# Barbara Payton
**Barbara Payton** (born Barbara Lee Redfield; November 26, 1927 – May 8, 1967) was an American film actress whose screen career ran from 1949 to 1955 and whose offscreen life became one of Hollywood's best-known cautionary tales. She appeared in about a dozen features, most prominently the [James Cagney](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-cagney) film noir *Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye* (1950), but she is remembered chiefly for the tabloid scandals, drinking, and sex work that ended her career and preceded her death at 39.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668510/) • [2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | Barbara Lee Redfield, November 26, 1927, Cloquet, Minnesota[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668510/) |
| Died | May 8, 1967, at her parents' home in San Diego, age 39, of heart and liver failure[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) • [3](https://www.altfg.com/barbara-payton/) |
| Studio start | Starlet contract with Universal in late 1948; dropped the following summer after word spread of an affair with the married Bob Hope[4](https://www.crimemagazine.com/left-die-barbara-payton-tragedy) |
| Best-known film | *Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye* (1950), opposite James Cagney, as gangster moll Holiday Carleton[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) |
| Feature count | 13 titles in the AFI Catalog filmography, 1949–1955, ending with *Murder Is My Beat*[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) |
| Signature scandal | The September 14, 1951 brawl in which Tom Neal hospitalized Franchot Tone[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) |
| Autobiography | *I Am Not Ashamed* (1963), dictated to ghostwriter Leo Guild[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) |
## Early life and arrival in Hollywood
Payton was born in Cloquet, Minnesota, and raised there and in [Odessa, Texas](https://www.edgepedia.org/odessa-texas), by parents she later described as hardworking but alcoholic.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668510/) • [2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) In 1945, at 17, she eloped with Air Force captain John Payton; the marriage produced a son, John Lee, and fell apart shortly after his birth.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) She and her husband separated in July 1948, by which time she was working as a professional model.[6](https://placenote.info/en/Barbara-Payton)
She moved to Los Angeles and worked the nightclub scene centered on the [Sunset Strip](https://www.edgepedia.org/sunset-strip), where the Universal-International production chief William Goetz encountered her in a variety revue at Slapsy Maxie's.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) • [7](https://hammerfilms.com/blogs/news/barbara-payton-hollywood-hammer-and-playing-the-cards) Universal put her under contract in late 1948 and cast her in bit parts; the studio dropped her the following summer after word got around that she was having an affair with the married [Bob Hope](https://www.edgepedia.org/bob-hope).[4](https://www.crimemagazine.com/left-die-barbara-payton-tragedy) In her autobiography she wrote that the Hollywood Press Association had named her "the most beautiful girl in pictures."[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood)
## Film career, 1949–1955
Her screen debut came in the Richard Fleischer B thriller *Trapped* (1949), with [Lloyd Bridges](https://www.edgepedia.org/lloyd-bridges), followed by small parts in *Once More, My Darling* (1949) and *Dallas* (1950).[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) • [4](https://www.crimemagazine.com/left-die-barbara-payton-tragedy) The turning point was *Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye* (1950), in which she played Holiday Carleton opposite James Cagney; she received terrific notices for her work in the gritty film noir.[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) • [8](https://www.ebar.com/story/45689) She followed it with *Only the Valiant* (1951) opposite [Gregory Peck](https://www.edgepedia.org/gregory-peck), *Drums in the Deep South* (1951), and *Bride of the Gorilla* (1951) with [Raymond Burr](https://www.edgepedia.org/raymond-burr).[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton)
**Decline.** Her career slide is usually dated from *Bride of the Gorilla*.[6](https://placenote.info/en/Barbara-Payton) Public displays of partying, drinking, and liaisons with men of dubious reputation alienated the studio executives whose goodwill her career depended on.[6](https://placenote.info/en/Barbara-Payton) Gossip columnists [Hedda Hopper](https://www.edgepedia.org/hedda-hopper) and [Louella Parsons](https://www.edgepedia.org/louella-parsons) lambasted her relentlessly, and by the end of 1953 her reputation was in tatters.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) In 1953 she went to England for two Hammer films, *Four Sided Triangle* and *Bad Blonde* (released in Britain as *The Flanagan Boy*), playing Lena and Lorna Vecchi respectively.[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) • [7](https://hammerfilms.com/blogs/news/barbara-payton-hollywood-hammer-and-playing-the-cards) Her final feature was the film noir *Murder Is My Beat* (1955), in which she played Eden Lane, a nightclub singer convicted of murder.[5](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton) • [9](https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1999/oct/14/she-spoke-if-she-lived-movie/)
## The Tone–Neal brawl
The episode that destroyed her standing in the industry was a love triangle with two actors. [Franchot Tone](https://www.edgepedia.org/franchot-tone), a well-established star, became engaged to Payton in the fall of 1950; she then became involved with B-movie actor Tom Neal and broke off the engagement.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) On September 14, 1951, after a night of heavy drinking, Tone and Payton returned to the home they had shared and found Neal there; Tone threw a punch at Neal, who responded with about ten fast punches that sent Tone to the hospital.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) Tone's face was nearly destroyed: according to her biographer John O'Dowd, he suffered a concussion, a shattered cheekbone, a fractured jaw, and a broken nose.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood)
The fight was a tabloid sensation. Payton, who had gotten a black eye in it, appeared at the hospital daily in skintight dresses, gave flippant interviews, and sneaked martinis to Tone in a thermos; Neal gave numerous ill-advised interviews of his own.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) After Tone's release Payton married him, then left him to reunite with Neal; by the end of 1953 she was done with both men.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) Encyclopedia.com records that the two actors' serious bar brawl while competing for her affections brought her negative publicity that outlasted her films.[10](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/payton-barbara-1927-1967)
## Later years
After her last film, Payton drifted through the West and Mexico, at one point the mistress of a gangster in the Nevada gambling town of Searchlight, and by the early 1960s had gone from high-end sex work in Chicago to heroin addiction on [Sunset Boulevard](https://www.edgepedia.org/sunset-boulevard), less than a mile from the clubs she had once frequented.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) She was spotted at Tom Neal's 1965 trial for the murder of his wife, at which he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and haunting crowds at film premieres.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood)
In 1963 she dictated her autobiography, *I Am Not Ashamed*, to the ghostwriter Leo Guild. The book, which recounted her descent into sex work and addiction, died at the bookstands on release but later became a cult classic for its lurid picture of 1950s Hollywood.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) • [11](https://classicblondes.com/2022/04/02/revisiting-kiss-tomorrow-goodbye-the-barbara-payton-story-by-john-odowd/) O'Dowd has said Payton did not write the book herself but likely shared anecdotes with Guild, who put his own spin on them.[3](https://www.altfg.com/barbara-payton/)
In February 1967 she was found passed out near a dumpster in a Sunset Boulevard parking lot, her liver failing, and was sent home to her parents in San Diego.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) She died there on May 8, 1967, at 39, officially of heart and liver failure after years of alcohol and drug abuse.[2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) • [3](https://www.altfg.com/barbara-payton/)
## Reputation and reappraisal
Contemporary accounts treated Payton mainly as a scandal figure, but later writing has been more measured. O'Dowd's biography, *Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story* (BearManor Media, 2007), the only full-length biography of her, describes a loving, gregarious, and generous woman who was also a voracious reader, an expert furniture maker, interior designer, and poet, undone by her own demons together with midcentury America's misogyny and Hollywood's patriarchal abuses.[3](https://www.altfg.com/barbara-payton/) • [2](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood) A writer for the *Bay Area Reporter* judged that she "showed great promise at the dawn of her career," and the Hammer Films company history has argued that her delicate performance as Lena in *Four Sided Triangle* reads as modern and empowering for the character.[8](https://www.ebar.com/story/45689) • [7](https://hammerfilms.com/blogs/news/barbara-payton-hollywood-hammer-and-playing-the-cards) The cultural historian Mary Phelps, writing in Oxford Scholarship Online's *Hard-Boiled Hollywood*, places Payton alongside [Marilyn Monroe](https://www.edgepedia.org/marilyn-monroe) as one of the casualties of the gap between the dreamed-of life of postwar arrivals in Los Angeles and the reality they lived.[12](https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/15964/chapter-abstract/170900004)
## References
1. [Barbara Payton, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668510/)
2. [Hadley Hall Meares, "Blazing Blonde Bombshell: Barbara Payton's Boulevard of Broken Dreams," Vanity Fair, January 6, 2021](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/barbara-payton-autobiography-old-hollywood)
3. ["Barbara Payton: Troubled Actress Remembered by Biographer John O'Dowd," Alt Film Guide](https://www.altfg.com/barbara-payton/)
4. ["Left to Die: The Barbara Payton Tragedy," Crime Magazine](https://www.crimemagazine.com/left-die-barbara-payton-tragedy)
5. [Barbara Payton filmography, AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Person/17814-Barbara-Payton)
6. [Barbara Payton, PlaceNote](https://placenote.info/en/Barbara-Payton)
7. ["Barbara Payton: Hollywood, Hammer and Playing the Cards," Hammer Films](https://hammerfilms.com/blogs/news/barbara-payton-hollywood-hammer-and-playing-the-cards)
8. ["Portrait of a tragic movie star's life," Bay Area Reporter](https://www.ebar.com/story/45689)
9. ["Barbara Payton, star of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950), died in Mission Hills bathroom," San Diego Reader](https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1999/oct/14/she-spoke-if-she-lived-movie/)
10. ["Payton, Barbara (1927–1967)," Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/payton-barbara-1927-1967)
11. ["Revisiting Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story by John O'Dowd," Classic Blondes, April 2, 2022](https://classicblondes.com/2022/04/02/revisiting-kiss-tomorrow-goodbye-the-barbara-payton-story-by-john-odowd/)
12. ["Hollywood's Last Lonely Places: The Sad, Short Stories of Barbara Payton and Marilyn Monroe," Hard-Boiled Hollywood, Oxford Scholarship Online](https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/15964/chapter-abstract/170900004)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Film people and crafts › Film actors and performers › Actors and actresses by country or nationality › American actors and actresses › Surnames P to Z*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license