The words "notorious," "infamous," and "flamboyant" have all been used to describe Hollywood beauty Barbara Payton. A Warner Bros. contract player of the early 1950s, Payton had a promising start in motion pictures before taking a free-fall dive into an abyss of degradation and obscurity.

Born Barbara Lee Redfield in Cloquet, Minnesota to restaurateurs Erwin Lee "Flip" Redfield and the former Mabel Todahl, Payton headed to Hollywood in 1945 in search of a career in movies and was eventually placed under contract by Universal Studios where she began appearing in bit parts.

Her acting career, begun in 1949, was over in just seven years, and after only twelve films. It had, in effect, been crushed by the less than favorable reputation she had cultivated as an inveterate, loose-living "party girl." The tabloids and newspapers of the day kept her name in the public eye, for awhile, in a series of embarrassing headlines, until she finally faded out of view. She resurfaced in 1962, accompanied by even worse headlines that exposed her hellish life on the mean streets of L.A. Despite the popularity of her 1963 tell-all biography, I Am Not Ashamed, Barbara Payton's career never recovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Payton

FILMOGRAPHY

Murder Is My Beat (1955) .... Eden Lane 

Run for the Hills (1953) .... Jane Johnson 

Bad Blonde (1953)... 

Great Jesse James Raid, The (1953) .... Kate 

Four Sided Triangle (1953) .... Lena/Helen 

Flanagan Boy, The (1953) .... Lorna Vecchi 

Drums in the Deep South (1951) .... Kathy Summers 

Bride of the Gorilla (1951) .... Mrs. Dina Van Gelder 

Only the Valiant (1951) .... Cathy Eversham 

Dallas (1950) .... Flo, Brant Marlow's Woman 

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) .... Holiday Carleton 

Pecos Pistol, The (1949) .... Kay McCormick 

Trapped (1949) .... Meg Dixon, alias Laurie Fredericks 

Once More, My Darling (1949) (uncredited) .... Girl Photographer 

Silver Butte (1949) .... Rita Landon