Susan Ker Weld was born on Friday, August 27th 1943 in New York
City. When her father, Lathrop Motley Weld, died three years later
at the age of 49, the cute little girl, whose name by then had
somehow been transmogrified into "Tuesday", took over the role of
the family breadwinner: Tuesday became a successful child model,
posing for advertisements and mail order catalogs. Her work and the
burden of responsibility estranged her from her mother Aileen and
her two elder siblings and catapulted the preteen girl into
adulthood. Nine years old, she suffered a nervous breakdown, at ten
she started heavy drinking. One year later, Tuesday began to have
love affairs, and at the age of twelve she tried to commit suicide.
In 1956 Tuesday Weld debuted in the low-budget exploitation movie
"Rock, Rock, Rock" and decided to become an actress. After numerous
TV appearances in New York she went to Hollywood in 1958 and was
cast for "Rally Round the Flag, Boys", something of a breakthrough
for her. Over the next years, Tuesday became Hollywood's queen of
teen, playing chiefly precocious sex kittens. Her wild private life
added to the entertainment of her fans. The critics acknowledged
her talent, the directors approved of her professionalism, and in
the late sixties Tuesday even managed to grow out of her child
woman image and find more demanding roles - she had been sweet
little sixteen for about sixteen years. However, Tuesday Weld
didn't achieve first-magnitude stardom. Maybe she was just unlucky
with her selection of jobs (she turned down "Lolita", "Bonnie and
Clyde", "True Grit", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" &&&), maybe her
independence-loving mind made her instinctively shrink back from
the restraints of superstardom. So Tuesday Weld kept on performing
well in films which had either not much flair or not much success.
From the mid-seventies on, she focused more and more on made-for-TV
movies. Ironically, the best (Once Upon a Time in America) and the
most successful film (Falling Down) that featured Tuesday Weld came
only after her career was already petering out.
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