Noir Pains: John Payne and the hardest-working job in existence

"The Crooked Way" directed by Robert Florey in 1949, starring John Payne, Ellen Drew and Sonny Tufts (Full Movie)

Between 1952 and 1957, Phil Karlson made several films noirs that characterized the changing manner of noir expression in the fifties: Scandal Sheet -based on Sam Fuller’s novel The Dark Page- (1952), Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Hell’s Island (1955), Tight Spot (1955), The Phenix City Story (1955), The Brothers Rico (1957). Karlson used the evocative lighting of cinematographers Burnett Guffey (Scandal Sheet, Tight Spot, The Brothers Rico), George Diskant (Kansas City Confidential), and Franz Planer (99 River Street) to display a classical chiaroscuro richness in many sequences while using on-location sets and story themes prevalent in many crime dramas of the decade.

His leading noir characters, always men and best portrayed by John Payne, who starred in three Karlson noirs— Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street, and Hell’s Island—are invariably trapped by a flawed past in a web of present-day circumstances that generate fear of being caught for a crime they did not do. Indeed, the Karlson-Payne films, particularly Kansas City Confidential and 99 River Street, are among the decade’s most compelling cinematic correlatives to the terror evoked in Cornell Woolrich’s fiction; yet this interior turmoil is contained in actions governed by a fifties milieu of often brutal criminal activity now seen as intrinsic to America’s social foundation.

The past that haunts the present, that serves as a component in foreboding a terrible future, is the central nightmare in Karlson’s world. In both films, the Payne characters come into the stories with lives broken in the past that leave them bitter but stronger, and quite without warning they find themselves in a harsh battle with fate. Joe Rolfe’s frame-up in Kansas City Confidential enrages him as he seeks to exonerate his appearance of guilt in a bank robbery. He did time on a gambling rap, and the suspicion because of this past lands him in jail, where the striking pattern of vertical lines reflected in a low-lit jail cell reinforces the terror of an arbitrary world where you can be picked up for nothing you have done wrong.

Released, Rolfe assumes the guise of one of the robbers —unknown, as they are, to each other— and tracks down his cohorts one by one, determined to find the robbery’s mastermind. As the Mexican authorities shoot one of them, Rolfe, but feet away, watches as Pete Harris (beautifully played by an early Jack Elam) crumples slowly to his death; Rolfe is dreading the man’s last-breath opportunity to betray Rolfe’s true identity. When he is beaten by the other two, Kane and Romano, at their rendezvous on a Caribbean island, low-angle shots in low-key lighting maintain the tension of how much physical punishment Rolfe can take without relenting. These moments are tests in Karlson’s world, as much of violence as of the psychological resilience his characters need to withstand persecution. And invariably they are shown in close shots. Unlike the close-up, which is inspective, the close shot for filmmakers like Karlson is isolating: men take their punches, and confront their fear in the image of their battered, sweaty faces —alone.

99 River Street is Karlson’s best film noir and one that defines well the defeated noir protagonist in the postwar era. Ernie Driscoll is a social representative of a world that encourages success and its rewards. As a frustrated man of lost possibilities, he knows the exhilaration of having “a chance at the top,” as he tells Linda. “It’s the most important thing in the world.” A victim of an eye injury in the boxing ring, he has been reduced to a person without accomplishment in a world that “knows you only if it can exploit you.” He drives a taxi now, and his unfaithful wife cannot stand it. Driscoll, like Rolfe, is no stranger to violence, but unlike him, and poignantly so, he has not learned callousness from his setbacks.

Ernie and his actress-friend Linda James, with whom he shares cups of drugstore coffee and sympathy, are characters attenuated by bad breaks in life in the manner that only creative people recognize. Their sensitivity, encouraged by performance —he in the fight ring and she on stage— exempts them from a total submission to noir hell. They function, as dreamers do, in a world all too often out of touch with their needs.

It is interesting that Linda deceives Ernie into believing she killed a man in rage and self-defense for an acting audition, but she delivers her greatest “performance” (certainly the best screen time of Evelyn Keyes’s career) when she attempts to seduce Pauline Driscoll’s killer with what must surely be one of the most erotically charged scenes in American cinema up to then, replete with insinuations of welcome rough sex. Her ruse, filmed in a medium-close panning shot of seemingly endless length, displays a rare moment of the metamorphic noir woman, a creature here who performs against her type to reveal a nonetheless compelling, dark side of her personality. “In a work of art intensity and speed can be creative forces, generating beauty and significance; outside of art, they can be, and often are, destructive,” wrote Jack Shadoian of the film. “99 River Street uses the American dynamism to condemn it; this is where it and other films of its period differ from similar films of the thirties and forties. Their insistence, often to the point of exaggeration, is, whether consciously or not, a moral one... Yet films like 99 River Street have no obvious moral ax to grind — one has to feel their bitterness. -"Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir" (2002) by Andrew Dickos

John Payne in "The Crooked Way" (1949) directed by Robert Florey

Nathaniel Rich believes that dread is the subject of noir. Guilt better explains the boomerang effect of many of the best noirs in which the investigator must seek his own guilty self, as in "Scandal Sheet" and "The Crooked Way"; As Jack Shadoian puts it, “society is the gangster.” Film noir then can be defined by a subject, a locale and a character. Its subject is crime, almost always a murder but sometimes a theft. Its locale is the contemporary world, usually a city at night. Its character is a fallible or tarnished man or woman. He might be a supporting character, an insurance investigator such as Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity or Edmond O’Brien in The Killers. He might be a reporter, such as John Derek in Scandal Sheet or a returning veteran, keen on discovering what happened to a friend or relative, as in "Cornered" (1945), "Act of Violence", and "Dead Reckoning", both of 1947. Not a few noir heroes are amnesiacs carrying out an investigation leading to themselves, such as John Hodiak in "Somewhere in the Night" (1946), and John Payne in "The Crooked Way" (1949) -This is pure noir, featuring an amnesiac vet with a criminal past that seeks him out. John Alton’s superb inematography amplifies the noir plot.

99 River Street (1953): John Payne, an ex-boxer, has an anger management problem. When his unfaithful wife is murdered, he becomes the chief suspect. Nobody is on the level, even Keyes, an actress, who fakes a murder to get a part in a play. Jack Lambert, an icon of a hood, makes the proceedings even more sinister. That male anxieties can only be allayed by women’s return to domesticity gets full support in this film. Keyes gives up her profession as an actress to be the happy wife of her gas station operator husband. -"What is Film Noir?" by William Park (2011)

John Payne and director Phil Karlson in the celebration of Mary Murphy´s birthday on the set of Hell´s Island (1955)

Any list of noir’s toughest directors would have to include such pugilistic auteurs as Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich, Richard Fleischer, and Sam Fuller. That said, the toughest noir director of them all might well have been Phil Karlson. He worked his way up from prop man to assistant director, and eventually to director at “Poverty Row” studios that churned out low-budget fare like timber mills spitting out piles of pulp. Karlson’s best film, 99 River Street. John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, an ex-boxer turned taxi driver who endures the longest night of his life after his wife dumps him for a jewelry thief. The film is a pitch-perfect example of the Dark Night of the Soul, the noir subgenre wherein a character wrestles with his or her demons over the course of a single treacherous night.

Led by an excellent John Payne, the cast features some of classic noir’s best players: Evelyn Keyes, Peggie Castle, Jack Lambert, and Brad Dexter. In many ways, this film is the ultimate Karlson picture. At its core is the frustration of a man of violence boxed in by situations which keep moving out of his control. Naturally, since this is a Karlson picture, when redemption comes, it comes with a hard right hook. Source: www.criminalelement.com

Ernie Driscoll (John Payne) is a washed-up boxer who was on the verge of becoming champ until he injured his eye in the ring. He's married to the gorgeous Pauline (Peggie Castle), who was hoping for the good life, and now spends her time being angry and disappointed. Unlike most noir heroes, who usually make a bad decision at some point, Ernie is mostly innocent; he never consciously makes a choice to enter the underworld. On the contrary, his dream is to save up enough money to open a gas station! His mistake came years earlier when he confused the adoration of his female fans -- like Pauline -- for the real thing. ("When I was a kid I thought I'd grow up and meet a girl who'd stick in my corner, no matter what. Then I grew up," he says.) Pauline betrays him, his career betrays him, and his own brute strength betrays him. When he loses his temper, he has the power to kill, and thus his assault and battery charge could result in some real, hard time.

Andrew Sarris wrote that one of Karlson's themes was the outbreak of violence in a world controlled by criminals and the corrupt. The film opens on an absolutely astonishing boxing sequence, close-up, ringside and off-kilter, that Martin Scorsese surely studied before he made Raging Bull. Karlson continues this low-angle violence throughout, and even echoes certain key shots over the course of the film. Many small moments further establish his agenda, such as when Rawlins simultaneously takes a belt of liquor and slugs a man in the jaw. In another scene, Linda plays out a lengthy post-murder scene in panicked close-up, with no cuts or cutaways. Source: www.combustiblecelluloid.com

John Payne and Alice Faye in a Press photo for "Good News" (1974)

"Good News" was not designed to win critical acclaim or Tony awards or to dazzle the leading lights of the serious stage. M-G-M filmed the story in the 1940's with Peter Lawford as the quarterback and June Allyson as the student librarian who tutors him. Abe Burrows, who directed the piece, rewrote the book by Laurence Schwab and Buddy de Silva, casting the football coach and the astronomy professor as the romantic leads. Harry Rigby wanted Alice to play the astronomy professor. One factor that led Alice to accept the offer was her costar, whom she handpicked. "I told Harry Rigby, the producer, I'd only do the show if I could have someone I knew-like John Payne-as my co-star," Alice told columnist Douglas Dean. "I hadn't seen him in seventeen years, but I knew we'd work well together. Harry contacted him and when he said yes-well, I was hooked."

The public would be as eager to see John Payne again as they were to see Alice Faye, and the combination would be dynamite. Payne's movie career had effectively ended in 1961, when he stepped out in front of a car in New York traffic. He sustained injuries to his face, which required 150 stitches, and his leg, which was broken in four places. Laid up for months, he gradually healed, but had to teach himself to walk again. Fortunately, his skill as a businessman and some astute real estate investments assured him of a livelihood after the loss of his acting career. "John was a very well-read person and a fine businessman," Alice once stated, the combination once leading him to buy the film rights to a little-known short story called "Miracle on 34th Street." He was, she said, "the least actorish of all the men I worked with." When the company finally did open at the St. James Theatre in New York on December 23, 1974, they did it without John Payne, whose original contract had expired by that time. "His leg hurt a great deal," Alice remembered, "making it very difficult for him to sing and dance and finally just move around on the stage. It wasn't as much fun anymore." -"Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen" (Hollywood Legends) by Jane Lenz Elder (2011)

In an interview backstage at the Geary Theater in San Francisco, where Payne was co-starring with Alice Faye in the Broadway-bound musical “Good News” he said, “No one thought I would live. I had a fractured skull. My left leg was broken in four places. My chin was literally cut off. There was a question of whether or not the leg would have to be amputated.” Only the proximity of Roosevelt Hotel to the accident saved his life. But the story was not widely reported at the time. To the public, John Payne, mysteriously and suddenly, disappeared. Payne did return to Hollywood but he grew disillusioned with acting, which he called “the hardest-working job in existence.”

John Payne, Gloria DeHaven & Anne Shirley ("Our Love Can Still Be Saved") video

John Payne, Gloria DeHaven & Anne Shirley (video)

John Payne and Gloria DeHaven in 1944

Songs "Johnny (baby please come home)" by Arlene Love, "Our Love Can Still Be Saved" by Jeff Barry, "Bye, Bye Johnny" by Chuck Berry, "Ooh Wee Baby" by Jeff Barry, and "Gloria" by The Cadillacs.

Jake Gyllenhaal - 'If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet' Portrait

Jake Gyllenhaal - 'If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet' Portraits

Jake Gyllenhaal arriving at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, August 27, 2012

Parallels between Dick Powell & John Payne

Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott in "Pitfall" (1948) directed by André De Toth

John Payne and Lizabeth Scott in "Silver Lode" (1954) directed by Allan Dwan

John Payne never especially wanted to be a movie star; he wanted to be a writer. Never the typical actor type, he was more of a thinker and a doer, but he took special pride in one of his movies. Believing in the unbelievable was a key spiritual value to him, and that is why "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947) was so important to him.

John Payne and Maureen O'Hara in "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947) directed by George Seaton

John liked the film because it was about belief, and the importance of belief was something he took care to impress upon his children. He had noticed the original story, by Valentine Davies, in a magazine, and pressed 20th Century-Fox to make a movie of it. It was right after World War II and studio chiefs were more inclined to make lavish musicals than a simple little story about a department store Santa taken to court on lunacy charges.

Years later, after Miracle on 34th Street had become a holiday favorite, his daughter Clancy Payne, learned that Fox agreed to make it only after her father put up his own money. According to Clancy, her dad even suggested some of the movie's sweetest touches, such as having Santa and a little orphan girl speak in Dutch, and the closing-scene discovery of Santa's cane by the fireplace.The film made a strong impression on his daughter. After all these years, Clancy still recalls her debates with schoolyard skeptics. Whenever one said there was no Santa Claus, she would declare, "My father was the lawyer who proved there is."

John attended Broad Street School in Salem, Virginia, before being sent off to Mercersburg Academy, a prep school in Pennsylvania. The summer he was fifteen he served as a ship's steward on a voyage to Cuba. There, he signed on to a hemp boat. "My job was to keep watering the hemp so that it didn't catch fire." No stranger to the sea, he explained, "Fishing has always been one of my favorite sports, especially deep sea fishing." Payne's father, a businessman, died when John was 17. With three boys to raise and the nation in the grips of the Great Depression, Ida Hope Payne struggled to hold onto their 1825 Colonial-style mansion at Fort Lewis, west of Salem, Virginia. John, nearly 6-foot-four with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, looked like a movie star even as a teenager. At the time of his father's death, John was a student at Roanoke College, but he was forced to suspend his studies in order to help support his struggling family.

In an effort to make ends meet, the young man took on a variety of jobs, including working as a male nurse to a neighboring widower's two children. He also sang at local radio stations. After a while, he was able to enroll at the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University. "While working for my keep while a student in the extension division of Columbia University, I had a program [airing] over 18 stations. 'The South Singer,' I was known as 'in them there days,' as Fibber McGee would say, and I teamed up with an organist and a violinist for three broadcasts a week. My end of the take was eight dollars a week. The year was 1935, however, and a man could buy a lot of nourishment for eight dollars!"

He also earned money as a boxer and later, a wrestler, billed as Alexei Petroff, the Savage of the Steppes. Also, he was sometimes known as "Tiger" Jack Payne. "When my money ran out, I ran the elevator, operated a switchboard and took care of a pool room," Payne recalled in an interview with famed columnist Hedda Hopper. "I'd been studying voice so I got a job on radio. Then the Schuberts offered me a part in a road company. I told the Schuberts I could do anything. They took me at my word, for $40 a week. I ended that tour with $3.20 to my name. But show business was in my blood by then."

From July 1937 to February 1938 John Payne and Betty Grable made twenty-six semi-regular appearances on the CBS radio program Song Time on Saturdays. He later recalled, "Back in 1937 while I was under contract to Paramount, I sang on a five-minute radio program with another contract player from Paramount. A girl who's done rather well since —Betty Grable. Betty and I didn't do so well then, though. We couldn't find a sponsor, and finally gave up the program. I sang low tenor —or should I say, high baritone."

At a cocktail party in 1937 he met Anne Shirley, the 18-year-old actress who had recently made a hit as the daughter in Stella Dallas. She told a fan magazine the story of how they met. He had promised to call, but she sat home waiting a week in vain. Finally, she had some tickets to a preview and wondered if it would be all right for her to call him. She did, but when he said he had another engagement, Anne broke down and cried. The next day a dozen gardenias arrived from Payne. The following week a dozen camellias came, then a dozen orchids, and then roses.

He claimed he wanted to play hard to get at first, but once the campaign started, he wasn't fooling. He fell just as hard as Anne had. On August 22, 1937, they were married. After three years, they had a daughter, Julie Anne Shirley Payne, born on July 9, 1940. Anne and John made their only professional appearance together on Lux Radio Theater and were heard supporting W. C. Fields in a version of his film Poppy, when they returned from their honeymoon. Friends thought the couple enjoyed a perfect marriage, but they were wrong. On February 28, 1943, they divorced, and John began to carry a torch.

Although he would date Jane Russell briefly, he was very unhappy. When they were making To the Shores of Tripoli together in 1942, his co-star Maureen O'Hara said, "He came into my dressing room one day and sobbed like I've never heard a man sob. Without any knowledge that anything was wrong, he woke up to find that Anne had left and was getting a divorce. He was totally heartbroken. He kept saying, 'Why didn't she ever tell me she was unhappy?'"

Margaret Lindsay and John Payne in "Garden of the Moon" (1938) directed by Busby Berkeley

Career-wise, a big chance came when Payne was signed with Warner Bros., where he replaced Dick Powell in Busby Berkeley's "Garden of the Moon" (1938). In this snappy musical, he played a struggling bandleader, and Margaret Lindsay played his love interest. After another four pictures Payne again moved on, this time signing with 20th Century-Fox which turned out to be the big breakthrough of his career.

Alice Faye and John Payne in "Tin Pan Alley" (1940) directed by Walter Lang

At Fox people began to really notice him, thanks to substantial roles in classic films like Tin Pan Alley (1940) opposite the studio's beloved star Alice Faye. He was wooing Faye again in the studio's big Technicolor musical Weekend in Havana (1941), and that same year he played the romantic lead in the classic Glenn Miller musical romp Sun Valley Serenade (1941) attracting the attentions of both Lynn Bari and Sonja Henie.

That same year, he starred in one of his best films, the beautiful "Remember the Day" (1941), directed by Henry King and starring Claudette Colbert. King remarked many years later of Colbert's influence on the cast members. "She got child actor Douglas Croft to glow with confidence and poise, and I saw her do the same thing with her romantic lead, John Payne, who was then a Fox stock player more noted for his good looks than for his acting skills. Payne gave one of his best performances in that picture." Until Miracle on 34th Street came around, Remember the Day was Payne's favorite. "When Claudette Colbert agreed to have me as her leading man in Remember the Day, it was a great boost to my career," Payne noted. This film has become one of those sleeper classics that seem to grow in stature as the years go by.

In the next year he was the romantic lead opposite Fox's big star Betty Grable in "Springtime in the Rockies" (1942). An expensive Technicolor production, this film would practically define the glossy Fox musical of the 1940's loaded with talent —Harry James and His Band, Carmen Miranda and Helen Forrest— and great songs—"I Had the Craziest Dream"—.

The war, however, would put a dent in Payne's career. On October 13, 1942, he entered into military service as a Student Aviator, serving in the 11th Corps Training unit of the Ferry Command. He enlisted for Army Pilot training in Phoenix, Arizona. He reported to Camp Williams, Arizona, on January 11, 1943, and after completing his training, in June, 1944, he was assigned to the Ferry Command at Long Beach.

After his discharge, Payne returned to Fox and was cast in "The Dolly Sisters", with Betty Grable and the new Fox beauty June Haver. He played Betty Grable's love interest in this delightful musical also featuring S. Z. Sakall, Reginald Gardiner and Frank Latimore.

John and Betty previously co-starred in three movies before he joined the military and it was obvious the two were still an appealing and popular screen team.

During the making of The Dolly Sisters, he met Gloria DeHaven, an actress under contract to MGM, and they married a couple of months later. Their daughter, Kathleen Hope (Clancy), was born to them on January 1, 1946. A son, Thomas, was born on February 25, 1948.

Problems arose immediately in the marriage. Unlike John, Gloria was born into a show business family. Her father, Carter DeHaven, and her mother, Flora Parker, were in the theatrical world for years. "My mother was a big star," she told a writer for Modern Screen magazine. "She could have gone lots farther on the stage but she quit to have children. She was left behind with her babies while my father went on to hear the applause and listen to the flattery of the world."

Gloria obviously saw that this might happen in her own marriage, and she wanted to resume her career after her children were born. John felt that picture work was very hard, and married couples see very little of each other when they are both working. "I told John I had show business in my blood," Gloria exclaimed. "He said that was just silly, that there wasn't any such thing. He thinks that all this talk about the background and tradition of the theater is just so much conversation."

Payne resumed his career with a vengeance at Fox after his return from service, doing fewer musicals and more variety. After The Dolly Sisters, he co-starred with Maureen O'Hara in Sentimental Journey, a tearjerker about a dying actress who adopts a little girl to give her husband (Payne) a companion when she is gone. The story was a pet project of Payne's. He had bought the property for himself from a magazine and sold it to his studio, only to discover they were going to cast Cary Grant in the lead. John wanted the role and was determined to convince studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck that he, not Grant, was the actor for the part. "I really had to do some acting that day," he recalled. When he cornered his boss in the men's room, Zanuck threw up his hands, "OK, OK, John, you got the part. Now let me finish what I came in here for."

Next was The Razor's Edge (1946), an important project at the studio. This gigantic film drama cost four million dollars to produce, and took more than three months to shoot. Movieland praised "Somerset Maugham's brilliant gift of language and his insight into human types have not been lost in the screen's version of his classic novel. Apart from the diamond studded cast: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall and a host of other big names, the Maugham characters leap to life as the author, played by Herbert Marshall, tells the story. The portrait isn't always pleasant, but excellent story, perfect casting and fine directing make this film a classic example of a good movie." Payne's was a supporting part, but a good one, allowing him to stretch himself as an actor.

He and Gloria DeHaven separated in December 1946 for the first time. John had made three pictures in a row and was working on Larceny (1948) for Universal-International when they separated for the second time. When he finished the picture, he went east to play in The Voice of the Turtle in Princeton, New Jersey with Joan Caulfield, his leading lady in Larceny. Gloria joined him in New York. And after six weeks of separation, they were back together again.

There was gossip that his co-star Joan Caulfield had something to do with their separation, but Gloria said, "This definitely was not true." Shortly after this came the final separation and divorce in 1950.

Payne was a loving father and said he wouldn't be without his children, not even for two weeks if he could help it, and loved to take them on location with him. About his two small daughters he said, "They're Daddy's girls, come right to the old man when they want something. And the boy? I don't know what I'm going to do about him," he laughed. "Here he is over a year old and he hasn't contributed a cent to the family income." Payne, by the way, was successful in business and had a real estate company in Hollywood.

John Payne and Gail Russell in "El Paso" (1949) directed by Lewis R. Foster

In 1949 Payne signed a contract to co-star in "El Paso", for producers William Pine and William Thomas. After that he starred in six pictures for the action producers and in 1950 signed to star in six more films for Pine & Thomas, then known as the "Dollar Bills" due to their cost-conscious ways. Until he joined the Pine-Thomas family, he had been basically known for starring with Betty Grable, Alice Faye, June Haver and other screen beauties, mostly in musicals, which took advantage of his handsome looks and his singing voice. With his shift to action pictures, John Payne toughened up his screen image and successfully lengthened his career. Typecasting in musicals could have meant that his career would die with the waning of that genre in the '50s.

Donna Drake and John Payne in "Kansas City Confidential" (1952) directed by Phil Karlson

During the '50s he made such films as Tripoli, Passage West, 99 River Street, Silver Lode, Slightly Scarlet and Kansas City Confidential. With Pine-Thomas Productions he shrewdly insisted that the films he appeared in be made in color and that the rights to the films revert to him after a few years. This helped make him wealthy when they rented his films to television.

He also starred in his own primetime NBC-TV series, The Restless Gun (1957-1959). Although he was not generally thought of as a cowboy, he was very convincing as loner Vint Bonner, a reluctant gunfighter roaming the west in the days after the Civil War. Investing a bit of his own personality into the role, his character was described as "a quiet, idealistic individual who preferred not to fight if there was an acceptable alternative. Unfortunately, there often was no alternative."

On September 27, 1953, Payne married Mrs. Alexandra Crowell Curtis at the bride's home in Bel-Air. Dr. Frank Dyer, Santa Monica Congregational minister, officiated. Matron of honor was the bride's aunt, Mrs. Donald Roarty, and the best man was Charles Spangler, a friend of Payne. The new Mrs. Payne was formerly married to actor Alan Curtis. His ever-evolving business ventures were considerably slowed down on March 1, 1961, when Payne was hit by a car as he was crossing Madison Avenue, a block from the hotel where he was staying. He was hurled onto the hood, his head smashing the windshield and his body denting the hood.

He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was on the operating table for hours as surgeons set fractures in his left leg and carefully sewed up numerous scalp and face wounds so as not to mar his handsome appearance. He begged doctors not to tell his wife, who was at their home in Santa Monica, but the hospital informed her and she got on a plane to come to him. In 1964, Sheilah Graham reported in the Hollywood Citizen News: "He never thought it could happen. That he would be all in one piece. And able to act again." He told her, "For two and a half years I was full of nuts and bolts. I have been full of hardware since I collided with that car in New York City. Everything had to be pinned together. The doctor has taken out all the nuts and bolts and pins and I'm not clanking anymore. If you only knew how good it felt." He bravely pushed ahead, despite the pain.

"That wasn't as much fun," Alice Faye said in the 1980s, "especially for John who sometime before had been badly injured when hit by a car in New York. His leg hurt a great deal, making it very difficult for him to sing and dance and just move around onstage. John was a very well-read person and a fine businessman, the least actorish of all the men I worked with."

John Payne's real passions were poetry, fiction, Greek philosophy, and Jungian psychology. He was, indeed, well read and wrote a number of short stories which were published in magazines. His daughter said he had a genius-level I.Q. He had one of the best physiques in Hollywood and worked out daily. He lived at the beach and often went swimming, summer and winter. John Payne died on December 6, 1989, at his home in Malibu, of heart failure. With him when he died were his wife, Sandy, and his three children. "Miracle on 34th Street" was playing on television in the Payne home as he lay dying. Watching the film today, his daughter, Clancy, sees the father she knew as a little girl. For her, his whole demeanor —the gentle movements, the calm, kind voice, and his funny double take with his left eyebrow raised— brings back a flood of childhood memories. The film has become as special to her as it was to him. Any time she feels she needs him, she simply watches Miracle on 34th Street, especially at Christmas. Source: www.classicimages.com