Gossipy Kate’s
Unscripted Endings
remembers
a falling star….

The tabloid tales about Hollywood’s new crop of young stars who party all night and change partners as often as they change shoes brings back memories of another star in another time…,

Her name was Barbara….
   
Barbara Payton 
1927 – 1967

She was born beautiful with the platinum blonde hair and deep blue eyes of her Nordic ancestors. Her hair darkened as she grew older making those blue eyes even more striking. She was also born with a big and loving heart and from the beginning what she wanted most from her world was love in return. Later she added another dream to her wish list…to be a movie star. But Hollywood could only love her conditionally and Barbara couldn’t or wouldn’t meet those conditions.

Barbara Lee Redfield was born in Cloquet, Minnesota on November 16th, 1927 to Erwin Lee (Flip) and Mildred Todahl Redfield who operated a small ice cream parlor/restaurant and lived in a 2-bedroom apartment upstairs. Barbara’s brother Frank came along 2 years later, making things a little crowded. In 1938 Barbara’s favorite aunt, Fay Redfield, persuaded Flip to move his family to Odessa, Texas and lent him the money to build a 20-cabin motel he called Antler Court. With the soldiers from Midland (a dry town) coming into Odessa every weekend to party, the motel soon became a booming success. However, Flip and Mabel, already hard drinkers, now had a bigger problem… one that both Barbara and Frank would inherit.

Cloquet, Minnesota

Several things about Barbara’s teen years stand out…her closeness with her mother and her inability to connect with her father. Many believe that something happened between Barbara and her father that hurt her so badly that it scarred her for the rest of her life. Her mother adored her and Barbara reciprocated by becoming expert in all the domestic arts to please her. Mabel loved putting her on display and often dressed her provocatively so that people would comment on her beauty. According to her biographer John O’Dowd, Barbara was only 15 when she lost her virginity to “a schoolmate’s 45 year old father ….in a dry bathtub in his home while…his surprise birthday party (was) celebrated downstairs.” She eloped at 16 with high school classmate William Hodge but her parents had it annulled. Barbara quit high school in her junior year.

Barbara in "Pecos Pistol"

Air Force pilot Jack Payton met Barbara in an Odessa nightclub during the spring of 1944. They dated while he was stationed in Louisiana and got married on February 10, 1945. After his discharge they moved to Los Angeles where Jack enrolled in college and Barbara began looking for modeling jobs on the way to her dream of being a movie star. But within a few months Barbara found out she was pregnant. John Lee Payton was born on February 14, 1947 and against Jack’s wishes, Barbara went back to looking for film work. She even hired an agent. Eventually things at home got tense and Barbara decided her marriage was expendable.  On July 14, 1948 she took the baby and left for Hollywood. It would be her brother Frank’s wife Jan and Jan’s parents who would care for Johnny while Barbara chased her dream.

In January, 1949 Universal Studio production chief William Goetz signed Barbara to a $100 a week contract adding her to their ample supply of stock players that included Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Shelley Winters, Howard Duff and Jeff Chandler. Her first movie roles came in two Western musical shorts Silver Butte and Pecos Pistols both released in late 1949. Nothing is left of the movies today except a few publicity stills.

Bob Hope

In March, 1949 Barbara went to Dallas, Texas on a studio publicity tour. Bob Hope was there for a golf tournament. Apparently it was fireworks at first sight. Not only did they spend the night together but Bob also set her up in a deluxe Hollywood apartment. The affair lasted through most of the summer. However, the studio caught wind of it and immediately canceled Barbara’s contract. Bob Hope was not only a beloved actor, he was also very much married. They just invoked the morality clause in her contract.

Barbara landed on her feet, with a new offer from Eagle-Lion Studio to do Trapped with Lloyd Bridges. As a result of the glowing notices about her performance, Babs found offers rolling in even from MGM for The Asphalt Jungle role that eventually went to Marilyn Monroe. Finally Warner bros. cast her as Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye starring James Cagney. Produced by William Cagney Productions (jointly owned by the brothers), it was possibly Barbara’s best performance and the picture grossed enough to get the Cagney boys out of a huge debt owed for some previous disasters.

But by 1950 Barbara’s problems were getting out of hand. The press began to notice that her nightlife was affecting her day job. Worried by her weight (and probably with studio encouragement) she was popping diet pills by day and drinking too many cocktails by night. In her next films at WB, her close-ups were sadly lacking either because her eyes were telling tales, the publicity about her partying was incurring the wrath of studio head Jack Warner or both. It was also apparent that the notches on her bedpost scored better than the films on her resume and now included names like George Raft, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Errol Flynn and Steve Cochran. Barbara never met a leading man she didn’t love.

In mid-1950 Babs playfully entered a Charleston contest on the Sunset Strip and won it. One of the judges was Franchot Tone, the accomplished stage and screen star. He was formerly married to actresses Joan Crawford and Jean Wallace but I am sure he wasn’t ready for Barbara Payton.
                           

Franchot Tone was considered to be one of the most gentle, unselfish and generous actors in Tinseltown. He fell so hard for Barbara that all of Hollywood heard the thud. In October 1950 they announced their engagement at New York City’s Stork Club. Less than 3 weeks later Barbara was called to testify before a Federal Grand Jury as a defense witness in the perjury trial of drug addict Stanley Adams accused of lying about his involvement in the death of drug dealer Abe Davidson. Barbara testified that Adams was with her the night of the murder. The publicity damaged her standing at the studio and all around town. But it was about to get worse.

Tone set Barbara up in a second floor apartment on Hollywood Boulevard fully equipped with….a private detective. He must have known eventually Babs would fall back into her old ways. Sure enough, she brought Guy Madison home after work on Drums in the Deep South one night and Tone caught them in bed. Franchot scared Madison so badly he felt safe enough to leave for New York on business. Confidential magazine put it on the front page and Jack Warner suspended her.
 

Then Barbara met unemployed B-actor Tom Neal at a Hollywood pool party. She claimed it was “love at first sight”. They even began telling people they were engaged even though she was still engaged to Tone. However, when Franchot returned from New York, Barbara decided he was still her man. When Babs and Franchot returned to her apartment after a night of partying, Neal was there having a party of his own. The brutal and bloody fistfight between the two men put Franchot in the hospital near death with a cerebral concussion, a shattered left cheekbone and a fractured right upper jaw. He remained unconscious and near death for 18 hours. The gossip mavens blamed  Barbara and Hedda Hopper was especially vicious in her comments. 

Payton/Tone nuptials

On September 28, 1951 Franchot Tone and Barbara Payton were married at her childhood home in Cloquet, Minnesota. The marriage lasted exactly 53 days. Barbara went back to Tom Neal. The Tones reconciled in 1952. That lasted two months until Barbara attempted suicide. It was then that Franchot threw in the towel and , you guessed it…Barbara went back to Tom. It lasted four years. Neal walked out on her just before Thanksgiving, 1953. She later confided to a friend that while she liked and respected Franchot, she loved Tom Neal desperately.

Barbara made her last movie in June, 1954…a B-movie for Allied Artists titled Murder is My Beat with Paul Langton. Her excessive drinking and depression returned with the endless days. She was hospitalized after collapsing in a pool of blood after a party, the result of an ectopic pregnancy. There was a short fling with Marlon Brando, an arrest for bad checks and an on again/off again fourth marriage to Tony Provas in 1955. In March 1956 she lost custody of her son Johnny.  Confidential magazine was publishing exposes about her affairs with Bob Hope and Guy Madison with her consent and public opinion was getting even more damaging.  In 1957 Babs joined up with her old girlfriend Lila Leeds in a Chicago call-girl operation and just missed being picked with her in a sting operation Lila went to prison. Barbara’s descent into her private hell was rapidly gaining momentum.

Barbara Payton in England

By the early 1960s Barbara was working in a Palm Springs cocktail lounge as a $00 a week hooker. Her face was bloated and her hands dirty and her nails, once so beautifully manicured were cracked and broken. In July, 1962 she was picked up after a beating and attempted rape by a teenage gang. The tabloids ate it up. Because of the new publicity Babs got an offer from Holloway House, a paperback publisher to do her life story. “I Am Not Ashamed” was ghost-written by Leo Guild and only served to pave the road for Barbara’s ultimate destruction.

After another failed marriage to Jess Rawley, Barbara returned to her parents’ home in San Diego in April, 1967. On April 25th she took her father’s prize Cadillac without his knowledge to go for more wine. She crashed it into a parked car a few blocks away, hitting the steering wheel and bruising the left side of her face severely. She never saw the doctor but it scared her enough to stop drinking cold turkey. However, it was already too late. On May 8, 1967 at 1:50 p.m. Barbara collapsed  on the bathroom floor in her parents’ home and died in her mother’s arms.

Barbara Lee Redfield Hodge Payton Tone Neal Provas Rawley was cremated and her ashes put into a crypt at San Diego’s Cypree View Cemetery.

What she wanted most from her world was love. But she was looking in all the wrong places. Only one person loved her unconditionally….her son Johnny Lee. She had forgotten how to love herself.