Tuesday Weld
Tuesday Weld | |
|---|---|
 Weld, ca. 1960 | |
| Born | Susan Ker Weld August 27, 1943 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Actress, model |
| Years active | 1955–2001 |
| Spouses |
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| Children |
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Tuesday Weld (born Susan Ker Weld; August 27, 1943) is an American actress. She began acting when she was a child, and progressed to mature roles in the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960. Over the following decade she established a career playing dramatic roles in films.
As a featured performer in supporting roles, her work was acknowledged with nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Play It as It Lays (1972), a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), an Emmy Award for The Winter of Our Discontent (1983), and a BAFTA for Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Since the late 1980s, her acting appearances have been infrequent.
Background and family
Weld was born Susan Ker Weld in New York City. Her father, Lathrop Motley Weld, was a member of the Weld family of Massachusetts; he died in 1947, shortly before his daughter's fourth birthday. Her mother, Yosene Balfour Ker, daughter of the artist and Life illustrator William Balfour Ker, was Lathrop Weld's fourth and final wife.[1][2] Susan Ker Weld was one of three siblings, the other two being Sarah King Weld (born 1935) and David Balfour Weld (born 1937).[3] Weld had her name legally changed to Tuesday Weld on October 9, 1959.[4]
Career
Left in financial difficulty by her husband's death, Weld's mother put Susan to work as a model to support the family. As the young actress told Life in 1971:
"My father's family came from Tuxedo Park, and they offered to take us kids and pay for our education, on the condition that Mama never see us again. Mama was an orphan who had come here from London, but so far as my father’s family was concerned, she was strictly from the gutter. I have to give Mama credit – she refused to give us up... So I became the supporter of the family, and I had to take my father’s place in many, many ways. I was expected to make up for everything that had ever gone wrong in Mama’s life. She became obsessed with me, pouring out her pent-up love – her alleged love – on me, and it’s been heavy on my shoulders ever since. Mama still thinks I owe everything to her."[3]
Using Weld's résumé from modeling, her mother secured an agent and Tuesday (an extension of her childhood nickname, "Tu-Tu", so named by her young cousin, Mary Ker, who could not pronounce "Susan") Weld made her acting debut on television at age 12 and her feature film debut that year in a bit role in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock crime drama, The Wrong Man. The pressures of her career resulted in a nervous breakdown at age 9, alcoholism by age 12, and a suicide attempt about the same time.[3]
In 1956, Weld played the lead in Rock, Rock, Rock, which featured record promoter Alan Freed and singers Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon and Johnny Burnette. In the film, Connie Francis performed the vocals for Weld's singing parts. In 1959, having appeared as Dorothy in The Five Pennies, she was cast in the CBS television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis as Thalia Menninger, the love interest of Dobie Gillis (played by Dwayne Hickman), whose rivals for Thalia's affection included Milton Armitage (played by Warren Beatty). Although Weld was a cast member for a single season, the show created considerable national publicity for her,[5] and she was named a co-winner of a "Most Promising Newcomer" award at the Golden Globe Awards.[6]
She was put under contract to Twentieth Century-Fox and appeared in feature films and episodes of Fox-produced TV series. In 1960, she appeared as Joy, a free-spirited university student in High Time, starring Bing Crosby and Fabian Forte. She sang a love song to Fabian on the season opener of NBC's The Dinah Shore Chevy Show on October 9, 1960. Four weeks later, on November 13, 1960, Weld returned to the network guest-starring on NBC's The Tab Hunter Show. On November 12, 1961, she played a singer, Cherie, in the seventh episode of ABC's television series Bus Stop, with Marilyn Maxwell and Gary Lockwood. This was the role Marilyn Monroe had played in the 1956 film Bus Stop, based on William Inge's play. Kim Stanley played Cherie on Broadway.
Weld's mother was scandalized by her teen daughter's affairs with older men, such as actor John Ireland, but Weld resisted, saying, "'If you don't leave me alone, I'll quit being an actress – which means there ain't gonna be no more money for you, Mama.' Finally, when I was sixteen, I left home. I just went out the door and bought my own house." In 1961, when Weld was 18, she had an off-screen romance with Elvis Presley, her costar in Wild in the Country.[7]
Tuesday Weld was Stanley Kubrick's first choice to play the role of Lolita in his 1962 film of the same name, but she turned the offer down, saying: "I didn't have to play it. I was Lolita."[8]
In 1963, she guest-starred as Denise Dunlear on The Eleventh Hour, in the episode "Something Crazy's Going on the Back Room". In 1964, she appeared in the title role of the episode "Keep an Eye on Emily" on Craig Stevens's CBS drama, Mr. Broadway. In that year she appeared in "Dark Corner", an episode of The Fugitive. She was well received for her portrayal of an incest victim in Return to Peyton Place, the sequel to the 1956 film Peyton Place, but the film was less successful than its predecessor.[3]
Weld appeared with Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen in the 1963 comedy Soldier in the Rain; her performance was well received, but the film was only a minor success. That same year she and former co-star Dwayne Hickman appeared in Jack Palance's circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth on ABC, in separate episodes. Later in her career, she turned down roles in films that succeeded at the box office, such as Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, Cactus Flower and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.[8] In a 1971 interview with the New York Times, Weld explained that she had chosen to reject these roles precisely because she believed they would be commercial successes: "Do you think I want a success? I refused 'Bonnie and Clyde' because I was nursing at the time, but also because deep down I knew it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of 'Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue' or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."[8]
In 1965, she appeared in the successful Norman Jewison film The Cincinnati Kid, opposite Steve McQueen. Some notable screen performances include the cult favorite Lord Love a Duck (1966), with Roddy McDowall, Ruth Gordon and Harvey Korman; Pretty Poison (1968), co-starring Anthony Perkins; A Safe Place (1971), co-starring Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles; I Walk the Line (1970), opposite Gregory Peck; and Play It as It Lays (1972), again with Perkins, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
In her thirties, Weld attracted attention as the favored, out-of-control Katherine in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) opposite Nick Nolte; and Michael Mann's acclaimed 1981 film Thief, opposite James Caan. In 1984, she appeared in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America, playing a jeweler's secretary who is in on a plan to steal a shipment of diamonds. During the robbery her character goads Robert De Niro's character, David "Noodles" Aaronson, into "raping" her with her complicity.
Weld has appeared in a number of television movies, including a remake of the much-filmed tearjerker Madame X (1981), Circle of Violence (1986), Reflections of Murder (1974) (an American remake of the French film Les Diaboliques) and A Question of Guilt (1978), in which she plays a woman accused of murdering her children. In 1993, she played a police officer's neurotic wife in Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.
Personal life
Weld has been married three times. She was married to screenwriter Claude Harz, from 1965 until their divorce in 1971. They had a daughter, Natasha, in 1966.[9] Of the marriage, Weld told Guy Flatley of The New York Times in 1971:
"Mama hated my husband—she's a jealous lover, you know. She's hated all the men I've ever been involved with. But I really felt that what I had been doing up to that time with my life was probably wrong, that maybe what I should be was a housewife. Our marriage lasted 5 years; it was just another one of my mistakes."[3]
She married British actor, musician and comedian Dudley Moore in 1975. In 1976 they had a son, Patrick, an actor, director and editor. They divorced in 1980. In 1985 she married Israeli concert violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman; they divorced in 1998.
Inspiration in the media
The cover of Matthew Sweet's third album, Girlfriend, features a photo of Weld from the late 1950s. Originally called Nothing Lasts, the album was retitled after objections to the title from Weld. Sweet's greatest hits compilation, Time Capsule, features photos of Weld on the front and back covers. Weld was honored with an eponymous song on Walter Egan's fourth CBS album, "The Last Stroll".[10]
The Rolling Stones 1967 hit single "Ruby Tuesday" is said to be about Weld; also, the Beatles are said to have been referencing her in their 1969 song "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" in the line Sunday's on the phone to Monday, Tuesday's on the phone to me.
On his 1982 hit single "New Frontier", Donald Fagen sings: "Introduce me to that big blonde, she's got a touch of Tuesday Weld."
After a dream involving the actress, Stephen Coates named his lounge swing band The Real Tuesday Weld.
Weld was the inspiration for the song "Groovy Tuesday" by the pop duo Swan Dive.[11]
The English rock band City Boy mentions Tuesday Weld, along with Marilyn Monroe (mentioned as "Marilyn"), in their song "Summer In The School Yard."
The character of Lu Ann Powers in the comic strip Apartment 3-G was inspired by Weld.
Tiny Tim was said to be obsessed with Weld in the 1960s, and composed the song "Dear Tuesday" that appears on his posthumous release I've Never Seen A Straight Banana, produced by Richard Barone (2009). He performed the song for Weld at a Hollywood party at the height of his fame in 1968. On his first album, God Bless Tiny Tim, he references Tuesday Weld in the lyrics of his song "Then I'd Be Satisfied With Life" ("...and if Tuesday Weld would only be my wife...").
Filmography
References
- ^ "Profile of Lathrop M. Weld". The New York Times. June 7, 1947.
- ^ "Yosene Ker a Bride; Wed to Lathrop M. Weld in Municipal Marriage Chapel". The New York Times. January 28, 1934.
- ^ a b c d e "Tuesday Weld: 'I Didn't Have to Play Lolita – I Was Lolita'". Moviecrazed. Retrieved April 22, 2015.
- ^ "Name made legal, 1959". Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, 1950–1961. University of Southern California Libraries. Retrieved April 22, 2015.
- ^ Denver, Bob (1993). Gilligan, Maynard & Me. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. pp. 9–45. ISBN 978-0806514130.
- ^ "The Five Pennies". Golden Globe Award. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved April 22, 2015.
- ^ Keogh, Pamela Clarke (2008). Elvis Presley: The Man, the Life, the Legend. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 153. ISBN 0743486137. Retrieved February 8, 2015.
- ^ a b c Jordan, Louis (September 20, 2011). "The Real Tuesday Weld". Slant Magazine.
- ^ "Tuesday Weld Gets Divorce". The New York Times. February 19, 1971.
- ^ Egan, Walter (1980). The Last Stroll. Columbia Records.
- ^ Swan Dive: Swan Dive (CD). Compass Records. 2000.
External links
- Tuesday Weld at IMDb
- Tuesday Weld at the Internet Broadway Database
- Tuesday Weld at the TCM Movie Database
