By Stephen Vagg
The one person in this series who didn’t want to be a star…
Pretty much every person we’ve covered in this series wanted to be a film star, and what’s more, tried really, really hard. Tuesday Weld was, as in many things throughout her life, the exception. She’d been a not-quite star for around a decade when, in the late 1960s, she turned down roles in a string of blockbusters: Bonnie and Clyde, True Grit, Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, Rosemary’s Baby, Cactus Flower and Paint Your Wagon – and before then she knocked back Lolita and The Collector, while after that she pulled out of Polanski’s Macbeth, The Stepford Wives and Norma Rae. There hadn’t been anything like it since George Raft, whose rejected movies include Belle of the Nineties, The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, The Sea Wolf and Double Indemnity. Raft did it through stupidity. Weld did it consciously.
Why? Read on.
She was born Susan Ker Weld in 1943 – the “Tuesday” was a childhood nickname which stuck, and it’s got to be said, it’s an arresting moniker. Weld’s father died when she was three, and her mother put little Tuesday to work as a model. Weld was blessed with good genes and an abundance of personality, and was thus soon very much in demand; this led naturally to acting.
Weld became a leading lady with remarkable rapidity – she was barely into her teens when given the lead in the jukebox musical Rock Rock Rock (1956), though it wasn’t much of a role: a teen who wants to save money for a prom dress, while various artists perform around her. She also understudied on Broadway in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, which was a very classy credit (Elia Kazan, Bill Inge).
Her personal life was hectic, due in part to her stage door mother, but she seems to have had a few mental issues – she later said “I started drinking heavily when I was about 10 years old. Sometimes I’d drink at bars, sometimes at parties, and sometimes I’d just stay home and drink. I made my first suicide attempt when I was 12. I had fallen in love with a homosexual and when it didn’t work out, I felt hurt.”
Professionally, things were better. Weld was cast in a support role in Rally Round the Flag Boys (1958), a comedy from Leo McCarey in decline starring Paul Newman ill-at-ease, based on a novel by Max Schulman; Weld stole the reviews as a teen called Comfort Goodpasture. The film was made by 20th Century-Fox which was on a star-building kick at the time and signed Weld to a long-term contract.
She played Danny Kaye’s daughter in The Five Pennies (1959), not a hit, but it further raised Weld’s profile, especially when Kaye called her “fifteen going on 27”. Fox cast her in the sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, based on stories by Max Schulman; she played Thalia Menninger, the unattainable love interest for the title character (Dwayne Hickman, who had played her boyfriend in Rally). Weld was hugely effective, and was instrumental in making the show a hit with its intended demographic. She got sick of the role after a season and asked to leave, and Fox let her.
Weld was thus more available for features but she displayed a knack for appearing in duds: she was The Girl in Because They’re Young (1960) with Dick Clark, and appeared in two Albert Zugsmith movies, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) and Sex Kittens Go to College (1960). Fox used her in a Bing Crosby comedy, High Time (1961), playing a groovy college chick who changes her personality every year to chase a different guy (including Richard Beymer and Fabian). In all these films, she was underused.
Weld did better guest-starring on television series such as 77 Sunset Strip, Ben Casey, The Dick Powell Show (playing a suicidal girl) and Adventures in Paradise. The parts were better than the ones she got in features, she was consistently excellent, and fan magazines loved her.
Fox knew they had something special and did try, putting Weld in some big studio pictures: Return to Peyton Place (1961), in the role played by Hope Lange in the original; Wild in the Country (1962), as a horny single mother who chases after Elvis Presley (she had off-screen flings with Elvis and another actor in the movie, Gary Lockwood); and Frank Tashlin’s Bachelor Flat (1962), again supporting an older star (Terry Thomas) with Richard Beymer. All these movies should have been good (especially Wild in the Country) but for various reasons missed the mark: Return to Peyton Place was an abomination, from an absurdly miscast director (Jose Ferrer); Tashlin was off form for Bachelor Flat; Wild in the Country was damaged by censorship.
None of the reasons the films were bad included Weld – watching every movie, you think, “They should use her more”. In fairness, Fox was cursed around this time, making hardly any good movies except for The Hustler (where there was a great part for Tuesday Weld, but it went to Piper Laurie, who was outstanding).
Weld’s television credits, however, continued to be strong. She carved out a niche playing traumatised, sexually compelling young women. In an episode of the anthology series Bus Stop, Weld played Cherie, the role played by Marilyn Monroe in the movie of the same name; Don Siegel directed. In Route 66, she wore a Japanese face mask for a slab of the running time. In The Naked City, she was a child bride married to spree killer Rip Torn in a story based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate (the duo who inspired the 1972 movie Badlands). Most of all, she was stunningly good as a troubled movie star in The Legend of Lylah Clare, far superior to Kim Novak in the 1968 film version; Franklin Schaffner directed.
Weld was clearly beautiful and talented, with great presence. She gave off a sense of instability, innocence and sexuality that seemed to stem from her real life, where she dated older men like John Ireland, and had mental health issues. All her friends remarked on her free spirit, beauty, humour, unpredictability and intelligence.
In Sam Levison’s pilot script for the much-criticised TV series The Idol, a character discusses Jocelyn (Lily Rose Depp), declaring, “Mental illness is sexy. If you live in Sioux City, Iowa, you are never gonna meet a girl like Jocelyn. She’s not walking down the street, she didn’t go to your high school, she doesn’t work at the bar or the diner, and she did not marry your best friend. And if, on the off chance, she did, she is still never, ever gonna fuck you. Unless she has some very, very serious mental problems. And that right there is why mental illness is sexy.”
Weld had a little of that quality – at least that’s what she was encouraged to project on screen. She later commented, “The girl I generally played was a little whorish teenager who would sleep with anybody, and yet has a childlike quality.”
Her image was the polar opposite to her contemporary, Sandra Dee, another blonde one-time child model with a rotten family life and mental health issues. While Weld was typically cast as the sexy/crazy girl, Dee always played “good girls”. Dee became a huge film star while Weld did not, but Dee regularly appeared in strong movies (Gidget, Imitation of Life) whereas Weld’s movies were consistently bad.
Weld was offered a great part in Lolita (1962) but turned it down. She played a kook in Soldier in the Rain (1963), adapted from the novel by William Goldman and starring Steve McQueen, but not many people went to see it.
Weld continued to receive raves guest-starring on TV shows – The Fugitive, Mr Broadway, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Eleventh Hour. Her movie roles remained “girl” parts – Bob Hope’s daughter in I’ll Take Sweden (1965) and Steve McQueen’s girl in The Cincinnati Kid (1965). I’ll Take Sweden should have been fantastic – with Hope trying to cockblock Weld all over Sweden – but is ineptly made. The Cincinnati Kid was at least a decent movie, and she was, once more, fantastic. Weld had a chance to play the female lead in The Collector (1965) when William Wyler briefly fired star Samantha Eggar, but turned it down; Eggar returned to the part.
Weld finally got a starring role in a movie worthy of her talent with Lord Love a Duck (1966), an anarchic comedy with Roddy McDowell directed by George Axelrod. It was only a cult hit, but has a devoted following. So too was another feature where she played a gorgeous Lolita-like teen sociopath with a troublesome mother who is adored by a psycho played by an older actor who was gay in real life: Pretty Poison (1968), with Anthony Perkins. In between the two, Weld was Abigail in The Crucible on television (1967), getting hot for George C. Scott.
The consistent excellence of Weld’s work did not pass unnoticed and she continued to turn down offers. She claimed she rejected Bonnie and Clyde and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice because they “reeked of success”; those two films made Faye Dunaway and Dyan Cannon movie stars. Rosemary’s Baby (which Polanski really wanted Weld to do) turned Mia Farrow into a movie star. True Grit almost made Kim Darby a star. Weld also turned down Lady Macbeth in Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) because of its nudity (Glenda Jackson also said no).
What made Tuesday Weld so desired in Hollywood? There was her beauty and talent, obviously – but she also seems to have had an X factor in person, which was compelling. In addition, the fact that Tuesday Weld never became a big star meant that directors and producers liked the idea of being the person who could turn her into one. She was like an indie cult band you felt special being a fan of; indeed, around this time, people started up Tuesday Weld film festivals, which focused on Lord Love a Duck and Pretty Poison.
Weld did accept some offers: I Walk the Line (1970), with Gregory Peck and director John Frankenheimer; A Safe Place (1971) from Henry Jaglom with Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles; and Play It as It Lays (1972), from director Frank Perry, fresh off having broken up with his screenwriter wife Eleanor. All the movies flopped and none have much of a cult, even in a world that deifies New Hollywood. A Safe Place, for instance, is easily the least-loved film from the BBS company (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces), though Anais Nin liked it and Weld was rarely more beautiful or captivating. But seriously, just watch the trailer, the resulting film is basically that, only at feature length:
In the early 1970s, Weld took some time off – by this stage, she’d had her first divorce (there would be two more, the second from Dudley Moore); her other romantic partners over the years included Al Pacino, Tom Mankiewicz, David Steinberg, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Omar Sharif, Richard Gere and Ryan O’Neal. The Band frontman Robbie Robertson also had a chaste dalliance with Ms. Weld while his buddy Martin Scorsese was seriously considering her for the Vicky LaMotta role in Raging Bull.
Weld went back to television, appearing in Reflections of Murder (1974), a remake of Les Diaboliques; and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1975), playing Zelda Fitzgerald, another mentally ill character. Weld was going to star in The Stepford Wives (1975) but pulled out shortly before filming for unknown reasons (Katherine Ross played it). She reminded Hollywood how good she could be in Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), once again playing a hot mess, and earning an Oscar nomination in the process. She was a drug addict in Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978) with Nick Nolte, and did a Martin Mull comedy Serial (1980); apparently, she and Mull had an affair, gossip we reproduce just because it’s so random (and also – go, Martin Mull). Weld turned down Norma Rae (1979), which won Sally Field an Oscar, and All Night Long (1981), made by Jean-Claude Tramont, the husband of her agent, Sue Mengers – Barbra Streisand later famously played this part, to her regret.
Weld kept busy in TV, specialising in ripped-from-the-headlines melodrama, but the roles were juicy and she was always excellent: A Question of Guilt (1978), accused of murdering her daughter; Mother and Daughter: the Loving War (1980); Madame X (1981), a remake of the oft-filmed mouldy old property; The Rainmaker (1982) with Tommy Lee Jones and director John Frankenheimer; The Winter of Our Discontent (1983), with Donald Sutherland; Scorned and Swindled (1984) with Keith Carradine; Circle of Violence (1985), abusing her mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald); and Something in Common (1986), shagging a younger man.
Weld continued to appear in films: she was in Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), with James Caan; Author Author (1982) with Al Pacino, directed by Arthur Hiller from an autobiographical script by notorious lech Israel Horovitz; and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984), as a very raunchy and deeply troubled gangster’s moll who gets turned on by robberies.
These were classy movies from major directors, but they were all “the girl” parts. For instance, in Thief, Weld appears in one of the classic all-time scenes – James Caan’s monologue – but just sits there and listens (important, yes, but she doesn’t get a monologue). In Once Upon a Time in America – a movie which just should have had all the female parts cut out of it – she plays a gal who just loves rape.
With a few key exceptions, Weld simply never did as well in films as she did on television. In the latter, the faster pace meant she could rely on her instincts more, the roles were better, and there was less politics. (Lee Remick was another star Hollywood didn’t seem to know what to do with who flourished on the small screen).
Weld had a decent part in Heartbreak Hotel (1988), a rare flop from Chris Columbus. She was the cover girl for Matthew Sweet’s classic 1991 power-pop album Girlfriend. She popped up as Robert Duvall’s mentally distressed wife in Falling Down (1993) – playing “crazy” once more – and could be seen in some indie movies: Feeling Minnesota (1996), Alan Rudolph’s Investigating Sex (2001) and Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls (2001). Then she retired for good.
Tuesday Weld is still alive. Her name occasionally pops up in the news buying and selling real estate, so she seems to have some money. We really hope she’s happy.
Tuesday Weld was the great lost star of the 1960s and 1970s. Even in bro-heavy New Hollywood, her beauty, talent and unpredictability would have put her up at the top – she could have easily challenged, say, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn and/or Faye Dunaway.
But she didn’t want to. As a result, she rarely worked with the best directors; she certainly only had decent material on occasion. She was definitely a television star. She was not quite a movie star. But she was, and is, a legend.
