Tom Neal: Killer Actor

 

A publicity photo of Tom Neal early in his career (photo source)

"Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no reason at all." - Tom Neal as Al Roberts in Detour (1945).

From the moment of his birth in January of 1914, Tom Neal seemed destined for the fame he craved most of his life; his great uncle was the noted actor and theater manager John Drew.  Neal was brought up in a spacious Chicago home and eventually attended Northwestern University, where he majored in mathematics.  Blessed with an athletic physique and good looks, he traded on them to compete in amateur boxing matches and participate in the school's drama club.  He moved to New York City in 1933, following some summer stock performances and debuted on Broadway in 1935.  In 1938, he not only made his first film appearance (Out West With the Hardys, part of Mickey Rooney's successful Hardy Family film series) but earned a law degree at Harvard.  Over the next handful of years, he appeared in many B-movies, including Republic Pictures' serial Jungle Girl and the classic film noir Detour, with Ann Savage, with whom he would make six films in total.  

While Neal was clearly intelligent and talented, his downfall appeared to be his temperament, his ego, and women, none of which were helped by his friendships with notorious Hollywood hellraisers Errol Flynn and Mickey Rooney.  While he was in New York City, he took up with Inez Norton, an ex-Follies dancer twice his age and who had been the girlfriend of Arnold Rothstein, the mobster who rigged the 1919 World Series.  Following his murder in 1928, Inez was left $150,000 by Rothstein (over $2.6 million in 2023 dollars) and Tom Neal was more than happy to help her spend it.  Neal and Norton were briefly engaged before she was followed by relationships with such Hollywood notables as Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, and Lorraine Cugat, the wife of Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat.  He married actress Vicky Lane in 1944 and the marriage lasted five years before Lane filed for divorce, citing mental and physical cruelty.  And then Neal met Barbara Payton.

Barbara Payton and Tom Neal (photo source)

Barbara

Unlike Tom Neal,  Barbara Payton was not born into a wealthy, connected family but to two alcoholics who had no issue with their daughter trading her good looks for male attention and leaving school at sixteen to marry.  Starting as a print and catalog model, Barbara transitioned into the acting business solely based on her reputation as a party girl in the Hollywood club scene.  She received  good notices in 1949's film noir Trapped and seemed firmly on her way with the noir thriller Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) alongside James Cagney.  Then along came Tom Neal.   

By the time she met Neal in 1950, Barbara had just divorced her second husband, who also took custody of their young son.  Like Neal, she was fiercely ambitious and in him, she saw the virility and good looks she craved.  She later claimed in an interview that within four minutes of meeting, she and Neal decided to marry.  Unfortunately, Tom Neal did not have the reputation and recognition Barbara also wanted.  But Franchot Tone did. 

Barbara Payton and Franchot Tone, 1951 (photo source)

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Franchot Tone was suave and sophisticated, a debonair leading man of the screen and stage, twice nominated for an Academy Award.  His first wife had been Joan Crawford, married from 1935 until 1939, while both were under contract to MGM (although Crawford's star greatly eclipsed his).  Despite their divorce, the two remained friendly over the years.  

The connections Tone had, as well as his wealth, were attractive to Barbara when she met him in 1950.  Although reportedly engaged to Neal at the time, she neglected to inform Tone of this fact.  Nor did she tell Neal that she was simultaneously dating Tone, although Neal later claimed that she had told him she was engaged to Tone but stepping out on him because he was "boring" compared to the more exciting Neal. 

The triangle came to a head on the front lawn of Barbara's home on September 15, 1951, when the 45-year-old Tone ended up semi-conscious on the ground, courtesy of a beating by the 37-year-old Neal.  Neal claimed that Barbara had kissed Tone in front of him and "the sight of a girl I love kissing another man made me see red."  Perhaps notably, Neal and Payton were reportedly going to marry in San Francisco that same day.

The public's sympathy was with Tone, who had been taken to the hospital with a concussion, broken nose, and smashed cheekbone.  Wherever Barbara's sympathies may or may not have been, she married Tone on September 28.  The marriage lasted less than 60 days before Tone filed for divorce, claiming that Barbara was being unfaithful with none other than Tom Neal.  For her part, Barbara admitted that she had been living with Neal but only because she was afraid of Tone.

(photo source)

The resulting publicity from the attack, as well as Barbara's alleged infidelity, put the careers of both Barbara Payton and Ton Neal on the skids (although both of them would milk their notoriety as long as possible).  Unlike the Elizabeth Taylor-Eddie Fisher-Richard Burton scandal that would break a decade later, Hollywood was much more sensitive to the public's opinion and deferred to those who basically wanted the couple blacklisted.  Neal and Barbara became re-engaged and said they would marry in Paris but eventually broke up once again, this time for good.

Neal met a woman named Patricia Fenton and married her in 1956.  They had one child together before Fenton died of cancer in 1958.  With his Hollywood career effectively over (his last on-screen appearance was a part in the television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer), Neal sold everything he owned and left Los Angeles for Palm Springs, where he found work as a gardener.  He eventually built a solid and respectable business, saying that he had learned the trade from watching the Japanese gardeners who had tended to his two-acre Bel Air estate. 

In 1961, he married his third wife, a 25-year-old receptionist at the Palm Springs Tennis Club named Gail Kloke Bennett. 

Gail and Tom Neal (photo source)

 

April 1, 1965

Neal often frequented the Tyrol restaurant in Idyllwild, a mountain community about an hour from Palm Springs, so his appearance there on the evening of April 1, 1965 wasn't unusual.  What was, though, was the fact that he was alone and according to Robert Balzer, one of the owners and a friend of both Neal's and Gail's, that he seemed troubled.  Sitting down with Balzer and James Willet, the restaurant's other owner, Neal began talking about Gail, saying that she had become his entire life since his second wife had died, and that he couldn't live without her.  He then confessed that he had killed her.  Balzer and Willett thought Neal was kidding, as it was April Fool's Day, but Neal refuted that, saying he had shot Gail to death earlier that day while she was taking a nap.  

Following his confession at Tyrol, Neal contacted his Beverly Hills attorney, who called the Palm Springs police to inform them that Gail was at their home on Cardillo Road and had "expired or was seriously injured."  Upon finding that Gail was indeed "expired," her husband was arrested and booked into the Riverside County Jail.

The murder house in Palm Springs (photo source)

Gail had been found on the couch of the couple's living room, partially covered with a lightweight blanket.  She was wearing a green sweater and green capris.  The capris were ripped below the zipper, which was unzipped, and pulled low on her hips, along with her underpants.  She had a gaping wound roughly one inch above her right temple, where she had been struck by a .45 caliber bullet.  The bullet then exited through her neck and tore through three pillows underneath her head before coming to a rest in the couch's upholstery.  

An autopsy indicated that Gail had died somewhere between 2:30 p.m. on April 1 and 2:30 a.m. on April 2.  

The Lodi News Sentinel, April 2, 1965 (photo source)

On April 16, the Riverside County Grand Jury indicted Tom Neal for murder.  Public defender James Kellam was assigned to defend Neal.  He later said that he felt that Neal "needed a better defense than a public defender could provide" and so chose not to visit with his client at all from April through August, believing that his inaction would cause Neal's friends to rally around him financially and thus provide for a criminal practice attorney.  On August 20, Neal petitioned the court for a continuance on the basis of needing a change of counsel. 

Surprisingly, Kellam's action worked and Neal's friends rallied around him.  A Cathedral City auto dealer took out an ad in the local paper, requesting donations for Neal's defense.  Friends in Palm Springs sent in check, soon followed by friends in Hollywood that included Mickey Rooney, Dorothy Manners, Blake Edwards, Harrison Carroll and even Franchot Tone, the man he had beaten back in 1951.  The money allowed Neal to hire Palm Springs attorney Leon Rosenberg.  Neal thanked the Cathedral City auto dealer with a handwritten two-page note in which he claimed that "friends" were responsible for shooting Gail.  

The Trial

The trial began on October 19, 1965 with Deputy D.A. Roland Wilson asking for a first-degree murder conviction.  Local real estate broker Frank Seyferlich testified that he had been at the Neals' home the night before the murder.  Between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. he had delivered letters of recommendation to Gail, who he said had been intending to divorce Neal and relocate to Los Angeles; she would have needed the letters as employment references.  According to Seyferlich, he was surprised to find Tom Neal at home as his understanding was the couple had been separated, with Neal living in Chicago since January of that year.  Gail had invited Seyferlich to stay for a drink but feeling uncomfortable, he left. 

Rosenberg managed to score points during his cross-examination of lab technician H. Carmon Bishop, when he got Bishop to admit that a man's wallet was found in the top drawer of the bureau in the master bedroom and a man's suitcoat was found in the master bedroom closet.  Wilson objected on the grounds of relevance, but the insinuation was that neither belonged to Tom Neal and that perhaps Gail had been seeing someone else.

The prosecution called only eight witnesses before resting their case on October 28.  Rosenberg began the defense's case on October 29.  Chief of Detectives Richard Harries testified that the wallet and suitcoat belonged to Steve Peck, a Palm Springs insurance man.  Peck rented a spare bedroom from Tom and Gail.  He had an alibi and witnesses who placed him in Phoenix at the time of Gail's murder.

Harries also admitted under oath that the murder weapon had never been located but a live .45 caliber bullet was found in Tom Neal's jacket pocket at the time he was arrested and that a similar box of ammunition was found in the Neal home.

Steve Peck took the stand the following day and recalled a domestic dispute between Tom and Gail that had occurred in November of 1964, only months before her murder.  According to Peck, Gail had pulled a .45 automatic on Neal screaming that she would kill him.  During cross-examination, however, Peck admitted that in his original statement to the police, it was Tom Neal that brandished the gun after slapping Gail several times. 

Tom Neal's Story

If the jury and the public had found Steve Peck interesting, they were absolutely riveted when Tom Neal took the stand.  According to Neal, Gail was lying on the couch and he was on one knee, caressing her.  She had questioned whether they "should be doing this," and Neal had accused her of "fooling around with all these guys" since he had left.  After he had accused her of having sexual relations with his friends, she had said she would kill him and had the .45 automatic in her hand.  Neal said he had pushed the gun away with both hands and it went off, striking Gail in the head.  He then prayed and claimed to recite aloud a tenant of Chrisian Science: "There is no life, truth, intelligence or substance in mind, all in infinity and its manifestation, for God is all in all.  Spirit is immortal truth, matter is mortal error.  Spirit is the real and eternal, matter is the unreal and temporal."  

Under cross-examination, Neal admitted that he and Gail had been estranged for some time, and that he had returned home from Chicago to attempt a reconciliation.  He said he did speak to his restaurant friends and told them that he "felt responsible for her death," but insisted that he never at any time said that he had fired the shot.  His friends had been the prosecution's first witnesses and had testified that he did say he had shot Gail.  Neal's cross ended with Wilson producing a copy of Gail's petition for divorce, lodged just before her death, in which she accused her husband of threatening her with a .45 revolver the previous November. 

On November 9, under rebuttal, Wilson called Dr. Armand Dollinger, who had performed the autopsy on Gail.  According to Dollinger, Neal's recounting of events was "unlikely;" the direction of the wound did not correspond with Neal's assertion that he had pushed the gun away. 

Rosenberg did his best to discredit Dollinger, asking whether the doctor had measured Gail's arm or had any idea of her muscle structure, to which Dollinger replied in the negative. 

Wilson then called three of Gail's coworkers from the Palm Springs Tennis Club.  All three testified that Gail had planned to leave town when she heard that Neal was returning from Chicago because she was afraid he would kill her once he learned she had filed for divorce. 

The Verdict

The jury of ten women and two men was out for ten hours.  Although the prosecution was seeking the death penalty, to the utter amazement of all present, on November 18, 1965, the jury found Tom Neal guilty of involuntary manslaughter, believing his story of the firearm accidentally discharging.  Wilson was stunned and Rosenberg elated, telling the press that with time served, Neal could be out by Christmas.  

At the sentencing hearing on December 10, Judge Hilton McCabe listened to Rosenberg plead for probation for his client, citing Tom Neal's "clean record" and saying the shooting was an accident that culminated from a marital discord.  Wilson said the prosecution would not consider probation and that the jury's verdict was the only break Tom Neal deserved.  Judge McCabe agreed, sentencing Neal to up to 15 years in prison.

Neal showed no emotion during the sentencing other than biting his lip but told the press outside that his sentence was "a railroad job."  

Tom Neal in a scene from his most famous film, Detour (1945) (photo source)

Afterwards

Tom Neal served six years of his one-to-15-year sentence.  He was paroled on December 6, 1971.  He returned to Hollywood, the scene of both success and downfall.  Instead of appearing on the big or small screen, however, he went back to his landscaping and gardening business.  His son found Neal dead in his bed on August 7, 1972, felled by heart failure.  He was 58 years old.   His body was cremated, with the eventual disposition of his cremains unknown.  

Barbara Payton at the beginning of her career (photo source)

Barbara Payton had no easier of a road than Tom Neal following their aborted engagement.  Suffering with alcoholism and drug addiction, between 1955 and 1963, she had multiple run-ins with the law, including arrests for passing bad checks and prostitution.  Offered the option of being admitted to rehab, Barbara said she would rather drink and die.  She ended up living with her parents in San Diego, where the trio spent their days binging on alcohol.  By the time she was 34 years old, the former slim and sexy blonde weighted 200 pounds, was unkempt, and suffering with broken blood vessels in her face from her constant drinking.

In 1963, she was paid $1,000 (just over $9,600 in 2023 dollars) for her autobiography, called I Am Not Ashamed, in which she recounted sleeping on bus benches and being regularly beaten while she was prostituting herself.  The book led to her last acting role, 4 for Texas, a Western comedy film. 

Her final marriage, her fifth, was in 1962, to a man named Jess Rawley.  She as still married to Rawley but living with her parents in San Diego when she died on May 8, 1967 of liver and heart failure.  She was 39 years old. 

During Tom Neal's trial in Indio, Barbara attended daily.  It was reportedly the last time the two saw each other.  

Franchot Tone in the 1930s (photo source)

Franchot Tone, who had been beaten at Neal's hands in 1951, married once more following his brief marriage to Barbara - to actress Dolores Dorn.  The marriage lasted only three years and the couple divorced in 1959. 

During the 1950s, Tone relocated from Hollywood to New York, where he appeared on stage and television.  His career continued into the 1960s, both on television and in film, until lung cancer, caused by his chain smoking, forced him to retire.  His first wife, Joan Crawford, who had also relocated to New York, cared for him until his death on September 18, 1968 at the age of 63.    

Sources:

Crockett, Art.  Celebrity Murders.  Pinnacle Books, 1990.

Historian Alan Royle (March 24, 2016).  Tom Neal - Getting Away With Murder.

Murderpedia (2022).  Thomas Neal.

Palm Springs Life (2022).  Killer Career - Actor Tom Neal.

Wikipedia (2022).  Tom Neal.

Wikipedia (2022).  Barbara Payton.

Wikipedia (2022).  Franchot Tone.

Gail's final resting place at Inglewood Park Cemetery (photo source)