Tuesday Weld is the kind of person that has suffered a great deal in her life but hasn’t really gotten the kind of notice that others such as Judy Garland and other troubled actors have. If you read through her bio you get only bits and pieces of a story that seems unbearably hard to understand from a moral standpoint but yet has some bright spots in between that aren’t all doom and gloom. Her life wasn’t a constant flood of sunshine and rainbows but thankfully it wasn’t the continual trial that it seemed to be either. The truth of it is that Tuesday, born Susan Weld, had a lot of pressure put on her shoulders at a very young age and was without a doubt given little if any real help in how to deal with it early on in life.
She didn’t have much choice when it came to going to work.
Tuesday’s father passed away before her fourth birthday and as a result this left her mother in dire straits financially-speaking. She put Tuesday to work as a model to help support her family. Tuesday wasn’t really given any choice to be more accurate when it came to her lifestyle as her mother would not give her or her siblings up to her father’s family. Her mother had been an orphan that had come to America from London and had managed to marry into a very prestigious family. Unfortunately her father’s family believed that her mother was nothing more than a commoner that couldn’t provide for her children. Her paternal grandparents offered to take all three children to raise and educate them with the stipulation that they would never see their mother again. This didn’t pan out since Tuesday’s mother would not simply give away her children.
Her fame didn’t come without a price.
Her mother wasn’t exactly careful with Tuesday when she went to book her for gigs, but she did manage to get her agent that worked with her. Tuesday’s acting debut came at age 12 and she would eventually go on to have a bit role in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Wrong Man. Unfortunately the spotlight wasn’t all that kind to her and by the age of nine, before her movie debut, she’d already had a nervous breakdown. By the age of 12 she was an alcoholic, and she even tried to commit suicide at one point. Her mother tended to push her so hard due to the hardships that she was feeling in her own life after the death of her husband. This is what Tuesday managed to convey in the past, as her mother was a very demanding and in some cases domineering woman. Despite all that however she continued to learn and to act and to take her place in the spotlight as needed to continue supporting her family.
Later in her career she would actively turn down roles that would go on to be part of successful movies.
You might have to ask Tuesday just what was really behind the decision to turn down roles in several movies that went on to be success stories, but her biggest reason seems to be that they WERE going to be successful, and she simply didn’t want that. It sounds odd doesn’t it? But if you look at the mindset of a person that’s been pushed for so long and never given enough gratitude then you might come to understand the idea of backing away from success finally. Eventually the drive to succeed is no longer there and the desire to simply back away from the pressure and avoid the needless stress is too strong and the person will give in, thinking it best to simply slip into the shadows without any fanfare. In some cases this seems highly likely and more than a little justified, but in Tuesday’s case it was a little confusing to be honest.
She did appear in a few more films up until she retired in 2001, such as this one:
Falling Down
She plays the part of a nagging wife that is quite neurotic and tends to take up a lot of her husband’s time with a great deal of needless concerns that are more to assuage her own feelings than to serve any real purpose. In fact the part could be taken out of the whole movie and it wouldn’t be missed except by those that have seen it. And more to the point it is a different side of the detective, her husband, that makes him a little easier to relate to and grants him a little more depth as a character.
Tueday Weld isn’t really a tragic figure in Hollywood, but she certainly didn’t have an easy time growing up. Her mother loved her very much, but in a way that almost made it seem like resentment at times.
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