Today, November 16^th, is the birthday of the late va-va-va-voom actress/1950s scandal mag cover girl Barbara Payton, who was born on this date in 1927.  The sexy and sensual Payton, who made barely more than a dozen films, and only a couple of truly memorable ones, is more remembered for her lusty off-screen pursuits, including affairs with many of her co-stars and admirers from other fields as well, including Howard Hughes.

Probably the most infamous incident in Payton’s rocky love life was the kerfuffle over her affections which took place between simultaneous boyfriends Franchot Tone and Tom Neal.  It’s such a juicy story, and I have such a lot of pictures, more than I can do justice to at this moment, so we’ll go into detail on Monday’s blog, or earlier if I can post it sooner.  Whew!  You won’t believe it.  Well, maybe you will.  As you can see from the photo, Barbara Payton was a dazzling blonde with an adorable smile and plenty of charm, and she liked men.  Really liked them.  A lot.  But more about that soon!

And in keeping with the theme, I’d like to remind everybody to look up up up into the sky this Saturday night to catch the annual Leonid meteor shower, which as entertainment goes, certainly trumps anything you’re going to find on TV (except perhaps on TCM, natch.)  This hopefully breathtaking celestial event brings to mind great meteor movies, but we need to expand the category to include comets, or else my personal favorite — 1998’s Deep Impact — won’t make the cut.  It’s light years more affecting than the bombastic and flippant Armageddon which came out the same year, though they make a nice study in contrast.  And let’s not forget about the gooey havoc wreaked by an errant meteorite in 1958’s The Blob, or the spikey terror of The Monolith Monsters from the previous year, who were unleashed from a meteor.  They only think it’s a meteor in It Came From Outer Space from 1953; meteors produce comedic consequences in 1993’s Meteor Man and 2001’s Evolution, and effects far less amusing in 1962’s Day of the Triffids or 1977’s The Crater Lake Monster.

Whatever your astronomical inclinations, it’s always a good idea to take the time during a particularly good meteor shower to ponder the universe.  And then go inside and watch a movie, of course.