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Biopic of the 1950s film noir starlet Barbara Payton. The dazzlingly beautiful and talented blonde bombshell quickly ascended to leading roles in Hollywood. But her wild partying ways, alcoholism, and scandalous romances brought her career crashing down to back alley prostitution.

Barbara Redfield Payton's path to Hollywood began 2,000 miles, and a thousand lifetimes away, amid the towering pines and cold winds of Cloquet, Minn.

The gutsy, self-assured and fun-loving young girl from the Midwest hit Hollywood equipped with little more than a suitcase full of dreams, a ravenous hunger for fame, and a devastating beauty—only to see her dreams destroyed by a disastrous private life that led her straight through the gates of Hell.

In a short career packed with more bedlam than most can ever imagine, Barbara Payton rubbed shoulders with Hollywood's elite and its artistic geniuses, including master glamour photographer Andre de Dienes and film-noir icon Edgar G. Ulmer—as well as with a host of other unique characters, some who could have been lifted from the pages of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential.

In those days, plush nightclubs like Ciro's, Mocambo and the Trocadero were a hedonist's delight. The glitz and glamour of her surroundings washed over the young starlet like the foamy California surf.

A rowdy, unrestrained iconoclast trapped in a particularly staid period in American culture, Barbara Payton has come to symbolize the dark and sordid side of postwar Hollywood.

This quick-thinking, wild and reckless knockout lived her life as if there were no tomorrow. Hers is perhaps the ultimate cautionary tale. And yet, beneath Barbara's hard-partying Bad Girl veneer, there was more, much more.

Script Excerpt
Written by:
Format:
Screenplay
Starring Roles For:
Sydney Sweeney
Young Colin Farrell
Greg Kinnear
In the Vein Of:
A Beautiful Mind
Monster
L.A. Confidential
Posted:
02/04/2015
Updated:
11/28/2025
Author Bio:
Linda Boroff Film and Fiction Bio With References 650-996-2750 I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English. My coming-of-age short story published in Cornell University's literary magazine, Epoch, was optioned to Sony and director Brad Furman. I'm represented for literary, film and TV by agents Sandstone Artists—Tammy Hunt and Jamie Bradley Below is a link to my short stories published in Cornell University, Dartmouth, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, Gawker, and many other publications.

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Contest Results:
Table Read (Semifinalist, Park City) [2023]
CS Unique Voices (Semifinalist) [2020]
Creative World (Semifinalist) [2020]
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