{"id":106223,"date":"2025-08-27T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106223"},"modified":"2025-08-26T00:46:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T04:46:49","slug":"happy-birthday-tuesday-weld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106223","title":{"rendered":"“I do not ever want to be a huge star.” — Tuesday Weld"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s her birthday today.<\/p>\n

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\nFrom the great “Pretty Poison” (1968) with Anthony Perkins. And below you can see her as the creepily blank and heart-achingly gorgeous teenage majorette in the fantastic opening sequence of the film.<\/i><\/p>\n

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\nSee Pretty Poison<\/i> if you have not. Don’t miss Kim’s essay about Pretty Poison<\/i>.<\/a> In Pretty Poison<\/i>, Weld shows up as the bombshell blonde teenager, restless in her small-town life, bored out of her mind (Weld was thrilling when she was bored because then she started yearning for excitement\/stimulation\/something to DO … and by that point, look out). She’s looking for escape and release, she’s empty on some level, and emptiness can be filled by bad-ness just as easily as it can by goodness. Bad-ness is certainly more exciting. <\/p>\n

Also:<\/p>\n

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\nFrom the wonderful “Wild in the Country” (1961).<\/i><\/p>\n

Weld was only a teenager when she made Wild in the Country<\/i> but she is fantastic as the wild-child bored-out-of-her-mind, her horniness indistinguishable from boredom and disgust, the so-called local bad-girl who torments Elvis Presley’s character, a man trying (under court order) to stay good, clean, on the right side of the law. She practically begs him to “take” her. With all of her impulsive shenanigans, there is a quiet moment in the middle of the film, where Presley and Weld perch on a rickety back stairway, and he sings, and she listens. There’s a stillness, a communion between these two hard-to-be-pinned-down misunderstood-sex-outlaws … when everything slows to a standstill, and they can just be. They’re kindred spirits. <\/p>\n

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