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Chapter 1
For
a country girl from a small midwestern town, Barbara Payton
made quite a name for herself. Born to Erwin Lee and Mabel
Redfield, on November 16, 1927, in Cloquet, Minnesota, it's
been said that Barbara Lee Redfield was an amazingly gorgeous
baby, with hair so blonde it was almost snow-white, and the
deepest, most beautiful blue eyes. "Lee" and Mabel
operated a combination ice cream parlor and small restaurant
in a building on the corner of Avenue C and Arch Street, in
the west end of town, and it was in their modest apartment
above the restaurant that their daughter Barbara and younger
son Frank entered the world.
By
all outward appearances, Barbara's early years in Minnesota
were carefree, if nondescript. A true child of the North Country,
she spent the summer days bicycling beside the crystalline
lakes and lush fields that surrounded the area, and in the
winter, she and her friends went sledding in the hills above
the Cloquet water tower. Barbara took an early interest in
cooking and decorating and soon excelled in these areas. Indeed,
they were skills she would carry with her for the rest of
her life. On the surface, at least, it appeared to be an idyllic
life for the little girl. "She was a very bright and
sweet child," says longtime Cloquet resident Mildred
Golden. "A happy child. Always smiling…always laughing."
"I
especially loved the winters," Barbara later wrote of
her childhood in Cloquet. "The cold, crisp Minnesota
winters, with a blue-black sky at night and a billion stars
you could reach up and grab by the handful. I think I made
a wish on every one of those stars."
Seeking
to better their lives, The Redfields relocated to Odessa,
Texas when Barbara was 11, and Lee and Mabel opened a motel
called The Antlers Court. By the time their daughter entered
Odessa Junior High, Barbara was a stunning sight to behold.
Mildred Golden remembers, "Her eyes were a striking shade
of crystal-blue, and she had a gorgeous complexion. Even as
a young girl, Barbara turned heads wherever she went."
Barbara
had an engaging, if precocious, disposition, and a wildness
that first became apparent at 15, when she eloped with an
older boy from high school named William Hodge. Although her
parents quickly annulled the marriage, Barbara's restlessness
with her small town life had taken hold and she married for
the second time at 17. Her new husband was a good-looking,
22-year old Air Force Captain named John Payton. Known to
his friends as "Jack", he was-according to Barbara's
brother, Frank-"an upright, All-American guy whose family
owned a successful automobile sales business in Rockford,
Illinois." The newlyweds eventually moved west, to Compton,
California, where Barbara gave birth to their son, John Lee
Payton, on February 14, 1947.
Though
devoted to her baby, Barbara had harbored a desire to break
into show business from the time she was a child in Minnesota,
and it wasn't long before she was declaring--to all who would
listen--that she was going to be a movie star. This caused
a great deal of dissension in her marriage, and in 1948, Barbara
again succumbed to her impetuous nature and left her husband to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. (While she retained custody of her son, Barbara and John Payton remained separated and were divorced in 1950.)
Following
her move to L.A., Barbara carhopped at Stan's Drive-In, on
the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where
she made some contacts in the modeling industry. Soon afterward,
she signed with Rita Leroy, a second-tier agent in town, and
by late 1948 Barbara was doing a lot of print work for various
businesses on the Sunset Strip. This, in turn, led to a job
appearing with seven other aspiring starlets and burlesque
comics Benny Fields and Henny Youngman in a baggy-pants comedy
revue at Slapsy Maxie's nightclub on Beverly Boulevard in
Hollywood.
It
was here that William Goetz, production chief at Universal-International
Studios, first saw Barbara. Impressed with her onstage poise
as Benny Fields' primary foil, and beguiled by her exceptional
beauty, Goetz snatched her up and, in spite of Barbara's total
lack of acting experience, signed her to the studio in early
1949.
With
a starting salary of $100 per week, Barbara was placed in
Universal's contract stable of stock-players, which included
Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Shelley Winters, Jeff Chandler,
Donna Martell, Howard Duff, James Best, Peggy Dow and several
other promising young neophytes. Over the next six months,
Barbara posed for countless publicity photos in U-I's portraits
gallery, and along with her fellow greenhorns, studied with
the well-respected Sophie Rosenstein, the studio's resident
acting coach.
Barbara's
tempestuous Hollywood journey had begun…
TO
BE CONTINUED….
John
O'Dowd
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