Sally Payne

Payne worked as a model for artists before making her first film, Hollywood Hobbies (1935), where she appeared in the bit part of a tourist. She became a leading actress in B films, usually westerns. She also played in comedy shorts for RKO Radio Pictures (playing the on-screen wives of Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol on several occasions) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (in a number of Pete Smith subjects).She is most remembered for her performance as Calamity Jane in the Roy Rogers western Young Bill Hickok (1940), as well as acting the role of Belle Starr in Robin Hood of the Pecos (1941), where her performing style echoed that of a contemporary, Una Merkel. Just before her association with Rogers ended, her status had enlarged from a supporting-role character to that of first-billed actress.

Payne's characters were usually the tomboy type, often helping men rather than being dependent on them. She frequently wore men's clothing, carried a weapon, drove stagecoaches and rode horses. Her male associates identified strongly with her ability to survive a rough environment like the Old West frontier, but she was never the object of male fantasies. Rarely did Payne's characters become physically intimate with her masculine counterparts; thus if she were called on to display affection of any sort, the relationships never went beyond the strictly platonic. Thus, her persona was that of a female sidekick, but never a lover.

At one point in her career, when a studio told Payne to undergo a rhinoplasty, reporters interviewed her at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, where she told them, "I've always found it a pretty good nose, but if they want to change it, I guess I'll let 'em do it. Things are that way in Hollywood."