Career
Left in financial difficulty by her husband's death, Weld's mother put her to work as a child 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. To this day, Mama thinks I owe everything to her. | ” |
Using Weld's résumé from modelling, her mother secured an agent and Tuesday (an extension of her childhood nickname, "Tu-Tu", given to her by her young cousin, Mary Ker, who could not pronounce "Susan" yet) Weld made her acting debut on television at age 12 and her feature film debut the same year in a bit role in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock crime drama, The Wrong Man. The pressures of her career, however, resulted in a nervous breakdown at age nine, alcoholism by age 12, and a suicide attempt around the same time.
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 as Thalia Menninger in the CBS television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Although Weld was a cast member for only a single season, the show gave her considerable national publicity, and she was named a co-winner of a "Most Promising Newcomer" award at the Golden Globe Awards.
She was put under contract to Twentieth Century-Fox and appeared in feature films and episdodes of Fox-produced TV series. In 1960, she appeared as Joy, a free-spirited university student in High Time, starring Bing Crosby and Fabian. She also guest-starred that season on NBC's The Tab Hunter Show. On November 12, 1961, she played a young singer, Cherie, in the seventh episode of ABC's television series Bus Stop, with Marilyn Maxwell and Gary Lockwood. This was the same 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 teenage 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.
In 1963, she guest-starred as Denise Dunlear on the NBC medical drama The Eleventh Hour, in the episode "Something Crazy's Going on the Back Room". Her costars in the episode were Angela Lansbury, Martin Balsam, Roy Thinnes, and Don Grady. 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 same year she appeared in "Dark Corner", an episode of The Fugitive, starring David Janssen.
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.
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, but in separate episodes. Later in her career, she turned down roles in films that became great successes, such as Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
In 1965, she appeared in the successful Norman Jewison film The Cincinnati Kid, opposite Steve McQueen. Some of her most 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 and Beverly Garland; 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 performed in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), for which she 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. While the robbery is happening she goads Robert De Niro's character, David "Noodles" Aaronson, into "raping" her with her complicity.
Weld has also 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, 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.
Read more about this topic: Tuesday Weld
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