Special Guest Blogger: Barbara Payton

If you’ve heard my name, it’s likely been whispered with a sympathetic cluck of the tongue or, more likely, a lascivious gasp. I’m the cautionary tale, right? The blonde bombshell who lit up the silver screen for a hot minute and then spectacularly combusted. The girl who had it all and then frittered it away on men, booze and a series of decisions so daft they’d make a reality TV producer blush.
And you know what? They’re not entirely wrong. It was a bit of a carry-on but they miss the best part that it was quite often a bloody good laugh.
Let’s start at the peak, shall we? Hollywood in the late ‘40s. The Studios owned you, body and soul. They told you what to wear, who to date, and what to think. They looked at me and saw a set of cheekbones that could cut glass and a certain rebellious sparkle. I was their next big thing. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, with the divine James Cagney. I was a contract player at Paramount, a bonafide starlet. It was all very glamorous and utterly exhausting.
Then came the men. Oh, blimey, the men. The history books love a good scrap over a dame, and I gave them a humdinger. Franchot Tone and Tom Neal. Two handsome, successful actors who decided the best way to win my affections was to beat each other to a pulp in a street. Honestly, chaps, was all that necessary? All that over a silly girl from Minnesota who was just trying to find a decent gin house in this town? It was romantic, I suppose, in a ridiculously Neanderthal way. Franchot won the fight and my hand in marriage. Tom got a suspended sentence and a starring role in my next film. See? Everyone’s a winner.
That, my dears, was the turning point. Not the fight itself, but the fact that my life had become more interesting as gossip than as cinema. The public didn’t want to see me act, they wanted to watch the real-life drama. And who was I to disappoint?
This is where my so-called fall from grace, kicks in. They talk about the alcoholism, the dead-end roles, the arrests for shoplifting and, yes, prostitution. They paint a picture of a broken woman, a ghost haunting Sunset Strip before she was even a proper ghost.
And yes, my fondness for a martini (or five) before lunch turned out to be a rather poor long-term career strategy. My bank account started to look less like a vault and more like a sad, empty teacup. So, I made some money on the side, and on my back, and all fours for men who were willing to pay me. A girl’s got to eat, hasn’t she? I was always a terrible businesswoman but there’s a certain freedom in hitting rock bottom. Once you’ve sold your mink coat for a fraction of its worth and spent the proceeds on a bottle of hooch and a packet of fags, you stop caring what the gossip columns say.
I wasn't a cautionary tale, that’s so dreary, my real legacy isn’t in a dusty film can,  it's in the glorious, messy, human truth of it all. I loved too hard, drank too much and made mistakes with the enthusiasm of a puppy chasing its own tail but I wasn't a victim, I was a participant.
Which brings me, rather unceremoniously, to the end which was of heart and liver failure aged 39 which frankly was a bit of an anticlimax after all the drama. The final curtain fell with a whimper, not a bang.