Diversity Rules Magazine

3 Diversity Rules Magazine June 2016 David-Elijah Nahmod is a film critic and re- porter in San Francis- co. His articles appear regularly in The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter. David developed Post Traumatic Syndrome Disor- der (PTSD) after surviving gay conversion therapy as a child and has found that many in the LGBT community suffer from severe, often untreated emotional disorders due to the extreme anti-gay traumas they endured. This column chronicles his journey. Hollywood is perhaps the most evil place on Earth. Its a town run by an industry that chews people up, spits them out, skins them alive, then walks away laugh- ing. Few Hollywood horror stories were more disturbing than that of Barbara Payton. As I recounted in an ear- lier edition of this column, Payton (1927-1967) was a rising Hollywood star in 1950, co-starring with screen legend James Cagney in the film noir classic Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. She made Murder Is My Beat, her last film, a mere five years later, after which she was blacklisted from the indus- try. During the 1960s she was a low rent prostitute charging five dollars a trick. Shortly before she died from alcohol abuse at age 39, Payton made headlines one final time when she was found sleeping in a dumpster in Los Angeles. Many have said that Payton's rapid and spectacular fall was of her own making--her hard partying lifestyle and homewrecking affairs, which she flaunted publicly, didn't sit well with movie moguls or with the public during the conservative 1950s. In 1963 Payton published a partially ghost written auto- biography titled I Am Not Ashamed--she was paid $2000 for the book and reportedly spent the money on cheap booze. at long out of print book is again available in a brand new edition courtesy of Spurl Editions. As legend has it, Payton told her story to press agent/gossip colum- nist Leo Guild, who recorded her somewhat rambling words and put them together in as coherent a fashion as he could. It's believed that Guild embellished many of the more lurid elements of Payton's sad tale in order to make the book more "marketable." What emerges is a portrait of a deeply unstable wom- an in turmoil. roughout the book, Payton speaks openly of her many sexual liaisons, freely admitting that she used her body to get what she wanted--she had no qualms about dating married men and says so. She rambles quite a bit--her thoughts jump from one topic to another and she's rarely consistent. Early on she claims to never watch television or go to the mov- ies--she later says that one afternoon she spent her last dollar to go watch herself in a theatrical revival of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. She also claims to have turned down a film offer from the acclaimed character actor Burgess Meredith. Payton would have her readers be- lieve that she felt "sorry" for Meredith and that she preferred to turn five dollar tricks in her filthy, roach infested apartment. It's hard to tell which anecdotes are true and which were created in the dark recesses of Barbara Payton's deeply troubled mind. What becomes clear through- out I Am Not Ashamed is the obvious fact that Barba PTSD Memoir - Con't on page 21 If You Could Read My Mind Barbara Payton's I Am Not Ashamed By David-Elijah Nahmod

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