WEIRDLAND: Barbara Payton: Lusty Blonde, Not Ashamed

Friday, August 01, 2014

Barbara Payton: Lusty Blonde, Not Ashamed

-"Barbara Payton certainly could be rehabilitated. It would first require an abstinence from drink. After that a concerted effort by people she loves and likes to make her feel she still has a place in the sun. There is always hope for a girl like Barbara Payton who once had the recipe and qualifications for success and happiness. Her talents can always be renewed and nurtured by realization and growth." -Margaret Steger (Psychologist Author)

Barbara Payton hardly could have picked a worse decade in which to reveal herself as a sexual "alley cat in heat" (as Tom Neal supposedly described her). Any sexual deviancy was considered dangerous in the 1950s, so much so that a Republican Party chairman once claimed that "Sexual perverts... have infiltrated our Government in recent years," and were "perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists." Much post-war propaganda, fueled by fears of nuclear war and images of happy couples setting up bomb shelters, emphasized the importance of a good family - anchored by a kind, submissive, domestic woman - as the key to keeping society stable in dangerous times. Payton couldn't have cared less. 'It’s a real sin, I think, to throw away one’s good fortune and the blessings in one’s life,' Barbara's biographer John O'Dowd said.

In 1951 her shocking publicity blitz had barely begun. Next stop on her media train was a rush of stories about her visit to Tone's hospital - by fire escape, no less - with what looked like martinis in hand to keep him happy while he healed. They even hitched up, but their union didn't last much longer than the cases of vodka it took to fuel it. This odd coupling of a Mae Westian, crass, lusty woman and a classy, wealthy movie star ground to a disastrous halt after only a couple of months." Their reconciliation and inevitable blowout was worthy of even more press attention, when Payton hurled a telephone at Tone and allegedly tried to kill herself on sleeping pills while he looked on in horror at a New York Hotel. Even the Kinsey Report (which revealed the dirty secrets behind white Americans' sex lives in the late '40s and early '50s) would have labeled Payton's behavior "outside the norm." Warner Brothers agreed. President Jack L. Warner dropped Payton from the studio and left her to wander through the professional abyss of pitiful B-movies like Four-Sided Triangle (1953), Bad Blonde (1953) and The Great Jesse James Raid (1953).

Barbara's personal life wasn't stable enough to sustain even a low-grade career. Her violence-and-alcohol charged relationship with Neal broke up and they went their separate ways, Neal to the eventual murder of his third wife and imprisonment in California in the 1960s. But was her decline really a result of the 1950s? Would she have led the sexual revolution of the '60s instead of being its martyr, if she'd only blossomed some 10 or 20 years later? Most signs point to yes. The public support that kept Hollywood suffocated by anti-Communist paranoia started to weaken as early as 1954, when Army attorney Joseph Welch made his famous retort to Senator Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" A few years later, postwar wife and mother Betty Friedan wrote her groundbreaking The Feminine Mystique, urging women to pursue careers of their own and breathe life into old ideas of female independence that had been discarded after World War II.

Soon America would be trumpeting the likes of Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Janis Joplin, Lolita, legal abortion, the pill, the Equal Rights Amendment and on and on; surely Payton could have thrived in the glimmer of this cultural flashpoint. Would Payton really fare much better as a sexual outlaw today, where pre-packaged stars politely parade their boyfriend du jour up fancy red carpets? Would she fit in while unapologetically pitting one lover against the other, publicly boozing it up, attempting suicide on sleeping pills and rejoicing in her bad publicity? Who knows? But at least she would have a reason to live. -Neal Colgrass (2004)

Barbara Payton: In 1950, a year of unspectacular note in history, except for a Korean skirmish, I was sitting on top of the world and going higher. My peculiar acting talents were worth $10,000 a week and I was in constant demand. Boy, everyone wanted me. I know it sounds unbelievable but it's true that Gregory Peck, Guy Madison, Howard Hughes and other big names were dating me. Almost everything I did made headlines. I was such hot news the papers didn't even have to use my last name. Everyone knew who Barbara was. It was like "Ava," "Lana" or "Frankie." I was in love -crazy in love- with one man, Tom Neal. And I was engaged to (and later married) the actor with the most class in Hollywood-Franchot Tone. There was my picture on the front pages of every paper in the country. I was one of the six "Baby Stars" most likely to succeed. There was Piper Laurie, Mona Freeman, Debbie Reynolds, Mala Powers, Barbara Bates and yours truly. That was in 1949. The other five are still fulfilling their promises. Me, I goofed. It was an exciting year.

I was the only blonde among the six. At seventeen and still wearing bloomers, I dragged in an Air Force Captain (John Payton) who wanted to marry me. Nowright now! I must have really been something. I think my folks were too scared by his insistence to say no. I also think they felt it would take an Air Force Captain to keep me under control. Even he couldn't do it. He said, "Honey, where do you want to go on our honeymoon?" When I said, "Hollywood" it was the first step to the end of our marriage. It made no sense. Why should I be married to just one man, have a dull life and raise a family when I could have all that glamour? I had an awful lot of money one time. I made it in pictures and I got a big settlement from Tone. One day I told Tom he was a bastard and I gave him the merry air. I still have a sad fondness for Tom. [...] And you know if I had it to do all over again, I'd do the same. It's all in heaven in a little black book with neat lines. -"I Am Not Ashamed" (1963) by Barbara Payton

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