Biography

Tom Neal

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Tom Neal is best remembered for his off-screen exploits, which involved scandal, mayhem and a charge of murder. Before his 1938 screen debut in MGM's Out West with the Hardys (1938), Neal had been a member of the boxing team at Northwestern University, had debuted on the Broadway stage in 1935 and had received a law degree from Harvard, also in 1938. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, he appeared mostly as tough guys in Hollywood low-budgeters. In 1951, in a dispute over the on-again / off-again affections and the wavering allegiance of notorious actress / "party girl" Barbara Payton, he mixed it up with Payton's paramour, the aristocratic actor Franchot Tone. The former college boxer Neal inflicted upon Tone a smashed cheekbone, a broken nose and a brain concussion. Hollywood essentially blackballed Neal thereafter, but he would come to find a livelihood in gardening and landscaping. He was brought to trial in 1965 for the murder of his wife Gale, who had been shot to death with a .45-caliber bullet to the back of her head. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Neal, which at the time meant a trip to the cyanide-gas chamber. The trial jury, however, convicted him only of "involuntary manslaughter", for which he was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

On 7 December 1971 he was released on parole, having served exactly six years to the day. Eight months later, Tom Neal was dead of heart failure.
- IMDb mini biography by: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com>

After his film career dissipated following a flurry of bad press, he left Hollywood for Palm Springs and worked such jobs as a night manager for a restaurant and a gardener. Eventually he set up his own landscaping business, but the business failed after a few years and he went into bankruptcy.
Was once engaged in 1934 to Inez Martin, a one-time Follies girl and ex-mistress of murdered racketeer Arnold Rothstein, who was shot to death inside a Park Central Hotel room on November 4, 1928. Martin was twice Tom's age. His father put an end to the whole thing by threatening Tom with disinheritance of the family's million-dollar fortune.
The volatile Neal, who once severely pummeled actor Franchot Tone over the affections of actress Barbara Payton, was later jailed for involuntary manslaughter in the 1960s for shooting his third wife to death in the head. He got six years despite maintaining it was an accident.
Tried a comeback in the movies and on television in the late 1950s, but his career was finished due to his violent off-screen reputation.
His second wife Patricia Fenton, whom he married in 1956, died of cancer in 1958. She bore his namesake, Tom Neal Jr., who later had a role in the remake of his father's classic film noir: Detour (1992). Following her death, his son lived with Tom's sister.

Women in my life brought me nothing but unhappiness. -- Following his 1971 release from prison for the murder of his third wife in 1965
Women come and go...like trolley cars.

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