BARBARA PAYTON - A TRAGIC LIFE THAT INCLUDED BOB HOPE? CAN'T STICK A MISTRESS LABEL ON HER!

BARARA PAYTON wrote this book, which I was unable to get a copy of and read, so what I'm about to tell you comes from reading multiple web sites that portray Payton as a film noir actress with a sordid life, beginning with being raped at 15. (And when a woman becomes a sex symbol in adult life, such horrible beginnings sexually are rarely identified as rape.) It's a matter of record that she eventually was arrested for prostitution and died young, about age 39, from the consequences of abusing her body with alcohol and drugs.   She wasn't found for a couple days, and she had lost teeth and grown obese and so she was found unrecognizable.

This was one woman who had a life too difficult to cope with, and though she has been linked with Bob Hope, it seems that she has been linked with so very many men that the label Mistress is very difficult to stick on her. at least not by me.

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Barbara Lee Redfield
November 16, 1927 in Minnesota - May 8th 1967 San Diego

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Like Marilyn Maxwell, and Marilyn Monroe,  Barbara grew up to become beautiful, had an early marriage that didn't last long, went from being a small town girl to Hollywood, and attempted to make a career in film. Unlike them, and unlike Bob Hope's wife Dolores DeFina Hope, she was considered trashy from the very beginning, and went downhill. She did not seem to have the penchant for raising herself up out of her circumstances that Monroe, who took classes and became an enthusiastic reader did, and I have yet to meet anyone who would deny that Dolores Hope became a terrific hostess and classy, sophisticated woman.

But an important aspect of defining a woman as a Mistress is her own intentions.  For instance, when in June 2013, I featured JILLIAN LAUREN : FROM NEW JERSEY TO THE SULTANS HAREM TO LITERARY SUCCESS : as MISTRESS OF THE MONTH, it wasn't that she had been a stripper, or had worked as an escort, but that when she got to the Harem it was her ambition to be the best, most wanted woman there, to elevate herself to being a mistress.  She was the mistress of Jefri Bolkiah and then his brother Hassanal Bolkaih, one man at a time.  She says she rose up in the ranks to be the #2 Girl.

Therefore, no matter how many men Barbara Payton had, be they husbands, affairs, or tricks, if she had a Relationship with Bob Hope and the ambition to be his Mistress, then maybe that label can stick after all.