Payton's hard drinking and hard living ultimately destroyed her physically and emotionally. Celebrity bartender and self-proclaimed hustler Scotty Bowers has alleged for a time she was regarded as a high-class sex worker much in demand. From 1955 to 1963, her alcoholism and drug addiction led to multiple skirmishes with the law, which included arrests for passing bad checks and eventually an arrest on Sunset Boulevard for prostitution. Payton was offered the option of being admitted to a detoxification unit, and said, "I'd rather drink and die." She ultimately died of heart and liver failure at the age of 39.
Barbara Payton wrote an autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed, published in 1963. She died four years later. John O'Dowd wrote a dynamite biography about the actress, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story, in 2007. So it comes as no surprise that John O'Dowd would clean out his files and produce a lavish 600 page hardcover coffee table book with archival photos spanning the life and career of Barbara Payton. Every page is full color and glossy and from the first page to the last you get a superb visual of her life.
Never have I seen a coffee table this large in size. Compared to the price I have paid for other coffee table books, this one is a bargain.
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