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, Minn.
As a child, she was very athletic, especially enjoying wintertime activities like skiing, sledding, and ice skating.
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.
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.
Eloped with and married her high school sweetheart, William Hodge. Her parents had the marriage annulled quickly.
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.
Her parents were Erwin Lee "Flip" Redfield, a construction worker, and Mabel, a housewife. She had a younger brother, Frank.
Her son was serving in Vietnam when she died.
Her son, John Lee Payton Jr., was born on March 14, 1947.
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.
In 1956, her ex-husband Payton accused her of neglecting their son, who had been living with Barbara since he was about 4. 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."
In 1964, she was arrested for shoplifting an outfit of clothing.
In 1965, she was arrested and charged with possession of heroin and a hypodermic syringe. The charges were dismissed, due to "insufficient evidence."
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.
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.
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.
Later in life, she carried a statue of St. Jude with her.
On Feb. 7, 1962, Payton was arrested for prostitution when she propositioned an undercover cop in a Sunset Boulevard bar.
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.
She died at her parents house. She had been living with them for the last several weeks of her life.