31 Days of Horror: ‘Inland Empire’, The Black Dahlia case

31 Days of Horror: ‘Inland Empire’ - an incredible showcase of Lynch’s most unsettling impulses:

Laura Dern in "Inland Empire" (2006) directed by David Lynch

"The only reliable constant throughout the film’s constantly shifting nightmare logic is Laura Dern, whose incredible performance is doubly impressive given that Dern has stated explicitly that she has no idea what the film is “about.” Inland takes place in a cruel, alluring Hollywood of the mind that recalls Mulholland Dr. (whose principal cast shows up here voicing a family of talking sitcom rabbits), but there are also callbacks to Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and possibly others, making Inland feel like a demented greatest-hits reel of sorts.

Over its colossal three-hour runtime, though, it becomes clear that Inland is not a mere restatement, but rather a digitized remix of Lynch’s pet themes and visual ideas, one that accentuates the most corrupting aspects of its cheap digital photography." Source: www.soundonsight.org

Poster of "Highway 301" (1950) directed by Andrew L. Stone

Poster of "Lost Highway" (1997) directed by David Lynch

FILMMAKER: There are a lot of film noir elements that come up in Lost Highway. In the late '40s, film noirs were considered B-movies, What is it about those particular movies is so fascinating now?

LYNCH: There's a beguiling and magnetic mood. There's so much darkness, and there's so much room to dream. They're mysteries and there are people in trouble, and uneasiness.

FILMMAKER: I thought that at certain times Patricia Arquette looked like Elizabeth Short, the victim of the real-life L.A. noir case, the Black Dahlia. Have you ever read a book called Severed?

LYNCH: No.

FILMMAKER: It's a book by John Gilmore where he says that he solved the Black Dahlia case.

LYNCH: I'll be darned. I talked to John St. John

FILMMAKER: Jigsaw John?

LYNCH: Exactly. We had dinner a couple of times. He was in charge of that case until he retired. Then he died, unfortunately. But he had a lot of information on her.

FILMMAKER: He was one of the sources for John Gilmore's book.

LYNCH: I'll bet he was.

FILMMAKER: What do you find interesting about that case?

LYNCH: Well, it's unsolved. And I love mysteries. And this thing just has this kind of other-worldly quality to it. The way she was killed a large part of it, and the fact that no one has ever come forward. They still don't know much about the case. Source: www.lynchnet.com

-John Gilmore: If David Lynch were to have a hand in The Black Dahlia, that would probably be a really good interpretation. I think he would do it rather well. It would be beautiful. But one of the problems facing David is... Lost Highway really didn't do anything for me.

-Yes, I went to see that film, and I wouldn't say it was so much esoteric as it was merely vague. But that was what occurred, and he was afraid, supposedly, to do something as stark as this. And so he's facing that problem, a typical Hollywood problem.

-Oh, it would have been a wonderful marriage, David Lynch and The Black Dahlia. He could have gotten back into the way he used to be, but would have done it in such a way that people would realise he just had a bad day with Lost Highway. Source: www.johngilmore.com

Tom Neal in "Detour" directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

John Gilmore: It wasn’t inspiration that focused my attention on the Black Dahlia case — although curiosity and fascination played their parts. It was a matter of financial necessity. It was ’63 and tough-guy actor Tom Neal wanted to produce and star in a movie based on the case. I was living in Hollywood, writing screenplays and stories, and trying to keep my head above water. The deal with Tom offered cash up front and a big carrot on the other end when he raised the financing “to get the cocksucker on a roll,” as he put it. Tom knew a retired cop who gave him information about my father, about his connections in LAPD and his past ties to L.A.’s former mayor, Fletcher Bowron. I took the “inside” door into LAPD and forged my associations with officers and detectives in homicide. After numerous ups and downs, the project with Tom collapsed almost two years later, when he was convicted of murdering his own wife in Palm Springs and sent to prison. Actor/director Jack Webb of Dragnet fame, closely associated with members of LAPD’s homicide, encouraged my unwillingness to give up on the case and prodded me to “keep hammering at the facts.”

I met Elizabeth Short in late ’46 when I was 11 years old. Elizabeth Short’s father abandoned his car on the Charlestown Bridge in Massachusetts, and seemed to vanish—to disappear. This was just after he lost his business during the Depression. Phoebe (Elizabeth's mother) worked as a bookkeeper whenever she could find employment, but for the next four years the family mostly depended on Mother’s Aid and government handouts. Phoebe Short was shocked when she received a letter from Cleo. He said he was in Northern California working in the shipyards, and apologized for leaving the way he did. He tried to explain in the letter that he had not been able to face up to the troubles, but knew that in his absence, if it appeared that he deserted or was dead, Phoebe would be eligible for more support. He asked if she might now allow him to return to the family. Phoebe answered her husband with an emphatic 'no'. She did not consider him her “husband.”

Almost daily Beth met new servicemen and went on dates, but she liked to think she was keeping a special place “in her heart” for Gordan Fickling. Several guys fell in love with Beth in Miami Beach before the season ended. “She was a natural vamp,” Sharon Givens says, “one who brings out the wolf in all men, no exceptions, and she didn’t even have to try.”

Beth met a very handsome Army Air Corps lieutenant, a pilot who had taken her to dinner twice. They danced at the Canteen, but she was also dating him on the outside because she wasn’t an “official” junior hostess. His name was Gordan Fickling and he’d come up from Long Beach. He had the use of a car and he’d take her to the beach and the amusement pier, or to Knott’s Berry Farm for fried chicken.

This sentiment changed on New Year’s Eve of 1945, when flyer Major Matt Gordan stepped into her life. A few days later the major asked her to be his wife. “I’m so much in love, I’m sure it shows,” she wrote to her mother. “Matt is so wonderful, not like other men... and he asked me to marry him.” Phoebe was very surprised with this news, but impressed with the photograph her daughter sent of herself and the handsome pilot. Matt gave Beth a gold wristwatch that was set with diamonds as a pre-engagement gift, and wrote to his own sister-in-law that Beth “is an educated and refined girl whom I plan to marry.”

Ann Toth portrayed Beth in a softer light: "In the first place, she didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, because after all, living with her, I knew, and she always came in at a decent hour, 11 o’clock, or around there. She never came in later than that, and naturally if she was supposed to be sexy and do other stuff, there is a lot more that goes to it, rather than if a decent girl - there is drinking, smoking, wining and dining, and a few other things that go with it. I don’t think she was trying to be sexy."

Beth became a regular at the Medford Café, a late-night hangout in the Square. “It would usually be after midnight when she’d come in the café,” recalls Joe Sabia, at the time attending Leland Powers School of Radio. He had wanted to fight in the war but was 4-F due to a disability. “She was like a shadow figure,” he says. “There was this void—something missing.” A few days later a telegram arrived from Matt’s mother. Muriel watched as Beth tore it open, saying it was probably about the wedding. Beth read the telegram, then stood there, holding the piece of paper, staring at it. “It’s not going to be,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s not going to be...” She handed Muriel the telegram. Her sister read it out loud: “Received word War Department. Matt killed in plane crash on way home from India. Our deepest sympathy is with you. Pray it isn’t true.” She wrote an urgent letter to Matt’s mother, asking if she could possibly send Beth enough money to “start a new life over again.” She had waited faithfully for Matt, but their future together had been taken away by the war.”

A new movie was playing around the corner, The Blue Dahlia, with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Two soldiers started kidding around and called Beth “the Black Dahlia.” Even the drugstore proprietor and his son were amused by the name. A.L. Landers owned the pharmacy, and often winked to his son when Beth showed up. “She’d come into the drugstore frequently,” Landers says. “She’d usually be wearing a two-piece beach costume which left her midriff bare. Or she’d wear black lacy things. Her hair was jet black and she liked to wear it high. She was popular with the men who came in the drugstore and they got to calling her the Black Dahlia.” Other servicemen began looking for her. “Has she come in today?” they’d ask Landers, “the Black Dahlia?”

“Every few days or so I’d see this girl coming past the window, looking at the shoes. She’d come in and she liked to try on the most expensive ones.” Martin Lewis co-managed two Hollywood shoe shops, one on Cahuenga south of the boulevard. “We were down from Macy Jewelers,” he says. “She would come in after that, trying on shoes, and I’d be helping her if there wasn’t anyone else in the store. We’d flirt a little and one thing would lead to another. Maybe three pair of shoes I let her have, and I loaned her money to pay rent — on the second time we drove up Outpost after I’d closed the Leeds store. We got in the back seat that time, but she said it was her time of the month.” “She was running around in a loose circle, with people that were broken up, or not working. I don’t mean employment as we think of it, but getting settled somehow within the law, you know, being legal. She did gravitate in that way, and ran around getting rides and being picked up by men to get from one place to another. She had a way of walking — of advertising her ass, certainly drawing attention to it. “I know she wasn’t a tramp, and I do not have any way to say that she was—expect that was how I wanted to see her, even while another part of me was so drawn to her in a way that had nothing to do with any sort of sex.”

She still hadn’t managed an income on her own and the small but frequent loans made to her by Hal and others had quickly mounted to a good-sized sum. Nobody for a minute thought they would get their money back. Despite her optimism and the assurances of booking agent Fred Sherman, whom she’d met through Barbara, Beth was walking a thin line, trying to look the part— measuring up to the flash and verve she generated. Sherman planned to have Beth meet an associate of actor Bob Steele, who was producing at an independent studio. Sherman, too, advanced Beth some cash for expenses and some additional clothes that were requested for a possible photo session. There was no hope for Hal McGuire, who found that following Beth around was as hectic as “jumping like a fast bouncing ball in a pinball game — that’s how she was living.”

“She was smart, an intelligent girl,” Phillip Jeffers (the 'war bond boy wonder') says, “but she seemed content to just float.” One night they were laughing and joking and Beth became very quiet. A sadness came over her that he did not understand. “What is it that’s bothering you?” Phillip Jeffers asked. “Please tell me what’s wrong.” She stared for a moment. Her eyes were watery. “Let’s enjoy today, right now,” she said. “Enjoy what we have in life!”

Actor Kevin Wilkerson remembers when Beth moved into Mark Hansen’s and started showing up at the Florentine Gardens. “She was being called the Black Dahlia, but my girlfriend said that Mark was calling her the black-haired eight ball. Mark Hansen was planning the Beautiful Girl Revue for 1947 and Ann said he’d promised Beth a part in it, featured in a gardenia or a big flower opening and she’d be in the heart of it, wearing a thin G-string, and a flesh colored flower in her crotch. She should be a stripper, Mark was telling her. He talked about the Flesh and Fantasy revue, where she’d wear high heels and ankle straps like Ann Jeffreys in the Dillinger movie.” Hansen gave a lot of big show business names their “break” and he was quick to publicize the beauties he’d made —Yvonne deCarlo and Betty Hutton, Jean Wallace, Gwen Verdon, Marie ‘the body’ McDonald, and Lili St. Cyr.

Red-haired Robert Manley was soon to find himself in the worst predicament of his life. It began casually enough; he hadn’t been intending to pick up a girl. But there she was — and there was no avoiding it. He was driving on San Diego’s Broadway in his old Studebaker coupe on a business trip from L.A. Stopping at a signal, he glanced to his right as a car turned the corner. When it passed, he was looking at a very pretty blackhaired young woman standing on the corner near the Western Airlines window.“You think I’m very attractive?” she asked. He said sure, and that she knew it herself without having to ask. Then he laughed a little, too, as though they’d shared a joke. She directed him to the Frenches’ house where he parked and shut off the motor. He then asked if she wanted to have dinner with him. “I don’t have anything else to do until I make some calls in the morning,” he said. “We can have a few drinks and maybe dance.”

Myth: She worked at the Hollywood Canteen. Fact: The Hollywood Canteen closed in 1945, while Elizabeth Short didn't get to Los Angeles until late July or early August 1946, according to a time line of her life prepared by the district attorney's office, among many other sources. "Severed" claims that Elizabeth Short worked at the Hollywood Canteen as part of its attempt to link this killing to the 1944 murder of Georgette Bauerdorf. The claim in "Severed" that she met Gordon Fickling at the Hollywood Canteen is even more ridiculous. As an officer, Fickling wouldn't have been allowed inside because it was strictly for enlisted men, as any photo of the front will prove. As I say many times throughout this Web site, "Severed" is 25% mistakes and 50% fiction. For the record, when I interviewed Fickling in 1996, he said they met in Florida. Source: lmharnisch.com

Mia Kirshner as Elizabeth Short in "The Black Dahlia" (2006) directed by Brian De Palma

"The novel is written from Bleichert’s point of view. His whole world and seemingly all of LA eventually revolves around the Dahlia. She becomes the only motivating factor in his life. He is not the only detective in the novel who talks to Elizabeth Short (the Dahlia’s real name) and swears they will find who killed her."

"Even though the book is set in Los Angeles in 1947 with period slang and dialog, the characters were very relatable. I never felt a disconnect with their motivations. Then Ellroy makes more and more of a point that Bucky is trying to both protect and possess the Dahlia. His obsession becomes overtly sexual in nature. His desire to have sex with Elizabeth Short is so central to his motivation that other characters admit to his face that they are using it to manipulate him. He is powerless in the face of it. Reading the afterword it becomes obvious that Ellroy was projecting his Oedipal desire onto Bucky and the Dahlia. It was a disservice to the character. Instead of letting him develop in a more organic fashion, Ellroy pushes too much of himself into Bleichert. Bucky does eventually solve the Dahlia’s murder." Source: www.pajiba.com

Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman in "Tomorrow is Another Day" (1951)

A clip from "Tomorrow is Another Day" (1951) directed by Felix E. Feist starring Steve Cochran, Ruth Roman

The Barbara Payton Story

Barbara Payton (1927–1967) (born Barbara Lee Redfield in blue-collar Cloquet, Minnesota) was eleven when the family-owned timber business hit the skids. Her father, boomer and hard drinker Lee Redfield, joined a construction company down in the oil town of Odessa, Texas. “I spent half my life watching movies and eating popcorn,” she said, “and when I was sixteen —this is 1943, the war was going on and James Cagney came to Odessa on a bond drive. He was at the picture show and I snuck back and asked him for his autograph. I never could've dreamed I'd someday be standing next to him in front of a camera, starring in the same movie with James Cagney.”

James Cagney and Barbara Payton in "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" (1950) directed by Gordon Douglas

Barbara would say, “I know I can do it —get into movies, because I got the looks and I've got the tits.” “By the time Barbara got to me,” says agent Philip Feldman, “she'd bounced off a few others who'd run her through Paramount and MGM. I was partly responsible for getting her a contract at Universal. She was a hard and nervy girl underneath her special prettiness, and could speak soft, like they say, but carry a big stick. She had the blonde goddess shine that can't be described as anything but a radiance that makes a movie star.” Feldman says, “She was aggressively making the rounds of name circles. With a brassy manner, she'd sidle right up uninvited to important people and swoop them over in a flutter as though she was Marilyn Monroe. One columnist who didn't want to talk to Barbara, who had an ax out for her from the start, like she'd read the writing on the wall plain and clear, was Sheilah Graham. She called Barbara a ‘shameless hussy.’ Rumors got around that Barbara was ‘seeing' Howard Hughes, but there was little evidence other than her invasion of Hughes' party at Ciro's. I recall an occasion when they were at the same table —Barbara and Hughes.

She'd no doubt invited herself to join them because John Ireland, the nervous actor she'd been dating a few times, sat chewing his fingernails while she hopped around the club like a rabbit.”

Actress Marilyn Maxwell and Bob Hope At Ciro's Club (1951)

Bob Hope's soon-reluctant hotel-hopping relationship with Barbara spanned less time than rumors to the contrary suggested. The meetings were few—usually in adjacent rooms registered to Hope. He'd unlock the door and party for a short time before “hitting the sack” for a peaceful, undisturbed sleep. “He snored loud,” Barbara said, “and it was a relief being in another room and shutting the door. The last time he had me traipsing after him, I got up in the morning and the door into his room was locked. At first I thought a maid or somebody'd shut it but room service hadn't been around. I discovered Bob had already checked out and there was a note for me at the desk. It wasn't even in his handwriting. ‘What a pleasure it was to have met you,’ it said. And he'd be looking forward to seeing me again.”

Actress Mamie Van Doren, under contract to Universal, says, “I'd see Barbara at a lot of the parties, drinking freely —very fluidly, you might say, and being chased after by men and her chasing after them herself. Barbara and I were friendly to a point because of Universal, but I can't say we were bosom pals. I was always more interested in my career, in the work I'd be involved in, but Barbara's concerns seemed to focus on having a wild time. I never had to chase anyone because I could stand still and men would be all around me."

"But Barbara —and I felt sorry for her— went after people in an almost ravenous manner. It was no secret about her and Bob Hope. She told me he'd rented a little motel room on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, on a weekly basis for his fling with Barbara. But she said he complained about the bed, that it wasn't to his satisfaction. He wasn't ‘performing’ as he wanted to, she said, so Hope ordered a new bed and had it delivered to the motel. Barbara told me he couldn't perform any better on the new bed than he'd done on the old one. She laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.”

According to Arthur Marx’s biography, "The Secret Life of Bob Hope", Hope’s subsequent long-term affair with actress Marilyn Maxwell, after breaking-up with Barbara Payton, was so open that the Hollywood community routinely referred to her as “Mrs. Bob Hope”. Hope paid Barbara off to end the affair quietly. Payton later revealed the affair with a tell-all printed in July 1956 in Confidential magazine. “Hope was at times a mean-spirited individual with the ability to respond with a ruthless vengeance when sufficiently provoked.”

“Not only did Hope give her the bum's rush,” said Lila Leeds (actress, party girl and Barbara's friend) “but Universal called her in to hand down her walking papers.” The dismissal from the studio was based on a morals clause in her contract: Chasing a married man— “an important celebrity,” she was told.

Lloyd Bridges and Barbara Payton in "Trapped" (1949) directed by Richard Fleischer

"Trapped," starring Lloyd Bridges, ran in the noir genre of lower-budgeted, second-feature films. Actor John Hoyt says, “She had a halting, intense energy, and was just twenty-two when she made Trapped. The picture was filmed in a documentary style like Naked City and the Mark Hellinger pictures. Earl Felton who wrote the script said Barbara was one of the best things in the picture. He liked her and they were friendly, got into a lot of involved conversations. Felton later shot himself —a suicide. Richard Fleischer, who directed the picture, said, ‘Payton's got a quality that's unusual, like she's run around a track, is catching her breath and holding it at the same time.’ Being a big star was right at her fingertips. She was very beautiful and in an individual way, meaning that nobody looked quite like Barbara. Nobody gave a hoot she'd been one more face in the parade of Bob Hope's philandering ways, and the only real concern was some of the characters she was associating with.”

Hollywood took notice of Trapped. This led Barbara to producer William Cagney, the brother of James Cagney. “Everyone was talking about her,” said Cagney, “because of her work with Lloyd Bridges. She was exciting and explosive. When she came for an interview she was tense and jumpy, and I told her to relax. She pushed her hair back off her face with one of those quick sweeps of her hand and gave me an icy look. I asked if she knew anything about the picture we were doing called Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. She said no.”

I told her the part was that of a gun-moll type to play opposite James Cagney. Cagney Productions signed Barbara for Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye on a joint seven-year contract with Warner Brothers. Her starting salary was $5,000 a week. In Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a cynical, violent film, Barbara gave her inarguably best performance. Warner's prolific director, Gordon Douglas, said, “She gave it her all. She had an erratic manner that vacillated between softness and fury, and her undeniable beauty leaps off the screen. She was fun to work with, and was under the guidance of James Cagney. She couldn't have had a better mentor.”

Universal wanted her for another picture, but Warners wouldn't let her do it. They didn't know for sure what to do with her, but they weren't going to loan her out. So while they stuck her in another movie. ‘Testing the waters,’ they'd call it.” The picture starred Gary Cooper, a Western called 'Dallas'.

“Barbara wasn't starring in it,” says Ann Richards. “She didn't have a leading role. In fact she had fifth billing and was playing a hootchy girlfriend of Steve Cochran.” Confused and angry that she didn't have the starring role, Barbara began dishing out a hard time. “The start of her fall, you could say,” says agent Feldman. “No matter how big you get, you don't dictate terms in Hollywood. They'll let you think you're dictating terms as long as you're showing a profit, but you're not really dictating the terms.”

Steve Cochran halfheartedly cooed his sympathy. He'd attended a couple of Barbara's parties and on the movie set shared nips in a trailer. They latched onto one another initially, Cochran carrying the same chip on his shoulder, though he was an accomplished actor, unlike Barbara. The difference in chips was that Cochran had long since placated his frustration with a steady, hard-hitting career as a tough-guy actor.

John O’Dowd (who wrote Barbara Payton's biography "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye"): Barbara and Franchot Tone were totally ill-suited for one another and I believe their marriage was doomed from the start. While they initially had a respect and a genuine affection for each other, this quickly disappeared after Franchot realized that Barbara couldn’t remain faithful. Later, their relationship was filled with duplicitous and vengeful acts fueled by obsessive jealousy and game-playing and an almost sadomasochistic feeding off of each other’s weaknesses and most fragile emotions.

Franchot Tone had divorced Jean Wallace in 1948

Franchot Tone and Barbara announced their engagement at a Stork Club party. “To the love of my life,” he said. “The flower of my heart.” But Tone was confused by Barbara's involvement with the likes of Don Cougar and Stanley Adams. “I would personally never have known such low-gauge personalities,” Tone said. “People mixed up with hoodlums and dope dealing. I couldn't leave her stranded, and I swore to be at her side, despite the ridicule I was receiving for getting involved.”

Warner Brothers took careful notice of the bad publicity and reviewed Barbara's past problems with Universal. The decision had already been made to cast her in the female lead opposite Gregory Peck in Only the Valiant. Peck was starring as a cavalry officer. The film was shooting in New Mexico, with Gordon Douglas directing.

Gregory Peck and Barbara Payton in "Only the Valiant" (1951) directed by Gordon Douglas

“The story was weak,” says Neville Brand. “The script could've been written on toilet paper.” Working again with Barbara, Brand says, “Nobody seemed to give a damn about the movie except Gregory Peck. Gig Young was also in it, and from the start, Gig and Barbara paired up off camera, both raising their separate cups, I presume, the result being some of Barbara's scenes cut because she was terrible, acted obnoxious and rowdy, her and Gig laughing and carrying on. Gregory Peck grew hotter under the collar each day. He finally had her barred from the set except for the scenes in which he had to work with her.” “Laughs are laughs,” says Gig Young, “but after a few days Barbara could give you the worst headache you've ever had. She could be absolutely a holy asshole. She shouldn't have been a drinker—should've laid off the jug. Show you how tough she was. Talk about the characters she kept on the side, and these guys were hoods. Then I caught her sticking a needle in her leg and I said, ‘what the hell are you doing? You a junkie?’ She said, ‘It's for pain. I'm in pain!’ She didn't have her fucking lines and Gordon Douglas, a swell man —was going nuts with her.

She couldn't draw upon herself. You couldn't get that close to her as a person to help her. I tried but she was resistant. She could deliver simple lines but couldn't make the part between the words come to life. Couldn't make a real person out of any of the characters she was playing. Like she was lost in her own world —standing in the middle of a movie set yet off somewhere in her own rose garden.”

It was during the making of Drums in the Deep South, a King Brothers independent picture for RKO-Radio, starring Guy Madison and filmed at the Goldwyn Studios, that Franchot brought to the surface her frail faithfulness in the flesh.

Married to troubled, ex-Paramount leading lady Gail Russell, Madison said he was avoiding confrontations with his wife. Avoiding even seeing her, he told Barbara as they'd stop for cocktails after a day's shoot at the Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Ann Richards: “Barbara said that Guy Madison told her he isn't gay and isn't even a bisexual. He claims he's straight as a gate and he's set to proving it. Barbara was having a ball and a fling because she says Guy's wife is so soused she doesn't even know he's in her life and he's lonely. He says working with Barbara has got him horny as hell.” Franchot personally followed Barbara and Madison from the Formosa to the apartment on Hollywood Boulevard where Barbara was staying —Tone paying the rent, the liquor bill, and footing for her new clothes, shoes, and costly furs. The confrontation between Guy Madison and Franchot in Barbara's apartment reached Confidential magazine. They published the story, bringing a heap of bad publicity down on Barbara. The studio said, “She appears as nothing but a slut in this thing —a bum.”

Franchot left for New York, Barbara pledging her love right back. “We'll be married soon as I return,” he said. “You'll be my wife, my bride. You'll belong to me forever, despite what anyone says. I love you and adore you and I want to bury myself in you. I'll die for you rather than ever cause you pain.”

Two days later, bored stiff, she sat at a swimming pool watching well-muscled Tom Neal in bathing trunks as he threw a beach ball to a giggling redhead in the water. Rippling in the sun, his skin glossed with Johnson's baby oil, Neal bounced along the edge of the pool graceful as a dancer. Barbara would later say, “He could make his muscles stand up and wink.” Tom Neal was “born too well to have turned out so bad,” says Toby Baker.

Ann Savage and Tom Neal in "Detour" (1945) directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

"He was a troublemaker, the only one I had problems with in all the years I was in movies. He would go out of his way to rub you the wrong way! Otherwise, he could be charming. He was like two different people." -Ann Savage about Tom Neal

Reduced to “poverty row” movies, Tom connected with a young director named Edgar Ulmer, maestro of the minuscule budget. They shot a cheap, quick film—a sixday, back-lot special called Detour, an unintentionally extraordinary film that would beat the test of time as the most despairing of all B-noir movies.

Through Ann Savage, Tom met Vicky Lane, who'd starred in 'The Jungle Captive'. Vicky and Tom became inseparable. “I went over to RKO,” Tom says, “and did a John Garfield part in one picture and bingo! Things clicked. I was working in one picture after another and Vicky and I got married. I was living in paradise… for a while.” A year and a half later, in 1950, Vicky divorced him on grounds of mental and physical cruelty.

Barbara Payton arriving the hospital to visit fiancé Franchot Tone who was beaten senseless by Tom Neal

Franchot was delivered into surgery at California Hospital, his nose broken and mashed, his cheekbone fractured, and suffering a concussion. The press swooped down on the hospital. Bill Watson of the Hollywood Citizen-News says, “The love brawl was the hottest thing we'd had in years. I knew Barbara Payton. I'd talked to her before. Who's she going to marry? One day someone —the next day someone else! ‘Franchot did not swing first!’ she said, ‘How could I have ever wanted to marry such a brute!”

Barbara, beaming for the cameras, reported that she was scheduled to be back in Hollywood the following week for the lead in Walter Wanger's 'Lady in the Iron Mask'. No sooner were they back in L.A. than she learned that producer Wanger had dumped her from the picture, replacing her with Patricia Medina. Barbara was told by an associate at Warners, “The word's out. With all the crap that's been going on, this rotten publicity, you've not only shot a hole through your foot, you've blown the foot right off your leg.” The “love brawl” had soured the studio but it was her continued connection to hoods and dope dealers that sealed her fate.

Fearing a box office drop due to Barbara's misbehavior, Warners opted not to put her into another big picture. At the same time continuing to get their money's worth, they passed her over to producer Jack Broder for his low-budget, horror film, Bride of the Gorilla. Broder said, “Without as much at stake on the back end, we gave Barbara top billing in the belief that the controversial publicity she was getting would create a draw at the box office.”

The film featured Raymond Burr, Lon Chaney, Jr., and actor George Sanders’ alcohol-slogged brother, Tom Conway. Burr would say, “Barbara's a gorgeous gal but she's like a sack of cats. She means well—she tries. Our director, Curt Siodmak, a wonderful man, did his best in every way to keep her in one piece for the picture. Barbara was absolutely stunning. Her beauty is magnetic and slightly mysterious. I'll never understand what happened to her or how it could have happened. I'm sorry for her —deeply sorry.” Director Curt Siodmak said, “I was working with three alcoholics and a sex maniac.” Realart's promotion of Bride of the Gorilla launched with special previews for Halloween. Barbara's appearance on screen was greeted with hoots and hollers, loud whistling and stomping.

Tom Neal and Barbara Payton debarking from a plane, 1953

Barbara's marriage to Franchot lasted for fifty-three days. A defeated, deflated Tone said, “She can't get Neal out of her hair. I am disillusioned and heartsick and there's nothing before us but divorce and hardship.” The much-publicized reconciliation between Barbara and Tone lasted less than three weeks. They were in the Warwick Hotel in New York when Franchot caught her “cooing,” he said, to Neal on the phone. “She was talking dirty to him. About his dick! I went in the bathroom and vomited.”

The blow that hit the hardest landed when Barbara returned to Hollywood. Her first contract option was up for renewal and William Cagney, in accord with Warners, declined to renew the option. Barbara's seven-year contract had collapsed after one year. Feldman says, “It was a tragedy. She'd had everything and threw it away. She'd been warned, but Barbara didn't seem to have any way of listening to what was being said or how to play the game.”

Barbara made two movies abroad, Bad Blonde and The Four-Sided Triangle, both forgettable pictures but amusements to England's moviegoers. Smelling possible employment, Tom joined her in London where they resumed their fights, sexual marathons, and drinking binges. With nothing further offered in London, Barbara and Tom made the trip back to Hollywood. Another press conference was summoned long distance by Barbara, to be held as soon as she stepped off the plane. “Tom Neal,” she announced, “has taken over the management of my career, and I will only be accepting strong film roles…”

Neal's management of Barbara's career, like an ape groping a bunch of bananas, landed her the role of a cave girl in the pathetic, Sonny Tufts slapstick B-movie, Run for the Hills. Still talking shop, pictures pending, and negotiations she couldn't discuss, Barbara showed up in Las Vegas, gravitating to an unknown actor named Gordon Scott. Soon to be Hollywood's next Tarzan, Scott was an almost instant replay of Barbara's attraction to Tom.

Barbara’s relationship with Neal was “one long bloody spectacle” and labeled as “Glitterville’s Top Tramp” over the course of a few years, her name was linked with: George Raft, Bob Hope, Guy Madison, Gregory Peck, John Ireland, Ralph Meeker, Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, James Cagney and Lloyd Bridges. While the sex scandals helped bury Barbara’s career, her connections with organized crime ensured there would be no career comeback. Source: mostlyfiction.com

John O’Dowd: Barbara’s relationship with Tom Neal was another exercise in masochism, I believe. They were both externally rough and irreverent, and they seemingly had over-the-top sex drives that they indulged often with not a thought (or care) to the possible consequences. Neal was also said to have an explosive temper — easy to anger and to react in an often physically aggressive manner — and for some inexplicable reason Barbara seemed to enjoy needling him and invoking his anger.

Barbara had serious self-worth issues as well as some heavy psychological baggage and severe emotional problems. I have no doubt that she was mentally ill. I don’t think Barbara ever stood a chance at succeeding in relationships with either Franchot Tone or Tom Neal — or with anyone else, for that matter. She needed intense, long-term psychotherapy, something that she, sadly, never received. Source: www.altfg.com

Another Marlon Brando sidekick, New York actor Sam Gilman, ex-friend of Carlo Fiori, says, “Payton was a junkie, plain and simple. She was hooked solid like a tuna on a nail." As a result of his past association with Tom, Ulmer brought Barbara in for the part. “She was desperate,” Ulmer said, “the desperation that was right for the character and the picture… Barbara Payton was haunted.”

Hugo Haas, another low-budget film noir director, says, “Ulmer's picture had a sense of immediacy few major studios were capable of capturing. They do not have the range of freedom from restriction, nor the creativity. Later I wanted to use Barbara but there was all the trouble she was in and she had gained weight since she appeared in Murder Is My Beat … She was drunk when I talked to her and I believed she was beyond the point of being in control… I personally felt she seemed suicidal.”

Unlike Barbara, Tom drifted from Hollywood but wound up broke in Palm Springs. He got a job as a head waiter in a restaurant. Soon he became manager, and through a customer got the idea of venturing into a one-man landscaping business. “A glorified gardener,” he'd joke. “I wouldn't have been able to get a job in Hollywood to save my life.” Tom passed exams for a landscape architect and opened a small business in Palm Springs. Tom went to Chicago to see his son and when he returned unexpectedly the night of April Fool's Day, accused Gail of leaving him for another man and the last fight erupted into violence. Gail was shot dead from a single .45 bullet entering her left temple. Her body was on the couch when the police arrived but the gun was nowhere in sight. Tom was arrested and charged with murdering his wife.

Barbara was taken into custody for passing bad checks at the liquor counter of a Hollywood market. Making faces, “mugging” for the newsmen, she joked that the arrest was nothing more than a prank. She stopped kidding when the police escorted her to jail and booked her for the bad checks. Her ex-husband was some kind of hero, his plane had been shot down and he'd spent a long time in a Korean prison camp. He took temporary custody and filed in court for full custody.” John Payton's list of complaints included “neglect” of the child, routinely exposing him to “profane language, immoral conduct, unwholesome activities, and no moral education.” She lost custody of the boy and was granted only “monitored visitation rights.”

Speaking honestly, Barbara said she'd hit the skids. “I'm a drunk. I drink wine all day and I'm writing poetry.” She was turning cheap tricks to stay afloat—boulevard creeps and downtown jokers and losers on Main Street. She was shooting smack but denied she was an addict. Sergeant Joe Lesnick had worked narcotics when he busted Barbara “with the smack and a load already under her skin.” He told me, “We weren't interested in the two-bit tricks she was turning in that motel room—that was Vice. We were on her for junk, trying to nail her connection. It was kept out of the papers because a guy at the Hollywood Citizen felt sorry for her—with a lot of damn good reason… She was a sad, sad case.”

Mamie Van Doren: “I felt sorry for Barbara. So much pain… I knew her long enough to see the change from one of the most beautiful girls to ever make it into being a star, and with a unique and unusual personality. But she was someone misery seemed to love. She was a person that broke herself, and even broken and wasted, she didn't leave Hollywood. That's the most pitiful part of all of it, because she'd be there in your face —a reminder and a terrible testament of how you can fail in the system, and how it can devastate. But Hollywood was not to blame. One had to look deeply into Barbara —if one could stand getting that close to the abyss.” -"L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times" (2005) by John Gilmore

In "The Song is You", a novel by Megan E. Abbott (2008), we find some references to Barbara Payton's story interspersed within a noirish tale in the tradition of James Ellroy's 'The Black Dahlia' and Joyce Carol Oates's 'Blonde': "The Song Is You" conjures a heady brew of truth and speculation, of fact and pulp fiction, taking the reader on a dark tour of Tinseltown, from movie studios, gala premieres, and posh nightclubs to gangsters, blackmailing B-girls, and the darkest secrets that lie behind Hollywood's luminous façade. Apply a sly feminist sensibility to postwar Hollywood noir, and you get a sordid saga in which women normally consigned to one-note victimhood turn out to be alarmingly complicit in their own downfalls in this solid follow-up to 2005's lustrous 'Die a Little'. Gil Hopkins is a studio fixer who helped cover up a song-and-dance team's involvement in the disappearance of an aspiring actress. When a gal pal shows up years later demanding help, Hop tries coming to grips with the conscience he never knew he had. A fevered, schizophrenic exploration of L.A.'s darkest corners follows as Hop opens cans of worms only to work desperately to keep any from wriggling free. -Frank Sennett (Booklist)

"Truth was, as much he liked Barbara, he'd been growing weary of the type. The itchy colts, always fixing to run into a fence, a tree, anything. Barbara Payton, hell, she was all tits and mouth, and he'd been around her kind just long enough to know that no amount of 'potential' in the world could save from her deathless desire to ruin herself. In five years, maybe less, he knew there'd be crinsom spider veins on that milk face, either two handfuls too much or too little on those ivory-for-now, soon-to-be ashen-gray hips. These types always went to seed, you could hear it rattling around under their shiny hair every time they shook their heads." -"The Song Is You" (2008) by Megan Abbott

Elisha Cuthbert would be an ideal choice in the case of reviving Barbara Payton's life and memory through a future on-screen project.

Barbara Payton, July 1951

Elisha Cuthbert, October 16, 2012