Best Book of the Year - Classic Images, 2007 Best Cover of the Year - Classic Images, 2007 Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story is the heartbreaking saga of the wild and free-spirited actress who hit Hollywood in the late 1940s, equipped with little more than a suitcase full of dreams, a ravenous hunger for fame and a devastating beauty---only to see each one of her dreams destroyed by a disastrous private life that led her straight through the gates of Hell. Gutsy, vulnerable--and doomed--Barbara Payton blazed across the motion picture stratosphere in record-time, only to collapse in a catastrophic free-fall from which she would never recover. BearManor Media is proud to announce the long-awaited second edition of the authoritative and popular biography, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story. Even against a backdrop of today's celebrity excess, Payton remains unchallenged as Hollywood's quintessential cautionary tale. Her public escapades, scandals, wrong turns, and eventual tragic demise still fuel articles in print and on the Internet, but John O'Dowd's riveting biography remains the gold standard for detail and authenticity. O'Dowd spent over ten years researching, interviewing, writing and aggregating a huge photo archive on the tragic, stunningly beautiful film noir actress. Early on, Payton was considered by critics to have acting talent that could have made her a major star. During her steep rising trajectory, she was the mink-swathed lover of Bob Hope, Marlon Brando, George Raft, Guy Madison and many others. She co-starred with James Cagney in the hit film, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, but the irascible Jack Warner also punished her with the title role in Bride of the Gorilla (the film remains a cult classic, thanks to Payton's smoldering beauty and dead-on game performance). Eventually, Payton's mythic, self-directed fury destroyed all opportunities and second chances. Alcohol addiction and lurid concurrent affairs with tough-guy gigolo Tom Neal (Detour) and suave second-leading man Franchot Tone delivered mortal career wounds. She provided reliable cover grist for the sleazerag Confidential and managed to attract the predatory wrath of all three "hag columnists," Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Florabel Muir. Within a few years, Payton had plummeted from $10,000 per week stardom to $5-a-trick prostitution along the boulevards of Hollywood's "dream dump." As her descent deepened, she dictated a rambling, barely coherent autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed, to a hack writer in exchange for a few cases of rotgut wine. At age 39, her road dead-ended from liver and heart failure.