Dear Ally Povey of Crossett AR,
Thank you for your email regarding Barbara Payton’s
performance in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.
While we applaud your defense of the film, we were puzzled by your reference to
Payton’s “husband, Paul Kelly.” Ms. Payton was indeed married four times, but
not once did she tie the knot with actor Paul Kelly, who to our knowledge never
crossed paths with the deeply troubled blonde bombshell.
However, after ruminating about this for an hour, staff
writer Sally Handly deduced you confused Paul Kelly with Tom Neal. Although he
never married Barbara Payton, Neal had a highly-publicized affair with the
then-23 year-old actress, and infamously beat her fiancé, Franchot Tone, to within
an inch of his life.
We imagine most cinephiles would balk at fashioning such a
seemingly far-fetched connection between Kelly and Neal, but the more Sally
(and we) thought about it, the more your mistaking one for the other makes
perfect sense:
1) Both have first names for last names
2) Both died
of heart trouble, and at nearly the same age (Kelly at 57, Neal at 58)
3) Both
got caught up in ugly, sensationalistic love triangles, viciously beating the
snot out of their competition (Neal put Franchot Tone in the hospital, while
Kelly actually killed Ray Raymond over Dorothy McKay, in an incident
harrowingly recreated in TV’s Hollywood
Babylon with Tony Curtis)
4) They
really do look alike:
Paul Kelly
Tom Neal
5) Both appeared in exploitation movies about under-aged kid-sisters, and within a year of each other (Kelly in 1940’s Girls Under 21, and Neal in 1941’s Under Age, with the sublime Nan Grey, best remembered for Dracula’s Daughter’s famous “lesbian” scene)
6) Both
men had seminal turns in films noir: Neal as the doomed Al Roberts in Edgar
Ulmer’s Detour (1945), and Paul Kelly
as the schizophrenic “Man” in Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire (1947).
Stark and nightmarish, Detour is arguably Ulmer's masterpiece, due in no small part to Neal’s beautifully
deliberate, taut performance as Al Roberts. Roberts is the epitome of ruin, a man who, through
little more than a couple of bad decisions and plain dumb luck, winds up at the
mercy of Vera (the excellent Ann Savage) who is either seriously damaged
goods, totally psychotic, or both. By the time he caves out of desperation in Vera's game of chicken near the movie's end (called as much by Vera, eyes bulging with total insanity), Roberts' hopelessness verily oozes out of the screen, as both he and the audience realize the bottom has permanently fallen out, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.
But it is
Paul Kelly’s performance in Crossfire
that should be required viewing for anyone who enjoys watching movies. A meditation on the toxicity of anti-Semitism
now studied primarily by film noir buffs, Crossfire
was, at the time of its release, a much-celebrated movie, earning five Academy
Award nods, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best
Supporting Actor. Kelly’s all-too-brief appearance at the picture’s midway
point is the purest, most beautiful mindfuck you will ever beg for more of, a stunning
cinematic gas lighting beautifully framed by DP J. Roy Hunt (who also shot
1949’s Mighty Joe Young) that, just by
virtue of its being in Crossfire,
makes it one of a handful of indispensable film noirs. If you're like us at Ranting Russell, you watch this scene two or three times in a row just to bask in Paul Kelly's total genius.
Kelly also has the
unique distinction of acting alongside all three King Kong principals. In a five-year span, from 1937 to 1942, the
Brooklyn-born actor appeared with Fay Wray in 1942’s Not a Ladies’ Man, Bruce Cabot in 1940’s Girls Under 21, and Robert Armstrong in 1939’s The Flying Irishman, and even had a turn with Son of Kong’s Helen Mack in 1937’s Fit for a King.
Not surprisingly for
the Studio System era of Hollywood, Neal and Kelly appeared in four movies
together: Within the Law and 6,000 Enemies (both 1939), Flight Command (1940), and Flying Tigers (1942).
Kelly did
25 months in San Quentin for manslaughter for Ray Raymond’s 1927 death, got
out, and wasted no time putting his life back in high gear. He quickly married Dorothy McKay (who died tragically
nine years later in a car wreck), and went on to a solid quarter-century career
in movies and TV.
Tom Neal
didn’t fair nearly as well. Unemployable after breaking Franchot Tone’s nose
and giving him a concussion in 1951, the Detour
star moved to Palm Springs and became a gardener. In Palm Springs he met Gail
Lee Kloke, a receptionist at the Palm Springs Racquet Club. They married in
1961 and a little less than four years later, on April 2, 1965, Neal – once
described by friend and writer John Gilmore as “a 14-karat psychotic” – killed Gail with a .45-caliber bullet to
the back of her head. On November 18, 1965 he was convicted of involuntary
manslaughter and sent to Soledad State Prison.
Upon his
release in December 1971, Neal, his life now practically indistinguishable from that of Al
Roberts, moved into a 1950s-era apartment building in Studio City, where he
died on August 7, 1972.
Neal’s
ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean, but you can visit Paul Kelly’s grave
at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, where he rests not too far from Sharon Tate, Allison
Hayes (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) and Bela Lugosi.
Thank you
for your email, Ally! Keep reading Ranting Russell.
House where Paul Kelly killed Ray Raymond on April 16, 1927
