Tuesday Weld mini-bio: A leading teen ing?nue of the 1950s and 1960s, Tuesday Weld later emerged as one of
the more intriguing actresses in Hollywood, delivering a string of well-received
performances in the kinds of offbeat and idiosyncratic projects rarely visited by
performers of her beauty and glamour. Born Susan Weld August 27, 1943, in New York
City, the name "Tuesday" was an extension of a girlhood nickname, "Tu-Tu." She
began working as a child model at age four to help support her family after the
death of her father, quickly moving from mail-order catalogues to television
commercials. She made her film debut in 1963's Rock, Rock, Rock before
understudying in Broadway's 1957 production of +The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.
Upon signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox, Weld was labeled by the
press as "Fox's answer to Sandra Dee," but after just one film, 1959's Rally 'Round
the Flag, Boys!, the studio dropped her.
Weld shot to prominence through her work in the television comedy The Many Loves of
Dobie Gillis, which premiered in 1959. That same year she appeared on the silver
screen opposite Danny Kaye in The Five Pennies, followed in 1960 by the campus drama
Because They're Young. Also in 1960, Weld began appearing under schlockmeister
Albert Zugsmith, first in Sex Kittens Go to College and later in the following
year's The Private Lives of Adam and Eve. Successive roles in Return to Peyton Place
and the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country further crippled her attempts to
mount a serious acting career, although her turn in the 1962 Frank Tashlin comedy
Bachelor Flat showed signs of life. Weld then turned down the seemingly tailor-made
title role in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita in order to study her craft at the Actors'
Studio, and after holding her own opposite Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason in
1963's Soldier in the Rain, she announced she would no longer accept teenage roles.
However, teen roles were all that continued to come Weld's way, and after a two-year
absence from the screen she resurfaced in 1965's I'll Take Sweden as the young
daughter of star Bob Hope. She followed with an appearance in the McQueen gambling
drama The Cincinnati Kid, and in 1966 delivered her strongest performance to date in
George Axelrod's little-seen satiric gem Lord Love a Duck. That same year Weld
married, later giving birth to her first child. Motherhood brought a temporary halt
to her career, forcing her to turn down plum assignments including Bonnie and Clyde,
Cactus Flower, True Grit, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. She returned to work in
1968's Pretty Poison, again earning strong critical notices, but after 1970's I Walk
the Line, it was reported that she had moved to Britain and retired from film.
The move was not permanent, for in 1971 Weld appeared in her friend Henry Jaglom's A
Safe Place. After 1972's Play It As It Lays, she returned to television work,
starring in the TV films Reflections of Murder and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood.
In 1977, Weld appeared in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a year later she starred in
Who'll Stop the Rain? From 1980 to 1985, Weld was married to Dudley Moore, a period
during which she appeared in Michael Mann's 1981 thriller Thief and Sergio Leone's
1984 classic Once Upon a Time in America. In the latter half of the decade, however,
she appeared more infrequently before the camera, with only a pair of TV-movie
credits, 1986's Something in Common and Circle of Violence: A Family Drama, and a
lead role in the 1988 feature Heartbreak Hotel. In the 1990s, Tuesday Weld sightings
were even more rare, including only 1991's Mistress, 1993's Falling Down, and 1996's
Feeling Minnesota.
PinkBohemianSweetieposted 512 days ago
