The Triumph & Tragedy Of Tuesday Weld
When boys and men first saw her on DOBIE GILLIS their jaws collectively fell. Then on set, the crew began noticing her sneaking food into her handbag..
On the set of DOBIE GILLIS the crew noticed Tuesday off camera was shy and withdrawn, as if hiding something. She was seen hitchhiking from the set and no one had actually met her mother. Then the crew noticed she would hit the food table after the actors had left and put the food in her handbag.
Her mom would leave her for weeks and months at a time on flings beginning when she a pre-teenager. There would be no money or food. She tried out for the role on Gillis hoping she could make enough money to eat.
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis S1E1 -PILOT "The Caper at the Bijou" Tuesday Weld Dwayne Hickman
Sheila Kuehl discusses working with Tuesday Weld and Warren Beatty
Tuesday Weld did not want to become famous. She didn’t even want to be a great actress. She wanted to eat. She never really thought of acting as a career, but when you have a mom who disappears with new boyfriends for weeks and sometimes months at a time with nothing but some bottles of booze in the home, no food or money to live on and you have to survive, you find the way to survive. You have heard of the sexual and physical abuse going on in the state run “homes” for kids so that isn’t even an option.
Did you know that Tuesday Weld had her first affair when she was 11 and that she attempted to take her own life when she was 12?
Tuesday lied about her age to get the role in DOBIE GILLIS - there was no way the producers would have signed her if they knew her real age without her mom’s signature. But how could she tell them she had no idea where her mom was?
The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis
The Hunger Strike
First Season With Marlo Thomas And Ryan O' Neal
Because she never thought of acting as an art, she could have just as easily become a waitress, her choices in roles were never what they should have been. Because every time she showed she could act she proved she was not just a great beauty, she was a great actress. Roger Ebert was the first critic to realize how incredible her acting ability truly was.
Lord Love a Duck 1966 Part I of II
Lord Love a Duck (1966) Part II of II
Weld became famous for turning 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. 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".
Did she even realize she was punishing herself?
When her mom was home she lived off her and complained about the older men she was seeing. All Tuesday had to do to get her to shut up, was threaten to stop working so- no more money.
Elvis fell madly in love with her when they did WILD IN THE COUNTRY together, their chemistry together was so thick you could cut it with a knife. But Tuesday like all adults learned love as children - and her mom probably didn’t love her.
Pretty Poison is a 1968 American black comedy film directed by Noel Black, starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, about an ex-convict and high school cheerleader who commit a series of crimes. The film was based on the novel She Let Him Continue by Stephen Geller. It has become a cult film.
I have posted here my favorite work of hers, and this is the topper. Naked City | S03E18 | A Case Study of Two Savages. This was the show that showed Hollywood her power as an actress:
She won excellent reviews for the February 7, 1962, episode in the Naked City, "A Case Study of Two Savages", adapted from the real-life case of backwood killers Charles Starkweather (played by Rip Torn) and Ora Mae Youngham, (played by Weld), Starkweather's young bride, on a homicidal spree ending in New York City.