her ghost-written autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed, which included unflattering photographs taken of her at the time. In the book, Payton admitted to being forced to sleep on bus benches and suffering regular beatings as a prostitute.

In 1967, ill and seeking refuge from her turbulent circumstances, she moved back to San Diego, California, to live with her parents. On May 8, 1967, Payton died at her parents' home of heart and liver failure.

Payton was cremated and is interred at Cypress View Mausoleum and Crematory in San Diego, California.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes
1949	Silver Butte	Rita Landon	Will Cowan
1949	Once More, My Darling	Girl Photographer	Robert Montgomery	Uncredited
1949	Trapped	Meg Dixon	Richard Fleischer
1949	The Pecos Pistol	Kay McCormick	Will Cowan
1950	Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye	Holiday Carleton	Gordon Douglas
1950	Dallas	Flo	Stuart Heisler
1951	Only the Valiant	Cathy Eversham	Gordon Douglas
1951	Drums in the Deep South	Kathy Summers	William Cameron Menzies
1951	Bride of the Gorilla	Mrs. Dina Van Gelder	Curt Siodmak
1953	Four Sided Triangle	Lena/Helen	Terence Fisher	Alternative title: The Monster and the Woman
1953	Run for the Hills	Jane Johnson	Lew Landers
1953	The Great Jesse James Raid	Kate	Reginald Le Borg
1953	Bad Blonde	Lorna Vecchi	Reginald Le Borg	Alternative title: The Flanagan Boy
1955	Murder Is My Beat	Eden Lane	Edgar G. Ulmer
1963	4 for Texas	Town citizen	Robert Aldrich	Uncredited

External links

• Barbara Payton at the Internet Movie Database
• CONELRAD production history of Barbara Payton's film Run for the Hills
• John O'Dowd Presents: Hollywood Starlet Barbara Payton Includes info on 2007 biography.
• Preview on Barbara Payton: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
• Story of Neal and Tone fight at Formosa Cafe
• Bob Hope: The Road to Bed in TimesOnline
• Barbara Payton at Find a Grave