Source: Mr. X via Crazy Days and Nights
This B list actor has been discussed in this space numerous times.
He was a convicted murderer who was also caught up with the walking blind item of her day.
There has been a new discovery about the actor.
He had a s.e.x.u.a.l relationship with the Black Dahlia.
Tom Neal
Barbara Payton
Elizabeth Short
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Barbara Payton – what a waste.
One of Hollywood’s truly tragic stories was that of Barbara Payton, a pretty and talented actress who experienced both the highs and lows of life in Tinsel Town. Just sixteen years after starring alongside Gregory Peck in the western feature Only the Valiant (1951) she was dead. Her body was so ravaged by hard living and liver failure by then it was all but unrecognisable, yet she was only 39 years old.
A run-down of Barbara’s private life reads like the script of a ‘B’ movie. She was born in 1927 in Cloquet, Minnesota (Jessica Lange’s home town) and moved with her folks to Texas when she was eleven. Four years later the father of a school friend raped her in a dry bathtub while the man’s family celebrated his surprise birthday party downstairs. That same year she eloped with her high school boyfriend, but her parents quickly had the marriage annulled. At seventeen she married an Air Force captain and moved to California where she took up modelling. The couple separated two years later, but not before Barbara gave birth to a son in 1947.
Universal-International put her under contract in 1948, but dropped her in 1949 after learning of her six-month illicit affair with the very married Bob Hope. Hope had put her up in a luxurious apartment, but the relationship disintegrated when she began demanding money from him as well. Over the following 12 months she embarked upon affairs with attorney Greg Bautzer, gangster Mickey Cohen, actors John Ireland, Gregory Peck, George Raft, a couple of Sunset Strip playboys, and many, many others.
In 1950, Warner Brothers and Cagney Productions suddenly contracted her at $5,000 a week. Barbara had met Jimmy Cagney a couple of years earlier, but the rumour mill contended she slept with his brother William to get the contract, and not with Jimmy. Around this time her divorce came through from her Air Force captain. She celebrated her freedom by becoming engaged to actor Franchot Tone. Then she nailed both her co-stars when she made Dallas opposite Gary Cooper and Steve Cochran. Barbara liked men and she liked sex. She made Trapped with Lloyd Bridges in 1949, a pretty solid film noir, and had a brief fling with him, referring to the father of Jeff and Beau as ‘a champion ruiner of girls in Hollywood’. Lloyd had a heavy rep.
In October 1950 her ‘friend’ Stanley Adams, a suspected murderer and dope addict, was charged with perjury. Barbara bravely, but ill-advisedly, went to bat for him and Warners placed her on temporary suspension after she testified for the defence and earned herself and the studio a lot of adverse publicity. One year later Tone allegedly caught her en flagrante with the married Guy Madison at her apartment. Before the feathers had stopped flying she told reporters she was ditching Tone for her newest lover – not Madison, but B-movie tough guy Tom Neal!
In September 1951, Neal attacked Tone outside Barbara’s apartment and beat him so viciously that the matinee idol required extensive plastic surgery to his damaged face. On September 28, much to the tabloids’ delight, Tone and Payton were wed anyway. Just seven weeks later the marriage was in tatters as scatter-brained Barbara went back to Neal, although not directly. Along the way she paused to dally with George Sanders’ alcoholic brother Tom Conway. She and Conway were shooting the woeful Bride of the Gorilla together. – Source
The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel: Black Dahlia Connection Explained
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel references “The Black Dahlia” Elizabeth Short, so what’s the connection to the Elisa Lam case? Both true crime stories are linked by a downtown Los Angeles location and have been extensively covered in pop culture. Ultimately, the two women are mostly connected by Hollywood lore rather than actual evidence.
In January 1947, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short disappeared after being seen at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Six days later, her mutilated corpse was found in the Leimert Park section of the city. Over the decades, the unsolved murder case has perplexed real-life investigators and online sleuths (like those in Crime Scene), while also serving as a cautionary tale about the dangers of Los Angeles, especially for young actresses. Approximately 66 years after Short’s disappearance and death, a 21-year-old Canadian named Elisa Lam similarly went missing in downtown Los Angeles, just days after checking into the Cecil Hotel. Her body was discovered approximately three weeks later inside a water tank atop the building. When police released surveillance of Lam acting erratically inside a hotel elevator, the clip subsequently went viral and sparked conspiracy theories about what actually happened to the young traveler. Crime Scene explores the most popular theories before reaching a sobering conclusion about Lam’s mental health issues.
The Black Dahlia is referenced in Crime Scene because Short allegedly visited the Cecil Hotel bar on the evening of her disappearance. In episode 3 of the Netflix docuseries, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” online sleuths identify a suspect in the possible murder of Lam, a death metal musician from Mexico known as Morbid. The shock rocker once posted a video of his experiences at the Cecil Hotel, and he also posted a separate video with images of serial killer Ted Bundy and The Black Dahlia in the background. Incidentally, amateur detectives decided that Morbid must’ve had an encounter with Lam at the Cecil Hotel, murdered her, and then referenced the killing in his art.
As it turns out, Morbid visited the Cecil Hotel one year prior to Lam’s death, and has an alibi that clears his name. His interest in the infamous hotel and The Black Dahlia is part of his death metal artistic persona, rather than an indication of malicious or violent tendencies. The musician, whose real name is Pablo C. Vergara, appears on-camera in Crime Scene (without make-up) and reveals that the online harassment he received following Lam’s disappearance led to a suicide attempt.
The Black Dahlia may have visited the Cecil Hotel bar at some point in her life, but there’s no evidence to support the theory that she was there on the night of her disappearance. The rumor derives from a police report by LAPD officer Myril McBride, who noted that she encountered a young woman who left a bar on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles and claimed that someone had threatened to kill her. When McBride saw photos of Short, she reportedly didn’t identify her as the woman she spoke with on the evening in question. It’s also worth noting that McBride didn’t specifically reference the Cecil Hotel bar in her report — still, the legend has become that Short did indeed visit the infamous location before disappearing. The woman that McBride spoke with also stated the she planned to meet with her parents that evening, which contrasts with the fact that The Black Dahlia had been estranged from her family. – Source
Read more on these Tags: Barbara Payton, Elizabeth Short, Old Hollywood, Tom Neal
