Weld, Tuesday (1943—)

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Weld, Tuesday (1943—)

American actress, notorious in the 1960s for her freewheeling lifestyle, who was dubbed "the archetypal nymphet" by Time magazine. Born Susan Ker Weld on August 27, 1943, in New York City; daughter of Lathrop Motley Weld and Aileen (Ker) Weld; attended Hollywood Professional School; married Claude Harz (a writer), in 1965 (divorced 1971); married Dudley Moore (an actor), in 1975 (divorced 1980); married Pinchas Zuckerman (a violinist), in 1985; children: (first marriage) Natasha Harz; (second marriage) Patrick Moore.

Selected filmography:

Rock, Rock, Rock (1956); The Wrong Man (1956); Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958); The Five Pennies (1959); Sex Kittens Go to College (1960); High Time (1960); Because They're Young (1960); The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1961); Bachelor Flat (1961); Wild in the Country (1961); Return to Peyton Place (1961); Soldier in the Rain (1963); The Cincinnati Kid (1965); I'll Take Sweden (1965); Lord Love a Duck (1966); Pretty Poison (1968); I Walk the Line (1970); A Safe Place (1971); Play It As It Lays (1972); Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977); Who'll Stop the Rain (1978); Serial (1980); Thief (1981); Author! Author! (1982); Once Upon a Time in America (1984); Heartbreak Hotel (1988); Falling Down (1993); Feeling Minnesota (1996).

Tuesday Weld, who would become Hollywood's premiere "sex kitten" in the 1960s before earning respect as an actress of genuine ability, was born in a Salvation Army Hospital in New York City on August 27, 1943. Her mother Aileen Ker Weld was the fourth wife of Lathrop Motley Weld, a former investment broker and playboy who was the black sheep of his rich and socially distinguished family. His death of a heart ailment when Tuesday was only three marked the beginning of her career in the spotlight, as her mother pressed the little girl into modeling in order to support the family, which included an older brother and sister. They barely survived in a $20-a-month apartment without hot water in a Manhattan slum, but Aileen Weld refused to accept her in-laws' offer to raise and educate the children because the deal hinged on her never seeing them again.

The burden of keeping the family together fell largely on little Tuesday (then called Susan), as her childhood became a steady round of auditions for modeling jobs. Under the pressure of show-business life, she quickly cracked, later claiming to have had her first nervous breakdown at the age of nine. The family's move to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, gave Weld the rare opportunity to attend public school on a regular basis, as her schedule in New York had allowed only her nominal enrollment in several city schools. She was still far from having a normal childhood, however, as she developed a drinking problem at age ten.

Increased financial need caused Weld and her mother to return to New York after only two years in Florida, where Aileen left her other children in the care of friends. While still modeling, Weld began acting and dance lessons, and quickly accumulated a number of television roles on such shows as "Playhouse 90," "Kraft Theater," "Alcoa Theater," and "Climax." Her acting success did little to assuage the pain she felt, however, and at age 12 she made the first of several suicide attempts, by ingesting a potentially lethal combination of alcohol, sleeping pills, and aspirin. She emerged from the resultant coma as wild as ever, routinely skipping school to get drunk in Greenwich Village.

Weld's break into films occurred at age 13, in 1956's low-budget Rock, Rock, Rock. Her part, described by a critic in Time magazine as "the archetypal nymphet, Shirley Temple [Black] with a leer," was to be the first of many such roles she would play in her acting career, and the image for which she became best known. Unable to gain admittance to New York's Actors Studio because of her age, Weld went with her mother to Hollywood and in 1958 landed the role of the sexy young babysitter in the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward vehicle Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, her first feature film. The following year she legally changed her first name to Tuesday, a childhood nickname, and played the crippled daughter of Danny Kaye in The Five Pennies (1959). This led to a featured role in the popular television series "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," as Thalia Menninger, one of the title character's girlfriends. Weld moved out of her mother's house at age 16, but, compelled by California's strict child labor laws to remain in school until she was 18, attended the Hollywood Professional School when she was not working. Her stint on

"Dobie Gillis" proved short, for in 1960 she was dropped because a sponsor thought her teenage sex appeal inappropriate for a family show.

Undaunted by this setback, Weld found that her image was in demand on the big screen and during the early 1960s starred in a series of movies (most of them forgettable, some truly awful) that exploited this quality. Among these were Because They're Young (1960), with Dick Clark as a high-school teacher; High Time (1960), starring Bing Crosby as a college student;Sex Kittens Go to College (1960), which featured Mamie Van Doren as an ex-stripper turned college science professor; The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1961), with Van Doren, Mickey Rooney—as the devil—and Mel Torme; Return to Peyton Place (1961), based on the novel by Grace Metalious ; and Wild in the Country (1961), written by Clifford Odets and starring Elvis Presley. In each, Weld played the part of a mindless teeny-bopper, troubled teenager, or luscious nymph, commanding $35,000 per film. Hailed as the successor to Marilyn Monroe (whose career was then in its final tailspin), Weld attracted a torrent of media attention for her offscreen scandals, which included affairs with some of Hollywood's biggest names, among them Frank Sinatra, Raymond Burr, Albert Finney, John Ireland, George Hamilton, Elvis Presley, and John Barrymore, Jr. Weld flaunted her sex life and further scandalized the press by making no secret of her fondness for liquor and showing up for interviews barefoot. Such behavior would seem almost commonplace by the end of the decade, but in the conservative early 1960s she was vilified by gossip columnists for adding to the moral decay of Hollywood.

Because of the poor quality of the movies she appeared in, Weld's film career had attracted almost no critical attention, but in the years following she began to earn a reputation as an actress of surprising range. Her sensitive portrayal of Jackie Gleason's dim-witted girlfriend in Soldier in the Rain (1963) caused Judith Crist to hail her as "a lovely blonde who portrays a teen-age submoron to perfection." Playing another backwards girlfriend—this time opposite Steve McQueen—in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Weld again turned critics' heads despite the minor nature of the role. She possessed a knack for elevating even the most typecast roles, such as her shallow high-school beauty whose every wish is granted in Lord Love a Duck (1966), causing one reviewer to remark, "Weld is not only sexy but eloquent in what she doesn't say with words." She was rewarded with first runnerup honors in the Best Actress of the Year category from the New York Film Critics Circle Award on the basis of her work in Pretty Poison, with Anthony Perkins, in 1968. Weld was runner-up to no one when she won Best Actress honors at the Venice Film Festival in 1972 for her portrayal of a troubled former model-actress in the screen adaptation of Joan Didion 's novel Play It As It Lays.

Despite her talent, box-office success eluded Weld. In the 1960s, she passed on plum roles in such major films as Lolita (in which Sue Lyon starred), Bonnie and Clyde (Faye Dunaway took the role of Bonnie Parker ), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower (for which Goldie Hawn later won an Oscar), and the crowd-pleaser True Grit. However, she had a significant cult following by the mid-to-late years of the decade, with Tuesday Weld film festivals springing up in Manhattan and other locations. The cult status of her celebrity allowed Weld to break out of her early Hollywood image to obtain more diverse roles, particularly in television movies which became her primary vehicles from the mid-1970s onward. During this time she was known more for her troubled marriage to actor Dudley Moore, whom she married in 1975 after the break-up of her first marriage in 1971, than for her acting. The 1980s saw even less of Weld, and in the 1990s, despite the respect that now greets her name, she acted in only two major films, Falling Down (1993) and Feeling Minnesota (1996), in which she played a mother.