Background and career
Tuesday Weld (born Susan Ker Weld; August 27, 1943) is an American retired actress. She began acting as 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. Weld often portrayed impulsive and reckless women and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Play It as It Lays (1972), an 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). After the 1980s her acting appearances became infrequent, and her last role was in 2001's Chelsea Walls.
Weld was born in Manhattan. Her father was Lathrop Motley Weld, of the Weld family of Massachusetts. Her father died in 1947 at the age of 49, shortly before his daughter's fourth birthday. Her mother, Yosene Balfour Ker, was born in Ealing, Middlesex, England, and was the daughter of the artist and Life illustrator William Balfour Ker, who was of Scottish descent, and related to the inventor Alexander Graham Bell. She was Lathrop Weld's fourth and last wife. Weld had a brother and sister. Her name became Tuesday, an extension of her childhood nickname, "Tu-Tu", so named by a young cousin who could not pronounce "Susan". She legally changed her name to Tuesday Weld on October 9, 1959.
Left in financial difficulty by her husband's death, Weld's mother put Weld 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. Weld was a child model and her mother secured her an agent using her résumé from modeling. She made her acting debut on television at the age of 12, and her feature film debut that year in a bit role in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock crime drama The Wrong Man. 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. On TV, she appeared in an episode of Goodyear Playhouse, "Backwoods Cinderella". She understudied on Broadway in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Weld was cast in a supporting role in the Paul Newman–Joanne Woodward comedy Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), made by 20th Century Fox. At Paramount Pictures, Weld was in The Five Pennies (1959), playing the daughter of Danny Kaye, who called Weld "15 going on 27". She guest-starred a number of times on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1958–59). She appeared in 77 Sunset Strip with Efrem Zimbalist Jr., in the 1959 episode "Secret Island".
Weld's performance in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! impressed executives at Fox, who signed her to a long-term contract. They cast her in the CBS television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, with a salary of $35,000 for one year. Weld played 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 only one season, the show created considerable national publicity for her, and she was named a co-winner of a "Most Promising Newcomer" award at the Golden Globe Awards. At Columbia, Weld had a leading role in the teen film Because They're Young (1960), starring Dick Clark. She was second billed in Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) made by Albert Zugsmith at Allied Artists. She made a second film for Zugsmith, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, made in 1959 but not released for two years. She guest starred on The Red Skelton Hour in "Appleby: The Big Producer" (1959) and on 77 Sunset Strip (1959) and The Millionaire (1960). At Fox, she played Joy, a free-spirited university student in High Time, starring Bing Crosby and Fabian Forte. She sang a love song to Fabian in the season opener of NBC's The Dinah Shore Chevy Show on October 9, 1960. Four weeks later, on November 13, Weld returned to the network as a guest star in NBC's The Tab Hunter Show. She guested in "The Mormons" for Zane Grey Theatre (1960). For Fox, Weld had a supporting role in the sequel Return to Peyton Place (1961), in the part played by Hope Lange in the original. Her portrayal of an incest victim was well received, but the film was less successful than its predecessor. She supported Elvis Presley in Wild in the Country (1962), along with Lange. Weld had an off-screen romance with Presley. Fox also used her as a guest star on Follow the Sun ("The Highest Wall") and Adventures in Paradise ("The Velvet Trap"). On November 12, 1961, she played a singer, Cherie, in the seventh episode of ABC's television series Bus Stop, produced by Fox, with Marilyn Maxwell and Gary Lockwood. It was an adaptation of the play by William Inge, with Weld in the role originated on screen by Marilyn Monroe. Weld supported Terry-Thomas in the Frank Tashlin comedy Bachelor Flat (1962), for Fox. Following the film's release, she appeared on What's My Line? as the celebrity mystery guest.
Weld's mother was scandalized by her teen daughter's love 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". She was Stanley Kubrick's first choice to play the role of Lolita in his 1962 film, but she turned the offer down, saying: "I didn't have to play it. I was Lolita". Weld took three months off to go to Greenwich Village in New York and "study myself". Then she starred along with Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen in Soldier in the Rain, written by Blake Edwards from a novel by William Goldman, but the film was only a minor success. She won excellent reviews for a 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 Caril Ann Fugate, (depicted as the character Ora Mae Youngham, played by Weld), Starkweather's 14 year old girlfriend, on a homicidal spree ending in New York City. She guest starred on Route 66 in "Love Is a Skinny Kid" (1962), Ben Casey in "When You See an Evil Man" (1962), and The Dick Powell Theatre in "A Time to Die" (1962) and "Run Till It's Dark" with Fabian (1962).
