| # | Fact |
|---|
| 1 | Upon her death, her remains were interred at Cypress View Mausoleum and Crematory in San Diego, California. Her location plot is Chapel of Promise Niche 28 (downstairs) in the middle at the top right side. |
| 2 | Her parents were Erwin Lee "Flip" Redfield, a construction worker, and Mabel, a housewife. She had a younger brother, Frank. |
| 3 | As a child she was very athletic, especially enjoying wintertime activities like skiing, sledding and ice skating. |
| 4 | One of her early hobbies was cooking, which she was very good at. Later in life, she often cooked gourmet meals for her husbands and friends. |
| 5 | She had a six-month affair with Bob Hope in 1949 in which he paid for her to live in a luxurious apartment. The affair ended when she began making demands for more money. |
| 6 | Dated or was romantically linked to actor Mickey Knox, producer Howard Hughes, actor John Ireland, gangster Mickey Cohen, actor George Raft, entertainment attorney Greg Bautzer, actors Gregory Peck, Tom Conway, Woody Strode, Guy Madison, Gary Cooper, Steve Cochran, and Jerry Bialac. |
| 7 | In September, 1949, her boyfriend, Don Cougar, a movie extra and drug dealer, beat up her elderly landlady in the middle of the night in a dispute over the amount Barbara owed for rent. In 1950, Barbara and Cougar were called before a Federal Grand Jury to testify in the perjury trial of Stanley Adams. Adams was a drug dealer already serving time for the murder of Abe Davidian, an informant. Barbara and Cougar supplied Adams with an alibi, but it was weak, and Adams was found guilty of perjury. |
| 8 | In 1951, while already engaged to Franchot Tone, she proposed marriage to Tom Neal. She allowed him to move into her apartment, which Tone was paying the rent for. She kicked him out when Tone returned from out of town. After this, she went back and forth publicly from being engaged to Neal to being engaged to Tone. Neal and Tone eventually got into a terrific brawl, resulting in Tone lying in a coma in the hospital for 18 hours. After being married to Tone for 53 days, she walked out on him and returned to Neal. |
| 9 | She was the subject of a spread in Confidential Magazine in the early 1950s when then-fiancé Franchot Tone allegedly caught her in bed with Guy Madison. Tone later married her, despite the indiscretion. |
| 10 | During the shooting of Dallas (1950), the crew would celebrate the end of each day's filming by sending her petticoats up a flag pole. They would fly them over the Warner Brothers lot at half-staff. |
| 11 | The film industry finally shut her out when she began flaunting the interracial relationship she was involved in, with black actor Woody Strode. |
| 12 | Starting early in her career, she regularly used sleeping pills to sleep and speed to keep her weight down. |
| 13 | In May 1954, when her finances were low, it was alleged that she gave two fur coats, valued at thousands of dollars, to the owner of a bar so that he would tear up her $200 bar tab. |
| 14 | When Franchot Tone decided to divorce her, he had a private detective take pictures of her having sex with other men. He then sent the photos to all the major Hollywood studios, hoping they would ruin her career. |
| 15 | In October of 1955 she was arrested for passing bad checks at Hollywood's Liquor Locker. She pleaded indigence, was fined $100 and given a 60-day suspended jail sentence. |
| 16 | Her son, John Lee Payton Jr., was born on March 14, 1947. |
| 17 | In 1956, her ex-husband Payton accused her of neglecting their son, who had been living with Barbara since he was about four. A custody battle followed, with her ex-husband accusing her of exposing their son to "profane language, immoral conduct, notoriety, unwholesome activities and no moral education." The judge ruled in favor of the boy's father, and labeled Barbara as " . . . an unfit mother, not to mention a thoroughly confused and misguided young woman.". |
| 18 | On Feb. 7, 1962, she was arrested for prostitution when she propositioned an undercover cop in a Sunset Boulevard bar. |
| 19 | She was stabbed in 1962 by a drunk and received 38 stitches to heal the wound. |
| 20 | Her autobiography, "I Am Not Ashamed", was actually ghostwritten by someone else. According to her ghostwriter, Leo Guild, Barbara had one favor to ask. She didn't want to be paid in cash or check. She wanted payment in red wine because there were claims on her cash. |
| 21 | She died at her parents house. She had been living with them for the last several weeks of her life. |
| 22 | Her son was serving in Vietnam when she died. |
| 23 | Later in life, she carried a statue of St. Jude with her. |
| 24 | In 1965, she was arrested and charged with possession of heroin and a hypodermic syringe. The charges were dismissed, due to "insufficient evidence." |
| 25 | In 1964, she was arrested for shoplifting an outfit of clothing. |
| 26 | Eloped with and married her high school sweetheart, William Hodge. Her parents had the marriage annulled quickly. |
| 27 | Jessica Lange read Payton's autobiography "I Am Not Ashamed" while filming The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), figuring that the character of hard luck roadhouse waitress Cora perhaps drifted to Hollywood to become an actress. Coincidentally, both Lange and Payton were born in Cloquet, MN, and Payton starred in a stage version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" in 1953. |
$3 Million
