Franchot Tone & Barbara Payton: Elegance and Madness, "Bride of the Gorilla", "The Girl"

Franchot Tone, publicity photo for "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" (1949). In 1929 Tone had become a member of the Theatre Guild, appearing in a series of shows including 'Red Dust', 'Hotel Universe', 'Green Grow the Lilacs', and 'Pagan Lady.'

In September 1950, it was reported that Barbara Payton was to make her Broadway debut in producer S.N. Behrman's play, 'Let Me Hear the Melody,' but the project was temporarily scrapped when the financing for it collapsed. (It was later produced in Philadelphia, without Barbara, in May 1951.) However, on September 12, Barbara did fly out to the east coast to co-star with Franchot Tone in a summer stock production of another S. N. Behrman play, 'The Second Man.' The Theater Guild had staged the original version of the play on Broadway in 1927.

Franchot Tone, publicity photo for CBS "Starlight Theatre" show, 1951

Produced at New York's Somerset Theater by Franchot's friend and Group Theatre associate, Jean Dalrymple, 'The Second Man' was a comedy about a social activist and novelist (Tone) who realizes that the second man in him is really an opportunist wise enough to turn to his wealthy mistress (Payton) for the luxuries his other lifestyle has denied him. Actress Margaret Lindsay (as Franchot's wife, Mrs. Kendall Frayne) and Broadway veteran Walter Brooke rounded out the four-character cast. The show's playbill described Barbara Payton as captivating in the role of Monica Grey, a part which was later played by newcomer Cloris Leachman when Franchot Tone reprised the production in June 1951.

'The Second Man' ran for one week as the Somerset Theater's final summerstock play of the season, and was the first of Barbara's two stage efforts (the 2nd being 'The Postman Always Rings Twice,' in 1953 with Tom Neal). Upon the show's completion, Franchot brought Barbara to the family homestead in Upstate New York, to meet his mother, Gertrude. (His father, Dr. Frank J. Tone, had died in 1944.) While it remains unclear what Gertrude Tone thought of Barbara following their introduction, Lisa Burks suggests it may have been somewhat of a strained meeting.

Following their brief visit to Niagara Falls, the pair returned to the west coast in late September, only to find more trouble awaiting Barbara in L.A. Despite her enviable alliance with such a respected member of the industry as Franchot Tone, Barbara’s growing connection to the Hollywood underworld was again apparent on October 29 when she was called before a Federal Grand Jury as a defense witness in the perjury trial of a suspected murderer and dope addict named Stanley Adams.


"Bride of the Gorilla" (1951) Stars: Barbara Payton, Lon Chaney Jr., Raymond Burr. Director & Writer: Curt Siodmak
The owner of a plantation in the jungle marries a beautiful woman. Shortly afterward, he is plagued by a strange voodoo curse which transforms him into a gorilla.

As Barbara prepared to leave on another promotional tour for "Bride of the Gorilla", word had begun filtering through the grapevine that Barbara Payton and Tom Neal were indeed seeing each other again. Through clenched teeth and white knuckles, Franchot saw his wife off on her publicity junket, perhaps knowing with his keen intellect, if not his captive heart, that she had resumed sleeping with the man who had nearly killed him. According to Ann Richards, Franchot had begged to Barbara not to cheat on him but she wouldn't hear of it.

While attending a movie memorabilia show at the New Yorker Hotel in NYC, a former Hollywood photographer who knew Barbara, shared a particularly disturbing tale. Ray goes on to describe the scene as a kind of mid-century modern version of the Norma Desmond estate in Sunset Blvd. (“a decrepit piece of Southern California Gothic,” as he put it) and remembers thinking that it was possible that Barbara wasn’t really house-sitting, but had taken occupancy of an abandoned piece of property. Set back off the road on the edge of a cliff, the house-on-stilts was trashed; the in-ground swimming pool, a rancid mix of rotting leaves and foul-smelling water.

“The kid just couldn’t keep her legs closed, you know? In my opinion, Tom Neal was scum and he ruined that girl. He took her right down into the toilet with him. She was fine before she got involved with that bastard.” What seems lost to this man is that a part of Barbara had been tough and cunning long before Tom Neal had entered her life… as countless men, including Bob Hope and Franchot Tone, had all-too painfully discovered. -"Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye - The Barbara Payton Story" (2013) by John O'Dowd

Barbara remembered having said Franchot had given a disease in her soul. As if lost in a black smoke, she could hear herself telling Carlo Fiori: “Franchot talks about suicide and says he’ll kill me and kill himself. He sees me as his tormentor. He says I’m the evil half of his nature that he is fixing in me, and which I bring to the surface in him. He says only death could ease the pain of living with a tormentor. If you leave me, he says, I’ll die… If you stay, you’ll slowly kill me…” -Barbara Payton on Franchot Tone

On September 14, 1951, the front page of virtually every major newspaper in the United States carried the story of how B-picture actor Tom Neal had brutally beaten dapper leading man Franchot Tone’s face into a bloody pulp over the affections of sultry blonde actress Barbara Payton. The sordid narrative surrounding this ill-fated triangle would have “legs”. Only Franchot Tone’s career would survive the disgraceful events. 'B Movie' dramatizes the most notorious scandal to hit Hollywood during the first half of the 1950s. Underneath the stark headline 'Barbara’s Nude Sun Bath with Neal Told in Beating Case,' Judson O’Donnell gave an eyebrow-raising interview to Louella Parsons where he expounded: "I used to see Miss Payton in the patio. She was sunbathing nude, above the waist. And Tom Neal would be beside her. He was exercising with his big bar bells. He was nude, too, above the waist. But he wore trunks. I heard her say to him once, ‘Oh, Tom, you have such big muscles!’"

Zsa Zsa Gabor once said, “I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman — not just a man with muscles.”

"The talent agent who brought June called it the Shark House. It was in Los Feliz and you could drive by a hundred times and miss it. But once you saw it, you couldn’t turn it away. There were no windows. The tiny lawn sloped up, feathered with ivy that looked red in the strange light. “Huston will be here,” the agent said. “Key Largo. The part’s perfect for you.” Two years ago, she’d married Guy, who ran sports book on the West Side for Mickey Cohen and liked to trot her up and down the Strip, his “actress wife.” Now, the talent agents saw different kind of possibilities in June, different ways to lay odds. They knew producers cast actresses for all kinds of reasons, including big vigs they needed to pay off, big secrets they needed to hide. “What does it matter?” her friend Gladys asked. “You married the honeypot. Just slip on your silver mink, prop your feet up, and listen to Dick Haymes all day.” Sometimes she considered it. But June held onto a few small things from when she first came to the City of Dreams. June had heard things. About the house’s owner: An elegant widow’s peak and a European way. A collector, an importer, a private dealer in things, objects. No one knew. She had seen him once at the Mermaid Room, where girls swam in tanks, their twitching smiles painted red, fingertips tapping on the glass. Eyes hidden behind a green-tinted pince-nez, he did not look up at the girls but seemed always to be whispering in the ear of his date.

June had heard he was a man acquainted with artists and intellectuals who made June feel, despite her 'I. Magnin' suits and cool voice, like a Woolworth’s counter girl who turned tricks every other Saturday night. “What’s the big deal? Another rich stiff with a taste for Tinseltown trim,” the agent said. Then June saw, under a darkening banana tree in the center court, two women, rubyhaired both, their bodies lit, swarming each other, their silvertoned faces notched against each other. They were famous, both of them, famous like no one ever would be again, June thought, and to see their bodies swirling into each other, their mouths slipping open, wetly, was unbearably exciting, even to June. Slowly, in the near-dark, she moved down the first long hallway. It was a honeycomb, the wetness on everything seeming to cling to its cold walls like nectar. Her arms quilling, she slid her mink back on, fingers clasped over the frog closure. It made her think of Guy and the things he was good for. He wasn’t very smart, or very nice, but he was crazy about her in the way men could be. Resting her hand against the wall, June felt it slide and there was a whole new passageway that, she realized, must be underneath the courtyard, because it had the same arcade of rooms. These rooms had no doors, only beaded curtains. The aura of lush jungle ruins, sweet and rotten. There was something in these rooms June knew and was sorry she knew. She felt suddenly like the rooms were inside of her.

June recognized this shivery platinum star who tinkled through a series of Paramount society pictures, her skin ice-white, satin creaming across her hips, jewels dripping stalactites from her ear lobes, her neck. She was always the Wealthy Wife, the Long-Throated Mistress, the Rich Divorcée on a tear, her voice warbling like a mouth full of cold marbles but her face, glorious.

Robert Taylor leaning over her, eyes lit with passion, mouth craning to reach her stemlike neck. The most beautiful woman the world had ever seen. The sound of the shimmying curtains drawing everyone’s eyes, the actress’s face untufting from the girl’s skirt and turning to face June. And the actress smiled, cooingly. 'Join us,' lulled the movie actress, mouth gleaming, wet. After a long time of walking in circles that seemed to knot tighter and tighter, she stopped and leaned against a wall. Listening to her stertorous breaths, she knew that she had reached some kind of droppingoff point. She had—one foot still hitched on the steps of that Greyhound—she wanted something, thought she’d do anything for that thing. Until now that the thing was here. And it surrounded her. But then she realized something was hiding behind the wall. Like a scurrying rat. The wall itself then moved, like a carapace clicking loose, and out came a young girl, long-limbed and sylphlike. A slipper of a girl in a pale-blue nightgown threaded with ribbon.

With furring braids and eyes winsome as Margaret O’Brien’s. Now, at nightclubs, at parties, coming out of powder rooms at private homes, June was the one who made the introductions, facilitated the transaction, occasionally procured the goods. The girls. “Do you think I could try your coat on sometime?” the girl asked her. They both looked down at June’s smoky gray pelts. June was remembering something. The girl in the story her father used to tell, the girl with no hands. And how a king heard what had happened to her and because she was so beautiful and pure, he fell in love and had silver hands made for her, and took her as his wife. As June watched her, something was happening inside. She was seeing a girl age seventeen, plaited hair and middy blouse, slipping off a bus at Sixth and Los Angeles Street a dozen years ago. June slipped the pearl-gray pelts around the young girl’s shoulders. “I didn’t think you’d really let me,” the girl said. The girl tried to stop under the heavy hanging red bell tree. “You can’t stop here,” June said. And she grabbed the girl’s hand tighter, which was cold as silver.In the courtyard, with all the stone faces turning, all the ivory heads lifted, tusks raised, June pulled the mink over the girl’s head. No longer lost, June guided the girl through the flaming center of the house, which she knew better than her own. Better than anyone. She didn’t let anyone see the girl." -"The Girl" by Megan Abbott, from "L.A. Noire Collection" (2011)