I was recently turned on to a Youtube video of the 1963 TV version of The Legend of Lylah Clare starring Tuesday Weld. I admit being obsessed with Robert Aldrich’s 1968 sardonic, poisonous-valentine-to-Hollywood version starring Kim Novak, but hadn’t heard of this hour-long original done for NBC’s DuPont Show of the Week on May 19, 1963. The DuPont Show of the Week was an hour-long anthology show that lasted three seasons on NBC. The Youtube video includes all the vintage commercials for the show hawking paint products and no-wrinkle clothes made of cotton and Dacron.
The Legend of Lylah Clare was written by Robert Thom, based on an original idea by Edward DeBlasio. Thom was a uniquely original writer. Born in Brooklyn, he went on to Yale University and then became a Rhodes Scholar. He wrote a play- The Minotaur, performed at Circle-In-The-Square and directed by Jose Quintero. He worked on the Broadway theatrical version based on the book by Meyer Levin– Compulsion about the notorious Leopold/Loeb murder case, and was brought in to work on the screenplay for the filmed version starring Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman and Orson Welles. He wrote the screenplay for The Subterraneans (loosely based on a Jack Kerouac novel) and All the Fine Young Cannibals starring Natalie Wood and based on jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. (Later he penned the screenplay for the terrific counter-culture dark comedy Wild in the Streets and he directed the bonkers- Angel Angel Down We Go). But in 1963 he tackled The Legend of Lylah Clare, and it’s a riveting story about a novice actress Elsie Brinkmann (Tuesday Weld) who is the spitting image of the famous, doomed late actress Lylah Clare. Her agent bleaches her hair to match Lylah’s Harlow-white shade and brings her to director Louis Zakin (Alfred Drake) who was closely associated with Clare. Zakin is at first unimpressed but suddenly Elsie channels Lylah Clare, guzzling champagne, shooting off a rifle in the dining room and shocking the producers Zakin has invited over who immediately greenlight a new film starring Brinkmann as Lylah Clare.
Zakin shows Elsie a portrait up on the wall and describes Lylah Clare as “that wicked, comic voluptuary- that was my creation.” He also demands Elsie “Give me your life!” and he changes her name to Elsa Christie. But “Elsa” slowly finds Lylah’s vengeful, self-destructive spirit over-taking her. She begins drinking wildly and has fits on the set refusing to show up to film scenes. She is even interviewed by reporters in a bubble-bath and then has a melt-down and chucks them all out. This all leads to the making-of-the-movie and its tragic outcome.
Tuesday Weld is one of those amazing actresses you wish had done more films. When you watch her sex-kitten allure in Lord Love a Duck or her chilling turn as the crazed cheerleader sociopath in Pretty Poison, she just blows your mind. In this teleplay she shines- she’s ferocious and heartbreaking at the same time. She was barely 20 when she made this. Alfred Drake was a famed theater actor and Broadway musical star and has just the right deranged arrogance for the part of Zakin.
True, this TV drama, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton), doesn’t have the inspired lunacy of the Robert Aldrich film. Or Kim Novak inexplicably walking around a garden in her bra. Or that demented dog food commercial at the end of the film. But it’s a fascinating hour of television starring one of the most criminally underrated actresses of our time.