“My Nights Are All Tuesday Weld…”
That was quite a night,” smiled Gary. “It was Tuesday’s eighteenth birthday, and a half a dozen of us were at her mom’s. Mrs. Weld is the best cook on the Pacific Coast, a real gourmet. After dinner, we sat around to the wee small hours eating chocolate cake and shooting the bull, the same as we’ve been doing since the first night Tuesday and I had dinner together. We talk about everything . . . life . . . working . . . living . . . breathing . . . loving . . . you name it, and we talk it. This girl has something to say on every subject. We may go to war on it, but that’s okay, too. When we disagree, she’ll read up on the subject and come back all recharged with new arguments. She reads well, she thinks well, she has terrific instincts. She’s curious about life and longs for experience. She doesn’t talk like a little kid or think like one, yet like a kid she’s honest and open. There probably aren’t twenty-five girls her age in this country who are as mature as Tuesday. Erratic things, sure she does em, don’t we all? Really, the only thing I’ve seen her flip for is cars, and what’s so erratic about that? It’s just a stage. But go with her to some joint for a soda and watch strangers try to rattle her. You know the routine—‘I don’t think you’re so hot’ or ‘You movie stars aren’t as pretty as your pictures’—and watch her handle them. She’s the fastest gun alive, she can deal with these taunts nicely or cuttingly—whichever the situation demands. She’s the least confused actress in this business, her values are absolutely sound.
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“For her birthday,” Gary went on, “I gave her a cardigan, one of those fluffy sweaters, bright orange. Unfortunately, it washes out with her face—you know what I mean—so she’ll have to exchange it for another color. I don’t know anything about girls’ sweaters. The last time I bought a present for a girl was when I was in high school—I bought a girl a lamp! I also gave Tuesday some handmade earrings, very modern, white gold. She liked those. Tuesday’s not concerned with material things. She’s smart enough to realize that happiness is better than nonsense. I’ve seen her have more fun on fifty cents than anyone else could have on fifty dollars. We’ll stop and buy a hunk of cheese—any kind, she loves all of it—and some dietetic cola and off we go to the beach at Malibu. She’s a good swimmer. While we swim, that dog of hers, Wolf, stands on shore barking at the waves.
“We cook together . . . eat together . . . read together . . . cue each other on scripts . . . take long drives. She has a wonderful personality, she’s stormy like I am. She wants to be great. I guess we even look a little alike. I’m in love. It’s sort of surprising. Girls were never anything special to me, just a key to going some- where, a party, a blast. Now I’ve been dating Tuesday for nine months and it’s love. With her, love is not just a four letter word—it’s the whole alphabet. Ours is not just an affair—it’s an adventure.”
Gary Lockwood shakes his head and tries to understand what’s happened to him. He’s twenty-four and there have been plenty of girls in his life. This is a fellow who was doing a man’s work at twelve, earning his own way driving trucks, packing watermelons, working a ranch. He was shaving at twelve, too.
There were girls in Newhall, California, when he was the big shot at Hart High, an all-star football player, an all-star basketball player, an all-State track man. When he landed a football scholarship to UCLA, there were plenty of college girls, although he didn’t dig them. As be says, “I hate cliche ways of thinking and these kids may talk a tremendous game, but they all wanted to go to the same party, the right party, and be seen with the same people, the right people.”
There were girls in Cuba and Guatemala when he was getting his first glimpse of the world on his own. There were show girls in New York when he acted the lead in the first play he’d ever seen, “There Was a Little Girl.” And there were pretty starlets when Josh Logan saw to it that Gary had a chance in movies: “Tall Story,” “Splendor in the Grass,” “Wild in the Country.” Incessant dating was a pattern but it meant nothing. Love was only a word.
That’s something he and Tuesday have confessed to each other. Neither of them has ever been in love before and the attachment is nice, it’s more than nice, it gives life new meaning. Everyone wants to be loved—every human being, young or old, reaches out for love. They’ve confessed other things, too. Confidence, for example.
“I guess we’re two of the most confident looking people in the world,” he says. “This depends, of course, on who is looking at us. Those who like us think we’re not confident enough. Those who dislike us think we’re too confident, brash. But the fact is, I think confidence is something you build because you’re afraid, it’s an armor you wear.”
They’ve given each other a great deal of confidence, that’s for sure. They’ve gained in security. Tuesday has changed. She’s calmer than I’ve ever seen her, she isn’t constantly trying to prove something. She’s always bragged that she didn’t want people to understand her, but now someone does.
Gary never asked Tuesday to go steady. He didn’t have to. She just did. They are very much alike, these two, ambitious about their careers, sensitive, defensive. Their boiling points are low. A lack of generosity bugs them. The other day when they stopped to have Gary’s car washed, Gary had his shoes shined while they waited. Next to Gary was a man with an expensive cigar, having his shoes shined while he waited for his big black Cadillac to be washed. The shoeshine boy knocked himself out on the man’s shoes and in return he was given a ten cent tip! But that was nothing compared to the had time the man gave the car wash boys. Tuesday and Gary exchanged a look. Gary would have gladly slugged the guy. Tuesday wished he would and was scared he might. Gary is a restless man. Tuesday knows and understands that because she’s a restless girl.
Injustice bugs them. Tuesday’s grown used to press reports that are not true; Gary hasn’t. A couple of weeks ago a syndicated column ran the news, “Gary Lockwood lost his girl and his TV series.” The writer couldn’t have been more wrong. “Follow the Sun,” Gary’s series—he co-stars with Brett Halsey and Barry Coe—is going great guns. As a matter of fact, Tuesday even filmed one segment, “The Highest Wall,” with him. They love acting together. As Gary says, the greatest thing in the world is to play against strength, which is what Tuesday has. Neither of them are skidding by on looks. Their working strength is talent.
As for his girl—all his nights are Tuesday and yet rumors persist that they’re breaking up. It’s bewildering. They read the stories as if they were reading about strangers. One reason for the rumors may be because there’s been no talk of marriage. And there’s not going to be. Gary’s in no position to marry, he’s barely gotten started in the business, and even if the series is a success, a TV series isn’t his goal. He’s looking for serious dramatic parts in major pictures. He’s going to he great or nothing. He has no idea which. How could he possibly ask a girl to marry him at this point? Especially a girl who is a star? No. Gary’s not thinking about marriage. But he is thinking about a boat, a thirty-footer. He hopes to have the boat by Christmas. He’ll give up his one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-month apartment and live on board for a year to help pay for it.
“It’s the first thing I’ve ever bought that was sort of permanent,” he confessed. ‘I’m the kind of a guy who’s scared of buying permanent things, even a house. I won’t buy anything on time, either— absolutely nothing. I’m not set enough in this business. Suppose something happened? Suppose something went wrong? I’m not the kind who thinks about tomorrow. Tomorrow I don’t know about. I live for now . . . today . . . tonight—tonight with Tuesday. . . .
“We’ll cook dinner at her house tonight, we usually do because we can cook better for the money. Besides, I enjoy goofing around the kitchen. My specialty is a German dish called rouladen, round steak sliced and rolled with slivers of pickle, cinnamon, salt, pepper, cheese and bacon, browned, then baked in the oven with mushrooms. But I don’t have to cook because, man, this girl of mine can cook, she’s almost as good a chef as her mother.”
Some nights they go to movies, usually at the Village Theater in Westwood, which was Gary’s hangout when he was a student at UCLA. He likes the Village because they can dress as casually as the college kids do. Gary’s anti dress-up. So is Tuesday. They see the movie, stop at Greenblatt’s delicatessen to pick up a few sandwiches and then drive along the ocean in Gary’s little red Corvette. Warm nights they go for a long drive with Tuesday’s massive white police dog—and use Tuesday’s silver Thunderbird. Three’s strictly a crowd in the Corvette!
A few months ago, they spent their nights at the hospital. Gary did all the talking then because Tuesday had had her tonsils removed and she felt miserable.
It really doesn’t matter where these two are, so long as they’re together. They hate big parties—they’ve gone to exactly two: Tuesday went to one for his sake, Gary went to one for hers. They love small parties at the homes of friends like Curt Lewin (Gary’s stand-in and friend for ten years), Tom Murphy or Barry Coe.
Gary’s introduced Tuesday to tennis and water skiing. It was a surprise that Tuesday was so athletic. Gary says she has true coordination, excellent rhythm, and can learn anything in the world she wants to learn.
They talk ad infinitum about acting; for they’re in love with it as well as with each other. This girl who started as a stony-faced child model (They used to call her “The Rock.’’) and this boy who escaped from a ranch to football, and would have been all-American if be hadn’t injured his knee in a UCLA game, have a lot in common. In acting they both found they could do something they never dreamed—they found they could project themselves into another personality, they could become someone else. It was exciting! It made up for being something of a lone wolf in a world that often seemed alien. Yes, they have a lot in common—yet, when they met during “Wild in the Country,” Gary didn’t flip for her at all!
“I wasn’t out looking for movie stars,” he told me. “Then one night I took a date to a party—but I found myself yakking with this little blonde. A week or so later, we started working together in the pilot of ‘Bus Stop.’ It was a great script, great lines, she played the Marilyn Monroe part and I the Don Murray part. We worked well together. As a matter of fact. I was fascinated with the way she works. In one scene I have to drink down a whole quart of milk. I figured she’d react big. The director figured it, too. Well, she didn’t. Her reaction was a sort of ‘So what?’
“I never even thought about her as a date. Every guy has a type and she just wasn’t mine. She was cute looking, sure, but I wasn’t interested in her looks, I was interested in her thinking. There’s a tremendous love affair that goes on between Tuesday and the camera. The camera loves her. For all her youth, she has a marvelous technique. In between scenes we talked about everything. I teased her. I called her ‘The Monster.’ We never did have a date. One night after work as we were walking toward the parking lot, she asked if I’d like to come by and have dinner. We talked until one the next morning.”
After that night Gary still didn’t ask her for a date. He didn’t like the way people made a fuss over her on the set. As if they were afraid of her. He wasn’t going to be in any of that. No indeed. He wasn’t getting involved in any of that. Girls were too easy to come by, he didn’t have to get involved with a prima donna. But talk to her he did. They’d smoke a cigarette and talk. His birthday rolled around and she brought him a present— a green sweater. For that he took her to dinner. They never did get around to an actual date.
They’ve always hated advice, yet tons of it is constantly heaped on them by well-meaning pals. The only advice they want is from each other. Often, in the beginning, Gary—a kid who worked hard for every nickel be ever had—was tempted by money to say, “I’ll do anything, just give me a script!” But he has a fierce pride, too, and Tuesday, having a fierce pride herself, pointed out to him that money or no money you have to believe in what you do.
Gary’s been up for parts and not gotten them because they’ve gone to names that matter on the marquee, they’ve gone to “pretty” boys. Gary’s no pretty boy. he has a wide nose and a fighting kind of jaw, a strong face, a stormy face. Tuesday tells him not to worry, that she didn’t get the kind of parts she wanted at first, either. “You’ll get them,” she says. She knows strength pays off on the screen. She’s acted with plenty of top talent and, as far as she’s concerned. Gary’s is top talent. He dreams of playing Hal in “Picnic,” he dreams of intense, dramatic parts. Meanwhile, everything that happens is training. The goal is art.
The greatest night they’ve known together was the night of the Moiseyev Ballet.
“We dressed, I’ll have to admit,” he laughed. “I was absolutely flabbergasted at how wonderful Tuesday looked. Black dress, white coat. her hair all honey-colored and neat. I wore my blue suit, my one and only suit, and felt like Gladstone Gander, Donald Duck’s nemesis. We were excited just thinking about the ballet, but what we saw was even more exciting. It was enlightened art . . . masculine . . . virile . . . smooth . . . living . . . precise . . . fantastic . . . so great! I’ll never forget Tuesday, standing up, clapping her hands and shouting ‘Bravo!’ She’d have thrown hundred dollar bills all over the stage if she’d had them. . . . We felt at once exhilarated and empty, thrilled and ashamed of ourselves because we’re so little by comparison. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and twice as beautiful because I saw it with two pairs of eyes—hers and mine. It was unlike any adventure I’ve ever had. But then, when I’m with Tuesday, every minute, every night is unlike any adventure I’ve ever had. I know Tuesday’s dated lots of other guys. but I think it’s different with me. I hope it is. And I hope it lasts . . . because without Tuesday, I’m lost.”
—JANE ARDMORE
Gary can be seen in Warners’ “Splendor in the Grass” and on ABC-TV’s “Follow the Sun,” Sunday, 7:30 P.M. EST. Tuesday’s new film is “Bachelor Fiat,” for 20th.
It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE JANUARY 1962
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