Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story is the heartbreaking saga of the wild and free-spirited actress who hit Hollywood in the late 1940s, equipped with little more than a suitcase full of dreams, a ravenous hunger for fame and a devastating beauty---only to see each one of her dreams destroyed by a disastrous private life that led her straight through the gates of Hell. Gutsy, vulnerable--and doomed--Barbara Payton blazed across the motion picture stratosphere in record-time, only to collapse in a catastrophic free-fall from which she would never recover.
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102 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hard read for me, but the whole story at last.,
This review is from: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (Paperback)
Right off, let me note that this book is about my mother, Barbara Payton, so of course I have a strong reason to care about it. My initial reluctance to be interviewed by Mr. O'Dowd, and my deep doubt about the use for another person out to make money off my mother made it a hard sell. But, I came to know John and trust him to tell the whole story, to tell it from all sides, to research it to an extent that would be laudable for any biography, and to include the good and the bad, leaving it for the reader to reach his or her own conclusion. I love my mother and have always been proud of her, but I'm realistic that her life was mostly great success and great failure. The author has done a good job. I found the book a pleasure and an agony to read, but I'm grateful for it and hope you will give it a read. It is a fine piece of work. - John Lee Payton
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hollywood horror story with heart,
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This review is from: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (Paperback)
"Unputdownable" is a clunky word that turns up far too often in book reviews, but it's applicable to this meticulously researched bio of Payton, who for a short time was one of Hollywood's golden blondes--and was for a painfully long time among the most miserable and dissolute of Hollywood's forgotten lost souls. O'Dowd has contacted relatives, former spouses, and many other primary sources to relate what will be the definitive account of the life of this clever, beautiful, and ambitious woman who was done in by her own demons, genetic predispositions, and impulsive, incautious behavior. To O'Dowd's credit, he makes Payton's sudden rise to fame as compelling as her crash-landing; seldom has an actress catapulted so rapidly from near-obscurity to starring roles in A-pictures opposite the likes of James Cagney and Gregory Peck. The book isn't just the final word on Payton, but the last word on her handsome but wretched consort, actor Tom "Detour" Neal, and the vicious love triangle whose third party was film star Franchot Tone. In the end, the intertwined relationships annihilated Payton and Neal's careers, and almost literally killed Tone (in one of the most infamous and brutal fistfights in Hollywood history). Payton's subsequent decline is awful, and Neal's dissipation and early death are nearly as hideous. O'Dowd writes with a relentless vigor that often shades to purple, and can't quite make up his mind whether Payton & Neal's downfalls were the results of our stars' flaws, a rapacious and uncaring Hollywood system, or that old standby, fate. O'Dowd's uncertainty, though, emerges as a positive element that allows the reader to decide the truth--if any meaningful truth at all exists in this tangled, obsessive story. The comments of Barbara Payton's son, elsewhere on this page, are touching because they reflect his mother's ability to love, and her inability to provide responsible care. In all, a remarkably affecting biography, handsomely produced by Bear Manor.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unforgettable!,
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This review is from: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (Paperback)
This is an enthralling biography that you will read again and again. Right off the bat, this is NOT your usual cut-and-paste biography. The author, John O'Dowd, has spent years researching and interviewing everyone he could find who knew Barbara Payton. The book is filled with rare photographs of the doomed star with even one snapshot taken just days before her tragic death. The result is a nearly 400 page study of a vastly complicated woman who was years ahead of her time. If she were alive today, she would be celebrated by the media as just another Anna Nicole Smith but with much more talent. I had always thought Frances Farmer probably had the most grim and tragic life since she was committed to the horrors of a state mental hospital by her mother during Farmer's peak years. Yet, you follow Payton from her childhood to her phenomenal luck in Hollywood, at the beginning, and you're amazed at how she early on began showing signs of self-destructive behavior. Even when she was signed by James Cagney to co-star with him in "Kiss Tomorrow, Goodbye," Payton was already getting a notorious reputation for wild promiscuity on the set. She loved sex and saw nothing wrong in having it from crew members to cast members. Her nymphomania grew to nightmarish proportions as her success brought her a $10,000 a week contract. On screen, she had all the makings of a true star. Her blonde, Nordic beauty, the crystal blue hue of her eyes and knock-out figure brought her comparisons with Marilyn Monroe. But as several people told the author, Payton was already showing alarming signs of recklessness. She hung out with drug and criminal figures and the most shady personalities on the fringe of Hollywood. After her affair with Bob Hope ended, she blackmailed him for tens of thousands of dollars and to turn the knife, she gave an interview with a scandal magazine detailing her sexual affair with Hope and laughed at his sexual prowess. When Universal wanted to sign her for a major contract, she showed up for their luncheon meeting with several of the studios major executives and then ended the meeting by walking out--leaving the executives enraged. She laughed about it later to her friends, even when it was pointed out to her that she had burned her bridges forever with Universal and word got around to the other major studios. The author goes into the scandalous affair between her and bad boy, Tom Neal, and writes how Neal nearly murdered Hollywood icon, Franchot Tone, who wanted to marry Payton. She played the two men against each other and was reportedly thrilled to have them fighting over her. But even after she married the much battered Tone, she kept seeing O'neal and laughed about it to the media. You keep watching Payton making one major mistake after another--burning all of her bridges, refusing to control her notorious promiscuity and refusing to stop being seen with filmdom's most shady characters. Her descent into prostitution is painful to read and you keep thinking: she went from $10,000 a week movie starlet to a $5 a trick prostitute, living on Los Angele's most notorious skid row. She was being kept by a black pimp who beat her relentlessly, knocking out many of her front teeth and leaving her with hideous black and blue bruises. This is a fascinating study of failed stardom and a beautifully blonde woman who made it a habit of making the wrong choices. At the end, you wonder why she insisted on staying in Hollywood--when she was offered many chances by her few friends to begin a new life. This would make a dynamite movie but I can't think of any recognizable female actress today who could really do Payton justice. In her own way, she was bigger than life. She was definitely someone who could have benefitted from psychiatric therapy or institutional care. Payton remains an enigma--someone who seemed hell bent on ending her last days in a living hell.
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