If They’re In Love, Why Aren’t They Thinking Of Marriage?—Gary Lockwood & Tuesday Weld

In the time that Tuesday Weld and Gary Lockwood have been going together, a great many half truths, rosy-colored fictions and downright lies have been told about them—and for that matter, by them, too. It is time to state the hard, unpretty facts.

These two kids spend as much of their time tormenting each other as they do being happy together—maybe more. But because of all the distortions they themselves have invented, and because of all of the speculations which have been accepted as proven fact, the truth about the problem that is breaking their hearts remains hidden.

Worst of all, it’s not even apparent to Tuesday and Gary themselves. Perhaps, despite all their experience, they simply don’t know as much about love as they think they do. Or maybe they’ve come to believe their own tall tales by now. In either event, this story is meant as much to show them, what’s wrong as to set the record straight.

The obvious questions people ask about Tuesday and Gary are: “Are they really in love?” and “If they are in love, why aren’t they thinking about marriage?”

Since Tuesday and Gary have both declared their love in public, you might wonder why the first is such an obvious question. The reason is that lots of people, in a position to know, say it just isn’t true. Tuesday’s mother, for example. When asked if she thinks this romance is the real thing, she looks up at the ceiling and says, “Sure, it’s always the real thing with Tuesday.”

But other insiders contradict Mrs. Weld. They say that Tuesday is really in love—but that Gary isn’t. One friend said, “Gary started the romance as a simple publicity stunt to get his career moving. When he realized Tuesday was playing it for real, he was horrified. He’s been looking for a graceful way out ever since.”

Tuesday’s enemies (and she has made a lot of them since she arrived in Hollywood) love to add that she has actually proposed marriage to Gary, and been turned down.

Now, these make very good stories. There’s a real touch of poetic justice about them. You know—heartless girl flirt finally gets her come-uppance—and all that. Or: Ruthless, ambitious boy deceives girl to further his career and ends up trapped in his own publicity.

But life is rarely that neat. The stories are good, but they are fiction.

Let’s start with Gary. The truth is, he loves Tuesday so wildly that his fits of jealousy leave them both exhausted. Now, Gary knows that Tuesday is true to him. She absolutely will not date anyone else. But Tuesday occasionally gets phone calls from Elvis Presley. And, the mere fact that she likes to talk to Elvis on the telephone galls Gary beyond belief.

Now, what about Tuesday? “I don’t understand how anyone who knows her can fail to see that she’s head over heels in love for the first time in her life,” an intimate friend revealed. “I’ll give you an example of what Gary means to her. A few months ago, Tuesday and Gary broke up for a while. The split lasted seven weeks, and it was for real. They were finally, officially, permanently through. Gary even took home the swimming trunks he kept at Tuesday’s house because he used her pool so often. But—almost every night during those seven weeks— Tuesday would start phoning Gary’s place around midnight. If he wasn’t home, she’d keep on phoning until he came in. Sometimes that wouldn’t be till three or four in the morning. When Gary finally answered his phone, Tuesday would let him have it. You know, ‘Where have you been?’ etc.”

Despite the fact that she knew Gary was dating, and that the knowledge drove her wild, Tuesday never once retaliated by going out with another guy. Not one. When she needed an escort, she got Dick Clayton, her agent—he happens to be Gary’s agent, too—to take her. When asked why she was turning dates down left and right, she answered without a trace of pride. “I’m hoping that Gary and I will get back together. I know he wouldn’t like it if I went out with someone else.”

Whatever it is, it’s love

Since Tuesday and Gary reconciled, Tuesday has gone even further. Tuesday once said she always cheated when she went steady, and she meant it. She was the biggest flirt in town. Any fellow who took her to a party could kiss her goodbye when they arrived, because she’d spend the evening talking, or dancing, or laughing with every man in the room. But with Gary, she clings like a burr.

So how come her own mother can’t see it? This is one of the places where the truth hurts. Mrs. Weld is no different from a lot of mothers. She can’t see it because she doesn’t want to. She is torn between wanting to see her daughter married, and the fear of losing her. So she has convinced herself that every boy Tuesday is interested in is the wrong boy. Then she tries to convince Tuesday, too. An ingenious mother can come up with a lot of objections. One boy is immature; another is arrogant. Still another isn’t capable of real love. But after a girl has watched her mother go through this performance a dozen times she begins to catch on. Everybody else does, too. Tuesday’s friends never have to ask her how serious she is about any particular boy. They can always tell by how vehemently Mrs. Weld opposes him. And Aileen Weld has never been so upset by any boy as she has by Gary. Even Gary, who’s gotten pretty good about giving out the “right” story, can’t hide it. When you ask him how he gets along with Tuesday’s mother, the best he can do is pause for about two minutes and then mutter, “We . . . we usually reach some kind of agreement.”

All of which takes care of the first question: Are Tuesday and Gary in love? The truth is, they’ve been in love since they met. They stayed in love even when they broke up. They are probably in love to stay.

Which brings us to question number two: Why aren’t they thinking of marriage?

Here is where Tuesday and Gary have created a real smoke screen. They have a different answer for every day of the week. Some of the answers are downright lies; some of them have a germ of truth.

Of course, Tuesday and Gary don’t believe every story they invent. For example, they keep saying that they have never discussed marriage. Now, that’s just not true and they know it and their friends know it.

“They’re always talking about marriage,” says a friend of Gary’s. “Every couple of weeks they show up at the house and announce they’ve decided to get married. For a few days they’re as happy and excited as kids. Then they have one of their fights, and it’s all off—they wouldn’t dream of marrying one another. A few days later they’re wondering not only whether they should get married, but when.”

But some of their other statements are harder to dispute. Like the one about how much they both need their privacy and can’t stand having anyone, even someone they love, around all the time. That’s why Gary talks about giving up his apartment and going to live on his boat. That’s why Tuesday moved into a house of her own. Since both of them have a reputation for being freedom-loving types, this is easy to believe. And it even has some truth in it. But it’s a back-dated truth, from pre- Tuesday days for Gary, and pre-Gary days for Tuesday. Today the very opposite is true. They literally can’t stand to be apart. Gary is able to give up his apartment and move to his boat because he is never home, anyway—he does his eating and his studying and his swimming and his just-lounging-around at Tuesday’s. The only reason he needs a place of his own is to sleep.

As for Tuesday, when she moved into her new house it was with the expectation that Gary would be there with her most of the time. But shortly after she moved, that seven-week split began. Did she take comfort in all that privacy she had? Not at all. When Gary stopped coming around, Tuesday found that the house gave her the willies. There were simply too many rooms. In a panic, she phoned friends and confided that she couldn’t stand to be alone. Finally, in desperation, she found a roommate, a dental assistant named Kay Biebel.

So you can rule out the privacy theory. They’d rather be together any day.

And now we come to a really good answer. Gary says, “We can’t get married because we both have to be free to follow any whim that strikes us.”

“. . . you never can tell . . .”

Gary dwells on the unpredictability of his life. He never knows from one minute to the next what he’s going to do. Didn’t he become an actor by sheer accident? Tomorrow he might decide to junk the whole deal and head his boat for the South Pacific. Marriage is the tie that binds you to one place, one job, one person. Obviously, he can’t get married.

Tuesday tells you the same thing about herself. “It’s not that I’m afraid of responsibility—I’ve had that since I was three. But if someone gives me a part in a show in Afghanistan, I want to be free to take it. If I want to dance barefoot on Sunset Boulevard at midnight, I don’t want to have to worry about what anyone else thinks about it.” So, she can’t get married either. A checkmate, perhaps?

Now here is something that is so close to the truth, it almost is true. Tuesday and Gary are truly creatures of impulse. They’ve been fighting conventions and restrictions all their lives. They like to follow their whims, and they want what they want when they want it. But is that a reason for them to shun marriage? No. A million times no. It’s the reason they have got to get married—to each other.

Because by some incredible miracle, Tuesday loves to go driving with Gary at three in the morning. Gary would happily say bye-bye to his career to follow Tuesday to Afghanistan. Tuesday would adore island-hopping in the South Pacific.

The simple truth is that these two ultra-individualistic, super-special, completely unique individuals are as alike as peas in a pod. And if they lose each other, it could take years and years for them to find anyone else to suit them half as much. Both Tuesday and Gary have a point when they say they’re not fit for marriage. They’re not—except to each other.

That’s why there’s real tragedy ahead if they keep messing with their romance. Instead of getting along better and better, they are fighting more these days. Tuesday has become almost as jealous of Gary as he is of her. She phones him half a dozen times a day at the studio, partly to find out how he is, partly because she can’t bear not speaking to him every few hours—but partly to remind him that he belongs to her and not to any pretty actress he happens to be working with. If they were officially engaged, everyone would know they belonged to each other and life would be easier for them both.

So, discarding the lies and the distortions, why don’t they get married—or at least engaged?

The reason is simple, even though they refuse to admit it to themselves and to each other: They’re afraid that they might be making a mistake.

It’s so ironic. Of course they have real doubts and problems. Who can deny it? Tuesday grew up in a broken home and has good reason to be scared of divorce. Gary has watched his young married friends struggle with first-year problems, and naturally he worries about how he’d handle them. Both of them live and work in Hollywood where they see marriages tear apart like paper. And they have their own special problems: two careers (with Tuesday’s better established); short tempers; old flames all over the place. And they’ve even got the half-real, half-phony problems like the privacy and impulse bits, they talk about so much.

But by brooding about these things and getting tense over them and putting the brakes on their romance, they make them worse, not better. If they keep it up, their relationship will surely fall apart. And then they’ll say, “See, we were right to wait—it didn’t work!”

But love is an affair of the heart, not of the mind.

It’s sad that Tuesday and Gary don’t see that. God knows their hearts know what they want—they’ve already proved they can’t live without each other. Whether they fight, whether they split, whether they give vent to jealous frenzies, they always come back to each other. What’s holding things up is the tremendous effort both of them are making to be careful instead of impulsive, to be selfless rather than selfish. It’s noble, but for them it’s all wrong. It’s against their natures. No decision made on that basis could possibly work for them, because they aren’t careful or selfless. That’s why they fell in love. That’s why they’re right for each other. That’s why they ought to grab each other while they’ve got the God-given chance.

If they do, it will be the sanest, most sensible thing they ever did in their lives!

—BY CHARLOTTE DINTER

Gary Lockwood appears in “Follow The Sun.” ABC-TV, Sun. 7:30-8:30 P.M. EDT.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1962