Barbara Payton

Early life

Payton was born Barbara Lee Redfield in Cloquet, Minnesota. She was the daughter of Erwin Lee ("Flip") Redfield and Mabel Irene Todahl, the daughter of 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-talking but quick-tempered. 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 managing family difficulties. 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 at mid-morning and continue long after midnight. He recalls the violent temper Lee Redfield had 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 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 parents' insistence that the marriage be annulled. A few months later, she quit high school in the eleventh grade. Her parents, who did not believe that formal education was needed for success in life, did not object to her leaving high school without a diploma.

In 1944, she met her second husband, decorated combat pilot 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 started a modeling career by hiring a photographer to take photos of her sporting fashionable outfits. This portfolio attracted the attention of a clothing designer, Saba of California, who signed her to a contract modeling junior fashions. In September 1947, the Rita La Roy Agency in Hollywood took her on and brought her more work in print advertising, notably in catalogs for Studebaker cars and in clothing ads for such magazines as Charm and Junior Bazaar.

The couple had a son, John Lee, who was born in February 1947. Payton managed to combine the responsibilities of wife, new mother, and professional model, yet marriage was strained; 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 caught 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.

After her divorce from Payton in 1950, she 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".

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 (1950) and Gregory Peck in Only the Valiant (1951), 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 low-budget horror film Bride of the Gorilla, co-starring Raymond Burr.

Personal life

In addition to her first two marriages (see above) and affairs with Howard Hughes, Bob Hope, Woody Strode, Guy Madison, George Raft, John Ireland, Steve Cochran, and Texas oilman Bob Neal, Payton was married two more times.

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, Tone discovered that she had continued her relations with Neal, and Tone was subsequently granted a divorce in May 1952.

The Payton/Neal relationship essentially ended 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 cancelled their engagement and broke up the following year.

In November 1957, Payton married George A. "Tony" Provas, a 23-year-old 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 addiction 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 34-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 memoir was re-issued in 2016 by Spurl Editions. The book originally included unflattering photographs of Payton and admissions that she had been forced to sleep on bus benches and suffered regular beatings as a prostitute. That year, she won a bit part in the western comedy film 4 for Texas, which was her last acting role.

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 at the age of 39. Payton was cremated and is interred at Cypress View Mausoleum and Crematory in San Diego, California.