08/27/2026
Born 83 years ago (27 August 1943) today: Hollywood’s transgressive pouty, perverse and malevolent s*x kitten / nymphette / wild child Tuesday Weld. I love the adorable Weld’s performances in Rock, Rock, Rock (1956), Return to Peyton Place (1961), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Lord Love a Duck (1966), Pretty Poison (1968), Play It as It Lays (1972) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). (As the ever-savvy Bruce La Bruce has noted, Weld is the rare actress to commit matricide twice onscreen: in Lord Love a Duck and Pretty Poison). Hell, she’s even beguiling in the otherwise execrable The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960). (I keep meaning to investigate S*x Kittens Go to College (1960) co-starring b-movie vixen Mamie Van Doren and Go Wild in the Country (1962), in which Weld is Elvis Presley’s leading lady). Interestingly, Weld is also famous for the parts she rejected: she was first choice for Stanley Kubrick’s Lo**ta (1962) ("I didn't have to play it. I was Lo**ta” she explained) (which went to Sue Lyon), Bonnie in Bonnie & Clyde (1967) (which went to Faye Dunaway), Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) (which went to Mia Farrow) and Pherber in Performance (1970) (which went to Anita Pallenberg). Weld’s turbulent bad girl persona wasn’t restricted to the screen. No wonder the May 1960 cover of gossip magazine Inside Story gasped “Too Hep at 16? The Startling Inside Story of a Teen-age Rebel!” As Slant website summarised, “Weld dated men three times her age, drank heavily, smoked pot, and was surly and difficult with reporters, once appearing on a daytime talk show in a bathrobe and bare feet. Sam Shepard later wrote of the incident, “I fell in love with Tuesday Weld on that show. I thought she was the Marlon Brando of women.”” In the grand tradition of late-period Garbo or Dietrich present-day Weld lives in deep seclusion and hasn’t been seen in public in years. Portrait of Weld by Jerry Schatzberg, 1963.
