Suzy Says

It’s a good thing we enjoyed Friday so much. It’s been pouring ever since. Yesterday the weather was so depressing that I bagged on going to town with my sister and ate Pop Tarts and watched “Gilmore Girls” instead, occasionally interrupted by Mark chain sawing falling or fallen trees.

You’d think it was February around here.

As you must have noticed by now, dark and stormy weather calls for dark and stormy movies. Last night’s double feature featured two ladies who were more scandalous in real life than any character they played on screen.
Barbara Payton

First up was “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” (1950), starring Jimmy Cagney and Barbara Payton. Cagney plays a – wait for it – gangster recently escaped from prison. In doing so, he kills off the lovely Barbara’s brother, one of his aiders and abettors, though he understandably fails to mention this minor fact after he gets a look at her.

There’s a breathtaking scene where Cagney beats Payton in the face with, oddly, a bath towel, she swoons into his arms in masochistic bliss, and they share a passionate kiss. No wonder the film was banned in Ohio. That scene still shocks more than all the murders in the rest of the film, and there’s no shortage.

I was surprised by the power of Cagney’s personality. He’s a short, funny-looking guy, but with such intensity and charisma that you can’t stop watching him whenever he’s on screen. He personally selected the 23 year old Barbara Payton to be his co-star, and her sultry beauty just glows. White heat indeed.

A year after this movie was made, Barbara was engaged to Franchot Tone, one of Joan Crawford’s many exes, but was also carrying on an affair with actor Tom Neal, a former college boxing champion. The two men brawled over Barbara, and Tone ended up in a coma. When he recovered, he and Barbara got married, but she left him a few weeks later for…Tom Neal. That lasted a whole four years, much longer than Neal’s two wives (or any of Barbara’s four marriages). One died of cancer a year after giving birth to his son, and Neal shot the other in the head, ultimately serving ten years for manslaughter. He died a year after being released from prison.

In the meantime, Barbara’s life was in a downward spiral. Just five years after making “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye”, she was arrested for a string of offenses: passing bad checks, public drunkenness, drug abuse, and prostitution. She died of liver and heart failure at the age of 39.

Gloria Grahame

Next up was “The Big Heat” (1953), directed by Fritz Lang and starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame. Ford plays a detective trying to shut down the mob who killed his wife (played by Jocelyn Brando, sister of Marlon, who managed to have a long and happy life in real life). Grahame plays the head gangster’s moll, hard-drinking, tough-talking, dripping furs and jewels. When the virtuous Ford points out that these things are the proceeds of crime, she says, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.”

Grahame becomes a witness against her lover eventually, and in keeping with our sado-masochistic theme, he scalds her face with hot coffee, fortunately off-screen, though the damage is later revealed in all its horror.

This role was just one in a series of sexy, troubled roles Grahame played, starting with town sweetheart Violet in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and these roles weren’t much of a stretch for Grahame, who specialized in stormy romances and failed marriages in real life, too. While married to director Nicholas Ray, she had an affair with his then thirteen year old son, whom she later married. She had children by both men, making them…cousins and half brothers?

This scandal took a toll on the Oscar-winning actress’ career, as did some unsuccessful plastic surgery which caused scarring and nerve damage. She died of cancer at the age of 57, after refusing surgery.

Life really can be stranger – and more tragic – than fiction.