Barbara Lee 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 Norwegian immigrants Erwin Lee ("Flip") Redfield and Mabel Irene Todahl. 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. Both of Payton's parents had long-standing problems with alcohol. Payton’s first cousin, Richard Kuitu remembers visits to the home of his uncle and aunt. The Redfields would often start drinking mid-morning and continue long after midnight. He recalls the violent temper Lee Redfield could demonstrate when fueled by drink, which would sometimes result in the physical abuse of his wife.

As Payton 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. She 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 did not 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 was not mandatory for success in life, did not 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 on February 10, 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. She also appeared in clothing ads for such magazines as Charm and Junior Bazaar.

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.

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 was not 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, both westerns, 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.

Decline

Over time, Payton's 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 childlike 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. She married her first husband, William Hodge, when both were high school students in Texas. The marriage was later annulled.

Her second marriage was to United States Air Force pilot John Payton, Jr. in 1945. The had one child, John Lee Payton (born 1947), before divorcing in September 1950. Payton lost custody of the couple's son in March 1956 after her ex-husband charged that she exposed John Lee to "profane language, immoral conduct, notoriety, unwholesome activities" and failed to provide the boy with a "moral education".

In 1950, Payton met actor Franchot Tone Ciro’s nightclub. The two were later engaged. While engaged to Tone, Payton began having an affair with B-movie actor Tom Neal. She soon went back and forth publicly between Neal and Tone. On September 14, 1951, 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. Payton and Tone, who was still recovering from his injuries, were married on September 28, 1951 in Payton's hometown of Cloquet, Minnesota. After being married to Tone for 53 days, Payton walked out on him, and returned to Neal. Tone was granted a divorce in May 1952.

The Payton/Neal relationship, essentially ending their Hollywood film careers. 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 also star together in The Great Jesse James Raid, a B-movie western that received a limited released to theaters in 1953. In May 1953, Payton announced that she and Neal were to be married that summer in Paris. The couple broke up the following year.

In November 1955, Payton married George A. "Tony" Provas, a furniture store executive in Nogales, Arizona. They divorced in August 1958.

Later years and death

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

Offered the choice of being admitted to the detox unit, Payton said, “I'd rather drink and die.” Following her brief hospitalization, she was driven by a county social worker to her parents’ home in San Diego. She told her family's neighbor, “I never wanted to be with them, I never wanted to see them again. But here I am, and I got all the booze I want.” Her father, Flip Redfield, and her mother, Mabel, were both heavy drinkers, and engaged with Payton in unabated drinking binges.

Writer Robert Polito recalls a thirty-four-year-old Payton in 1962, when she was a habitué of a Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard establishment, “Coach and Horses,” where the young Polito’s father tended bar, "Barbara Payton oozed alcohol even before she ordered a drink … her brassy hair; her face displayed a perpetual sunburn, a map of veins by her nose … she carried an old man’s potbelly … her gowns and dresses … creased and spotted … She must have weighed two hundred pounds … She does not so much inhabit a character as impersonate a starlet."

In 1963, she was paid $1,000 for her autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed, which was ghost written by Leo Guild. The book included unflattering photographs of Payton and admissions that she had been forced to sleep on bus benches and suffered 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

 

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Barbara Lee 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 Norwegian immigrants Erwin Lee ("Flip") Redfield and Mabel Irene Todahl. 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. Both of Payton's parents had long-standing problems with alcohol. Payton’s first cousin, Richard Kuitu remembers visits to the home of his uncle and aunt. The Redfields would often start drinking mid-morning and continue long after midnight. He recalls the violent temper Lee Redfield could demonstrate when fueled by drink, which would sometimes result in the physical abuse of his wife.

As Payton 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. She 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 did not 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 was not mandatory for success in life, did not 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 on February 10, 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. She also appeared in clothing ads for such magazines as Charm and Junior Bazaar.

During this period in her life, the couple welcomed their son, John Lee, who was born in February 1946.  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.

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 was not 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, both westerns, 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.

Decline

Over time, Payton's 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 childlike 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. She married her first husband, William Hodge, when both were high school students in Texas. The marriage was later annulled.

Her second marriage was to United States Air Force pilot John Payton, Jr. in 1945. The had one child, John Lee Payton (born 1947), before divorcing in September 1950. Payton lost custody of the couple's son in March 1956 after her ex-husband charged that she exposed John Lee to "profane language, immoral conduct, notoriety, unwholesome activities" and failed to provide the boy with a "moral education".

In 1950, Payton met actor Franchot Tone and the two were later engaged. While engaged to Tone, Payton began having an affair with B-movie actor Tom Neal. She soon went back and forth publicly between Neal and Tone. On September 14, 1951, 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. Payton and Tone, who was still recovering from his injuries, were married on September 28, 1951 in Payton's hometown of Cloquet, Minnesota. After being married to Tone for 53 days, Payton walked out on him, and returned to Neal. Tone was granted a divorce in May 1952.

The Payton/Neal relationship essentially ending their Hollywood film careers. 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 also star together in The Great Jesse James Raid, a B-movie western that received a limited released to theaters in 1953. In May 1953, Payton announced that she and Neal were to be married that summer in Paris. The couple broke up the following year.

In November 1955, Payton married George A. "Tony" Provas, a furniture store executive in Nogales, Arizona. They divorced in August 1958.

Later years and death

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

Offered the choice of being admitted to the detox unit, Payton said, “I'd rather drink and die.” Following her brief hospitalization, she was driven by a county social worker to her parents’ home in San Diego. She told her family's neighbor, “I never wanted to be with them, I never wanted to see them again. But here I am, and I got all the booze I want.” Her father, Flip Redfield, and her mother, Mabel, were both heavy drinkers, and engaged with Payton in unabated drinking binges.

Writer Robert Polito recalls a thirty-four-year-old Payton in 1962, when she was a habitué of a Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard establishment, “Coach and Horses,” where the young Polito’s father tended bar, "Barbara Payton oozed alcohol even before she ordered a drink … her brassy hair; her face displayed a perpetual sunburn, a map of veins by her nose … she carried an old man’s potbelly … her gowns and dresses … creased and spotted … She must have weighed two hundred pounds … She does not so much inhabit a character as impersonate a starlet."

In 1963, she was paid $1,000 for her autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed, which was ghost written by Leo Guild. The book included unflattering photographs of Payton and admissions that she had been forced to sleep on bus benches and suffered 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.