You Have No Idea What These Female Child Stars Endured

You Have No Idea What These Female Child Stars Endured

Anissa Jones. In 1976, child star Anissa Jones was found dead at a friend’s house after a party. As police investigated, they uncovered chilling details about what really happened that night. Anissa Jones charmed audiences across America with her cutesy performance as Buffy Davis on CBS’s Family Affair. But as Hollywood has shown all too often, the glamorous life of a child star often obscures troubling darkness beneath the surface. Jones, tragically, was no different. Mary Anissa Jones was born on March 11th, 1958 in Indiana. Not long after the birth of her younger brother, Paul, the Jones family moved to California. The move would set Anissa’s destiny in motion, but hardship began before her acting career did. Her parents divorced soon after their relocation. This kicked off a bitter custody battle over their two kids that would last for years, resulting in an eventual victory for Jones’s father. But while the battle raged, Anissa was with her mother, Mary, who recognized her daughter’s talents early and set to work trying to nurture them. Though perhaps a little heavy-handedly. Mary was determined and enrolled Anissa in dance classes at the age of four. The Joneses’ new neighbors in California clearly found the young Anissa charming, too, and they suggested Mary start bringing her to auditions for TV commercials. Anissa had immediate success, and by the age of six, she was appearing in TV commercials for cereal. She would star in three more commercials over the next two years, but this was only the prelude to her eventual stardom. She sure is pretty. At 8 years old, Anissa Jones got her big break. She was discovered by a producer and cast in the role of Buffy Davis on CBS’s new sitcom, Family Affair, in 1966. The show followed three orphaned children sent to live with their wealthy uncle. It was a wholesome premise, and Jones was perfect for the role. The young actress was physically suited, too. She was small for her age, which meant that although she was 8 years old when she landed the role, she could possibly play the 6-year-old Buffy, and audiences were smitten. Viewers received Family Affair and the character of Buffy rapturously. Her blonde hair, tied up in pigtails, and charming smile immediately made her a hit among America’s increasingly large TV audience. Anissa Jones was easy to love, but the show was anything but easy to make. Well, what do you know about that? As Family Affair grew in popularity, so did the demands on the cast, and it hit Anissa particularly hard. The production schedule was grueling, and she found herself dedicating most of her life to it.

What are we going to do with her? The show filmed all year round, and the youngster would often work 7-day weeks to meet network deadlines. Family Affair only continued to gain in popularity as time went on, and CBS executives considered the show a bonafide hit. It didn’t take long for it to hit number one in the ratings, and Buffy and the rest of the characters became household names overnight. Jones’s character was rarely seen without her on-screen doll, Mrs. Beasley. She was so popular that the network released a real-life version, which became the best-selling doll in America. There were Buffy coloring books, lunchboxes, a line of children’s clothing, and even a cookbook with Jones on the cover. Anissa became known for her deep kindness and her undying love for her brother, Paul, who would always accompany her to set. Whenever she received gifts, she would insist that her brother get one, too. If this wasn’t possible, she would graciously give her gift away, wanting to share equally with her brother. If I had my picture on a record album, would you be proud of me? Cast and crew members alike on Family Affair continually praised Jones’s talents and kindheartedness. One co-star later gushed about her intelligence and natural ability as an actor, noting that she would always make friends with guest stars so they’d feel welcome on set. Okay. She may have even charmed one of the biggest names of the day. You have been a bad boy. In her short career, Jones only ever made one feature film appearance. In 1969, at the height of her celebrity, Jones got a small role in the film The Trouble with Girls alongside none other than Elvis Presley. Despite her low movie count, Hollywood nonetheless pursued Anissa Jones for her charming personality in other ways. Between 1967 and ’71, she appeared as a guest on no fewer than five talk shows, including Merv Griffin’s and Dick Cavett’s. Additionally, in 1967, she presented an award at that year’s Emmys, likely making her one of the youngest ever to do so. But fame soon began to wear on the young star. Family Affair was the one thing most young actors want, a steady job. But as the years went on, Anissa began to see the dark side of her popularity. She began to tire of playing Buffy. She resented the character for seemingly trapping her in childhood and saw the role as babyish. Soon her displeasure with it all began to come through on screen. Her performances in later seasons of Family Affair were not as energetic or convivial. Perhaps in part due to Buffy’s less than enthusiastic screen presence, Family Affair’s ratings began to slump. I have I’m afraid to ask the next question. What was in it? In 1971, it was canceled after five seasons. Anissa Jones, now only 12 years old, was delighted and eager to begin the next phase of her career. But the looming shadow of the character of Buffy would prove difficult to shake. All right. I think we’ve got a guest. You’re going to die up there. She auditioned for the role of Regan MacNeil in the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist. Playing the part of a young girl possessed by a demon would have been the perfect pivot for the burgeoning actress. But director William Friedkin gave the role to Linda Blair instead, citing his difficulty in imagining adorable Anissa in such a horrific role. In yet another attempt to avoid being typecast, she auditioned for the role of Iris in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic, Taxi Driver.

Again, the part couldn’t have been less like Buffy. Iris was a 13-year-old street worker who attracts the attention of Robert De Niro’s character, Travis Bickle. But perhaps Scorsese suffered the same mental blockage as Friedkin, because the role instead went to Jodie Foster. Jones began to spiral. As she entered her teen years and with little professional success, Anissa Jones decided to lean into her previously denied freedom. She turned to substance use and shoplifting for thrills. She tried a few normal jobs, but couldn’t seem to hold one down, and she reportedly suffered from erratic mood swings. By this time, Jones’s parents’ long custody battle had ended, and she and her brother had gone to live with their father. However, on March 7th, 1974, he died from cardiovascular disease 4 days before his daughter’s 16th birthday. Although Jones’s mother, Mary, was technically her guardian, she never spent any time at the family home. This infuriated Mary. Anissa would disappear for days with her friends, whom her mother felt were a very bad influence on her only daughter. Such was her contempt for Anissa’s new lifestyle that Mary often filed missing person reports with the authorities after not seeing Anissa for days. Her entry into adulthood didn’t ease her mother’s worrying. Anissa turned 18 on March 11th, 1976, which meant she was finally entitled to all the money she’d earned on Family Affair. Previously kept in a savings account on her behalf, this one-time payout was massive, and she immediately began putting it towards her new favorite hobby, partying. Naturally, this meant that her substance use worsened, and her life began to spiral further. She had received a payout of just under $200,000, and after 4 or 5 months, she’d blown through most of it. On August 27th, Jones took a trip with her boyfriend and some friends to party in the beachside town of Oceanside, California. The party would end up at the home of the father of one of Jones’s 14-year-old friends. The next morning, August 28th, Anissa Jones was found dead from an overdose. Such was the extent of her indulgence that even the coroner was shocked at how such a young girl managed to consume so much. He called it one of the most severe overdoses he had ever seen. Anissa Jones had always loved the seaside. After holding a small private service, her family had her body cremated and scattered her ashes over the Pacific Ocean. Among the items found at the scene of Jones’s death was an envelope with the business address of Dr. Juan Carlos Moschos. This envelope contained a detailed description of the type and quantity of one of the substances that showed up on Jones’s toxicology report. Moschos had allegedly been playing the role of Jones’s Dr. Feelgood, prescribing Anissa illicit substances on demand. Indeed, prior to her death, Moschos was already under investigation for his suspicious professional practices. The evidence began to mount.

At the news of Moschos’s potential involvement in Jones’s demise, the media began to swarm with reports digging up any damning information they could find. Many of the occupants of the building of Moschos’s practice reported the popularity of the doctor’s services, speaking of the long lines they would often see outside his office. The numbers were astounding. Jones’s doctor appeared to work tirelessly to supply anyone that would give him business. A report released around his investigation revealed that Moschos would write over 100 prescriptions a day. He had no qualms about who he’d sell to, either. Though she was only 18 at the time of her death, Anissa Jones nonetheless fit the bill for Moschos’s average client. When a local news team visited his office, they found it full of young people, most of them somewhere around Jones’s age. It was no wonder she was able to procure the heroic dose that killed her. Moschos made it very easy for troubled young teens to get their hands on dangerous amounts of substances. The report released by the local news team alleged that Moschos only required a patient to show a valid ID, after which he would sell them a prescription for whatever they wanted for the low price of just $5. With all the evidence they’d gathered, the authorities made their move. Just 6 days after Jones’s body was discovered, Moschos was apprehended at his office in Torrance, California. He was charged with illegally prescribing Seconal to the young actress, but was also slapped with multiple prescriptions for profit charges in a separate undercover investigation. His charges amounted to 11 offenses, but Jones’s killer would never see justice. Despite his profession, Moschos was a very unhealthy individual. He suffered from diabetes, hepatitis, and high blood pressure. On December 6th, 1976, he was admitted to hospital where he died 3 weeks later, just 4 months after his most famous patient. Jones’s family still wanted their day in court. They sued the doctor’s estate for $400,000. A 1979 verdict found the doctor only 30% liable for the young actress’s passing, resulting in a $79,500 payout to her family. In 1984, Jones’s mother, Mary, experienced another unimaginable tragedy. She lost another young child to substance abuse. Anissa’s cherished brother, Paul, overdosed on March 15th of that year, days after what would have been his sister’s 26th birthday. He was only 24. Anissa Jones wasn’t the only cast member of Family Affair to suffer an untimely demise. Her co-star, Sebastian Cabot, died from a stroke in 1977 at the age of 59, and another castmate, Brian Keith, took his own life in 1997. These tragedies and Anissa’s life are a damning indictment of the physical and mental toll that show business can take on some of its most vulnerable talents. Baby Peggy was one of the most mistreated child stars, but even when she grew up, the terrors kept coming. Surrounded by a lecherous men, she was no stranger to their advances. That is until she discovered the perfect secret weapon to keep their nasty hands off her. Over the past century, child stars have endeared their way into people’s hearts.

Baby Peggy was the first of many, and she forged a path for child actors when there wasn’t one. But being a groundbreaker also meant she had to navigate the harsh realities of being a child actor without a blueprint. On October 29th, 1918, in San Diego, California, Baby Peggy came into the world as Peggy Jean Montgomery. When it came to being discovered, she had an undeniable stroke of luck. Her father was a former cowboy and park ranger who worked as a stuntman for Tom Mix, Hollywood’s first Western star. One day, the toddler accompanied her mother and a family friend to Century Studios where Jack was working. As fate would have it, Peggy made a stunning impression on some very important people. While on the film set, she wowed the movie’s director with her good behavior and compliance with her father’s directions. He immediately cast the toddler in a few short films with Brownie, the wonder dog, the studio’s canine star. In 1921, the studio released Playmates, which led to Peggy accepting a long-term contract with the studio. Between 1921 and 1924, Peggy worked tirelessly. She acted in nearly 150 short comedy movies. In 1923, Peggy joined Universal Studios. Now a bonafide star, she wielded a power she didn’t even know she had. Her popularity made her schedule even more grueling. Outside of filming, she held in-person promotional tours throughout the US. During the 1924 Democratic Convention, she became its official mascot. She stood on stage next to Franklin D. Roosevelt and waved the American flag. Her parents used her as their golden ticket and cashed in on her fame in a disturbing way. Peggy’s parents seized the opportunity to enrich the family. Her images graced countless magazine covers, ads for businesses and charities. Before reaching the age of 5, she secured different product endorsements such as dolls, handbags, jewelry, and milk. Still, these lucrative deals were just the tip of the iceberg. Peggy scored herself a huge payday. Her film contract with Universal gave her an annual income of $1.5 million, about $23.7 million today. However, due to her age, little Peggy didn’t exactly have control over her own finances. Peggy’s success provided a good life, not just for her, but for her entire family. Before she’d even turned 3, the Montgomerys began living it up in a mansion in Beverly Hills with maids at their service. They stayed in high-end hotels, owned a $30,000 car, and the tiny actress traveled to work in a limo. The media attention on Baby Peggy made her a social darling. In the year she turned 6, Peggy received more than 1.2 million fan letters. There were rumors that her family had to hire five people just to sort through the mail. However, the admiration she received inspired other self-seeking parents.

Later in her life, Peggy said she believed her success made the mothers of Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, who she later befriended, aspire for their daughters to reach the same heights of fame. Garland apparently owned a Baby Peggy doll as a child. But though the child star seemed to have it all, behind the scenes, life was far from rosy. Life on sets wasn’t great for Peggy. Exploitation was rife. She came up in the industry when child stars were a new phenomenon, which meant there were no laws to protect them. As a toddler, Peggy was on set 8 hours per day for 6 days a week. She didn’t receive breaks for rest or proper schooling. Her public identity created an internal conflict with her true self. The aura of Baby Peggy overshadowed the real Peggy Jean Montgomery. She struggled to balance the two, feeling her private self couldn’t exist under the crushing weight of her public persona. The frustration over her inability to reconcile both identities eventually created a personal crisis. This inner turmoil she faced almost led to a mental collapse, a pattern of events that later reemerged in her life. On film sets, Peggy’s welfare was at stake. The child actor did most of her stunts, which were often brutally dangerous. One scene called for her to flee a burning room alone. The door that was supposed to be her escape route caught on fire. Luckily, Peggy found a window and climbed out only to discover that the windowsill was also on fire. And the neglect didn’t end there. Although she was the family’s breadwinner, Peggy didn’t have any control. Instead, her parents managed her fortune. They recklessly spent money on cars, homes, and clothes. Throughout her childhood, Peggy and her sister barely attended school. Unsurprisingly, the child star spent most of her time on sets. But if she hoped to one day further her education, a huge obstacle stood in her way. There was no money saved for her future. Out of the blue, Baby Peggy’s film career came to a crashing halt. And it was all thanks to her dad. In 1925, Jack got into an argument with producer Sol Lesser regarding her wages. In retaliation, Lesser revoked Peggy’s contract. Following the incident, Hollywood boycotted her, and she only got a minor role in her last movie. At the tender age of seven, her film career was over. But she wasn’t done with show business. While Hollywood abandoned her, Peggy’s vaudeville career still thrived. For four years, she went on an arduous tour. Baby Peggy endured medical issues throughout her tour. During that time, she often suffered from tonsillitis and other illnesses. Despite her poor health, she continued to perform through the pain. There were even times when her parents put a bucket on each side of the stage so that she could throw up before she went on and after she left.

When Peggy’s film career went kaput, her family’s exorbitant spending didn’t follow suit. Around the time Universal dropped her, her grandfather stole most of her fortune. Although her earnings from her vaudeville tour helped to rebuild the family’s finances, their lavish lifestyle eventually caught up with them. The Montgomerys had to sell their Beverly Hills home, but it wasn’t enough to get them in the clear. Peggy and her family left flashy Hollywood for a ranch in rural Wyoming. Her father took $75,000 from the proceeds of the sale of the family home in LA and put down a payment on the property, which he hoped to turn into a luxury retreat. But the stock market crash of 1929 put an end to those lofty plans. Thus, the family struggled with the onset of the Great Depression, while Peggy faced an inevitable reckoning. Peggy found a silver lining in her new life. She enjoyed her life away from the stage and sets. But sadly, it didn’t last. The family went broke and sold all their valuable possessions to make ends meet. Left with no option, Peggy reluctantly returned to Hollywood with her family and $300 borrowed from a friend. Hollywood changed a lot after Peggy left. Talkies, movies with sound, were in. She also learned the hard way that she wasn’t a baby anymore. Now a teenager, she struggled to find work as an extra. When she did, she only got paid $3 a day and found herself surrounded by former silent film stars also reduced to working as extras. As a young child, Peggy got away with her sporadic attendance at school. But now the situation was different. The Los Angeles School Board insisted that she go to school. So Peggy and her sister attended the Lawlor Professional School, which had an accommodating schedule for child actors. There, her classmates included Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Before long, all of her family had to work to survive. Their struggles led to marital strife between Peggy’s parents. There was only so much that she could take. Her return to Hollywood floundered, and a career revival seemed unlikely. Her home life just wasn’t the haven she craved. As a result, she had several nervous breakdowns. Frustrated with her professional and personal troubles, 17-year-old Peggy ran away with her sister. And wildly, a chance at retribution came a few years later. In 1938, Jackie Coogan, Peggy’s contemporary who shared similar experiences, sued his parents for misappropriating his fortune. Concerned she would follow suit, her parents asked Peggy if she had the same intention. Although Peggy didn’t take legal action against her parents, her case helped change Californian law.

In 1939, the state of California passed the California Child Actors Bill, aka the Coogan Act. The law protects child actors from maltreatment and ensures a share of their earnings goes into a trust. So while Peggy didn’t get her money back, her harrowing story helped future child actors keep theirs. Following her break from her parents, Peggy continued to struggle to reestablish herself in Hollywood. Despite the challenges she faced, there were some happy moments. On the set of Ah, Wilderness! she met Gordon Ayers, a bartender who also desired to make it in Hollywood. Three years later, they were married. Peggy had difficulty shaking off the shadows of her past. Although she was now an adult, people couldn’t stop seeing her as Baby Peggy. She decided she had to reinvent herself in a drastic way, a name change. Drawing inspiration from actress Diana Wynyard and her husband’s surname, she became Diana Ayres, the child star formerly known as Baby Peggy. But if she assumed that the identity change would help her career, she was mistaken. As an adult, Diana learned there was another kind of danger on sets. In an interview later in her life, she told of how men would linger around the sets and approach girls by massaging their necks. Unfortunately, the young actress wasn’t immune to their advances. But she eventually found a way to keep the vultures at bay. As it turned out, intellectual women scared the men on the sets. When Diana went to work, she would bring a highly academic book, which was somehow kryptonite to them. Once the men saw her with it, they stayed away from her. Diana’s personal life continued to change, but not in a happy way. After a decade of marriage, she and Ayres divorced. Following the split, she converted to Roman Catholicism and changed her name again. This time she became known as Diana Serra. It was the beginning of yet another chapter. But the biggest change was yet to come. After years of struggling to rebuild her acting career, Diana gave up on it. From a young age, she disliked acting. However, as an adult, she grew to hate it and decided to move on to an entirely new life. She worked as a switchboard operator, a bookstore assistant, and a gift shop manager. Eventually, her love of books led to her most fulfilling job yet. Peggy’s interest in the written word led her in a different direction. In 1954, she founded a greeting card company. Later, she managed a bookstore at the University of California, in San Diego, during the ’60s. Meanwhile, she moonlighted as a freelance magazine writer and journalist on historical and religious topics. As her professional life gained stability, so did her love life. With one failed marriage behind her, Diana finally found the love of her life. In 1954, she married Robert Carey, an artist. They had a son and stayed married until Robert’s passing in 2001. Diana became a film historian and began to write books. Drawing from her father’s experiences as a cowboy turned stuntman, she released her first novel, The Hollywood Posse, in 1975. Three years later, she wrote about the horror stories and fates of child actors in Hollywood’s Children, an inside account of the child star era. After decades of struggle, Diana purged the demons of her past. In 1996, she released her memoir, Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy? Writing the book had been a cathartic experience as she reflected on her career and her parents’ mishandling of her fortune. What’s more, Diana made sure that this growing awareness of child star struggles didn’t end with her story. In 2003, she put the spotlight on her fellow child star, Jackie Coogan, titled The World’s Boy King. In her autobiography, Diana also recalled the fates of other child stars, including her friend, Judy Garland.

She continued to promote the rights of child performers. She became a member of the nonprofit advocacy organization, A Minor Consideration. As an activist, Diana spoke at movie screenings, hoping to educate the public and raise awareness about the issues and dangers child actors face in the industry. In deep contrast to her earlier years, Diana didn’t shy away from talking about her heyday. She participated in documentaries where she gave further insight into that time of her life. In 2017, she celebrated her 99th birthday with the release of her first novel, The Drowning of the Moon. On February 24th, 2020, she died at her home in California at the age of 101. Just 10 days prior, she’d spoken to Silence as Platinum, a silent film blog, about the realities of life as a child star, continuing to campaign for a cause close to her heart. Hollywood is filled with stories of child actors who grew up too fast, but Tuesday Weld might just be the ultimate one. Weld’s penchant for scandal made people uncomfortable, but she still managed to become a star in her own right. Before that day, however, she was a verifiable hot mess. Let’s sink our teeth into her story and see what turned Tuesday Weld into an unlikely Hollywood survivor. At a shocking age, Tuesday Weld was infamous for her risque films and love life, but the villain was her own mother. Weld’s hatred for her mom festered until she finally lashed out and did the unthinkable. Stay tuned for more on that later. Actress Tuesday Weld was born Susan Kerr Weld, and it was not, as you might expect, on a Tuesday. It was Friday, August 27th, 1943. Weld’s family lived a precarious existence, one that could tumble at any moment. Just before she turned four, Susan Weld faced her very first crisis. Her small family became even smaller. Weld’s father, Lathrop Motley Weld, was the black sheep of the family. He had some serious baggage, addiction and a scandalous romantic history. Lathrop passed suddenly and left them in a terrible financial position. Weld’s mother, Yosienne Balfour Kerr, had her hands full with three kids and no source of income. What could she do? It was in this desperate moment that Yosienne noticed something about her daughter, Susan, that gave her an idea. Susan was remarkably pretty, and Yosienne had a brilliant idea that would solve her small family’s financial dilemma. Yosienne was desperate for money, so she tried to find work for young Susan as a model. Weld’s young life soon became filled with countless auditions. To make matters worse, she had the added pressure of earning money for food, as well as supporting her mother emotionally. Yosienne expected Weld to fix all the problems in her life. All of this happened before Weld was even 10, and the consequences were chilling. At 9 years old, the pressures of being a replacement father to a family of four were too much for Weld, and she had a nervous breakdown. Yosienne took the opportunity to move the family to Fort Lauderdale, where Weld could finally attend school more regularly, away from all the auditions back in New York City. Sadly, it was too late for Susan Weld to have a normal childhood.

Weld had very grown-up problems, so she turned to a very grown-up solution. Booze. By 10, she already had a pretty serious addiction. However, the pressures of providing for a family still remained, so Weld had to start working again. This time, her mother left the other kids with a friend in Fort Lauderdale and took Weld back to the Big Apple. It was time to make much-needed money. Weld’s modeling soon led to something else, acting roles. When she was just 12 years old, she got in front of a camera and a small role in a television series. That same year, 1956, the big screen came calling, and the director was a big deal in more ways than one. Alfred Hitchcock gave Weld a small role as a giggling adolescent in his film, The Wrong Man. But appearing in a film was no fairy tale. For Weld, it was closer to a nightmare. After her one stint on TV and one on film, Weld still had serious emotional problems. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for acting, or maybe she wasn’t cut out for being the sole earner for a family of five. These pressures eventually led Weld down a dangerous path, adding pills to her booze addiction. Weld’s mother refused to get her the help she needed. Instead, she continued to push her daughter into the spotlight against her will. Weld’s first lead role was in Rock, Rock, Rock, called a jukebox musical because the songs in it were already hit singles of the time. While Weld was certainly the lead, the film’s real draw was the list of already established singers working on the film. Still, Weld stood out, and for a scandalous reason. While there were plenty of young actors playing teenage roles, critics noticed something unique about Weld. She portrayed them as unwholesome. This led one critic from Time magazine to call her the archetypal nymphet. It seems that Weld’s inappropriate childhood was coming out in her characters, and sadly, she was receiving recognition for that. While Hollywood is still famous for hiring adults to play teenagers, when it came to Weld, the opposite was true. Weld must have looked older than she was, because she was still just 12 when they started filming Rock, Rock, Rock. She was supposed to be a teenager, but that wasn’t the most disturbing part.

The actor playing her on-screen boyfriend was actually a 21-year-old man. And we’ll see, Weld’s taste in men only mirrored the cringeworthy roles she had to play. Weld’s next feature led her and her mother out to Hollywood for the production of 1958’s Rally Round the Flag, Boys. This comedy had Weld playing the oddly named nymphet, Comfort Goodpasture. It was, however, her co-stars that made the film important for Weld. She played opposite husband and wife dream team, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. However, it was Weld’s performance alongside Dwayne Hickman that gave 20th Century Fox a money-making idea. In 1959, they put the two together in a CBS TV show called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Weld, now officially using Tuesday as her name, played one of the loves that Gillis couldn’t have. There was, however, something else keeping these two teen stars apart. It turned out that Tuesday Weld and her co-star, Hickman, were not at all fond of each other. Hickman didn’t think Weld took acting seriously and didn’t come to rehearsals prepared. Weld, on the other hand, found Hickman to be too into himself and out of touch with the real world. Besides this, there was another reason why the show wasn’t working for Weld. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a family show, and Weld, well, Weld was being herself. In one scene, she was flirting with a classmate, played by Warren Beatty, where Beatty is simply describing the clothes in his closet. Both Beatty and Weld pushed the scene to an inappropriate climax that the sponsor of the show was not comfortable with. The producers dropped Weld after one season, but there were bigger things in store for the fired actress. Allied Artists took Weld from 20th Century Fox, as well as something else far more precious, her innocence.