Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, the Barbara Payton Story - Second Edition by John O'Dowd

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, the Barbara Payton Story - Second Edition by John O'Dowd

Author:John O'Dowd [O'Dowd, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Women, Performing Arts, Film, General
ISBN: 9781593934439
Google: GBx1rgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1593934432
Publisher: BearManor Media
Published: 2015-04-10T07:00:00+00:00


Barbara’s son John Lee was her devoted companion at her new home on North Beverly Drive. Courtesy of John Lee Payton

A circa-1970’s photo of rugged, B-film actor Mickey Knox, who dated Barbara for a time in 1954. Courtesy of Mickey Knox

By 1954, Barbara’s wild behavior was attracting every drug dealer, punk and gigolo in Hollywood. Courtesy of Shirley de Dienes/de Dienes Photographic Arts

Chapter Twenty-Four

Fur Coats and…Heroin?

With the onset of the Korean War, in October 1951 Barbara’s former husband, Captain John Payton, had been recalled to active duty with the Army Air Force, and was sent overseas. On Memorial Day, 1952, while navigating a B-26 bomber over Pyongyang, Korea, Payton’s airplane was shot down and he was captured and held in a Communist camp for sixteen months. His son, John Lee, recounts what his father has related to him about the experience: “Dad said his plane was shot down while flying the last mission of his tour. Before their capture, he and the other crew members who had survived the crash had made their way to the coast, within view of an island that was supposed to be a rescue point for downed aircrews. They couldn’t reach the island, however, and hoped somebody on our side would spot them. After three days, a local man saw them. They asked him to help and he said he would. Instead, he turned them in to the enemy.”

While in captivity at the prison camp in Pyongyang, John Payton and his fellow crew members did whatever they could to make the best of an ominous situation. “My father told me that they made cigarettes by frying grass and rolling it in strips of wallpaper,” John Lee says. “They were being held in an area of Korea where U.S. aircraft bombed frequently and when the planes would get too close my father and the guys would light up all their cigarettes because, as Dad put it, ‘We were damned sure not going to leave any behind if we were going to get killed.’”

After nearly a year and a half behind enemy lines, John Payton and his crew were finally released in late 1953. Upon his return to the States, he telephoned Barbara, who immediately expressed an interest in reviving their long-dormant relationship. On March 27, 1954, in one of her many attempts to remain hot news, the out-of-work actress called the press to announce her plans to remarry her ex-husband, “within the next two weeks.” Obviously, John was unaware of just how bad Barbara’s lifestyle had gotten, and probably hoped she was still the same girl he had loved in Compton.

Still in a revved-up, publicity-crazed mode of operation, Barbara told the L.A. Examiner, “The other day I asked John if he would like to come to Hollywood and see me and our son, Johnny. He said, ‘I’d like to come back to you both forever.’”

Barbara, the capricious, if somewhat cynical, romantic, loved to hear a declaration like that — at least for the short time it took to deliver it.



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