Thursday, September 23, 2021

TinselTales: The Model and the Method Actor

If I'm being honest, I don't know for certain if the actor in question was really into The Method, but it makes for a catchy title and he did play one in a movie we dearly love here in the Underworld. This is one of countless startling incidents that have taken place over the years in Hollywood, where the drama off-screen often competes with, even exceeds, the drama on-screen!

Born January 6th, 1934 in New York, New York, Tom Gilson grew up to be a 6'4" aspiring actor. The first gig he landed was a bit in the Robert Wagner flick Prince Valiant (1954), but it didn't lead to further screen work. Back in NYC, he took part in the play Saint Joan, which starred Siobhan McKenna. In 1957, his Brylcreamed hair and pretty-boy face landed him a role on The Phil Silvers Show as Elvin Pelvin (which capitalized on the recent drafting of singing sensation Elvis Presley.)

1958 brought a pair of movies with further parts for him to portray. Young and Wild, though cheaper and more exploitative, gave him more to do. (Considering what was to come, this still featuring a shotgun being loaded, is a bit unnerving now.)

Check out all the incredible mannequins, I mean thespians, honing his or her craft for this shot...

His other film that year was 20th Century Fox's Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, which placed him as the love interest to Tuesday Weld.

Soon after, he signed with Warner Brothers as a contract player, which meant basically one thing; he'd be working all the time! The young men and women of this period were put to use in many films and many TV series. He was seen in The Threat (1960) as a henchman, but also popped up in other movies like This Rebel Breed (1960) and on shows like Bourbon Street Beat, Bat Masterson and Cheyenne, to name a few.

You'll never guess who the gal in the middle is, playing a character named "Wiggles!"

It was 1960's The Crowded Sky which would be his most fateful film. The crowded movie was brimming over with characters and plot lines and his was about a young Method actor who's flying to the coast to test for a role. In tow is his agent, Patsy Kelly, who has precious little patience for his self-generated agonies. (By the way, the young lady in that Rebel Breed lobby card one pic back is none other than a young Dyan Cannon!)

Meanwhile, we have Saundra Edwards, born March 12th, 1938 in Los Angeles, California. The dark beauty was of German-American and Cherokee descent. Married at 16 to her business manager, she was already mother to a baby girl when she landed the March 1957 Playmate of the Month spot in Playboy magazine! She was 19 at the time.

This being the earlier days of the fabled mag, she was mostly seen partially nude or semi-obscured, though there wasn't too much left to the imagination nonetheless.

The pictorial had her portraying a ballerina removing various layers of the costume seen on the cover. She would give birth to a son in 1959 at age 21.

The right people must have been observing the pics in between reading the articles because she was soon granted a Warner Brothers contract and was put to work with bits in movies like The Naked and the Dead and Auntie Mame (both 1958.) Like her fellow performers, she also wound up on most of the studio's series like Cheyenne, Maverick, Bronco and so on. Because of her half-Native American heritage, she was often cast as Indian maidens or other exotic creatures.

We find her here being embraced by Alan Hale Jr. in Up Periscope (1959), unbilled as "Grass Hut Girl."

But in 1961, she was cast as a stewardess in The Crowded Sky. Seen here with fellow flyer Anne Francis, they are collecting a ticket from Jean Willes. In between Francis and Willes, one can spot Gilson looking out a window.

When it's time to collect the tickets from Kelly and Gilson, Francis' hand is in just the right position to spoil us seeing the interested gaze that he is shooting the lovely flight attendant. The movie concerns what happens when a small navy jet and a large passenger plane collide in midair, but those weren't the only things colliding and creating sparks. Edwards and Gilson fell for one another. They had also worked on the same episode of Cheyenne in 1960.

As I noted earlier, Gilson plays a Method actor. He's totally unsure how to proceed with a part he's up for - a coward. He can't identify with it and has nothing to draw from.

He goes through a series of James Dean-ish contortions trying to determine how he will be able to properly express cowardice (while Kelly sits watching him, rolling her eyes!)

Once the planes clank into one another and a crash may be imminent, he discovers all too soon what fear is and finally has some appropriate feelings from which to draw his upcoming portrayal... if he lives through the disaster!

Edwards' participation in the movie is far less pronounced. We don't really get a decent look at her until after the collision. Even then she must share the screen with higher-billed Francis.

The elegant Edwards gives the passengers in the rear of the plane emergency landing instructions.

At the end of the ordeal, Gilson and Edwards share this very brief moment together as she pours coffee for Kelly and him. In real life, though, the two would enter a tumultuous relationship which culminated in her pregnancy and their (I won't say shotgun) marriage. Their child, Tom Jr., her third, was born five months after their marital union. (Some sources give the marriage and the birth as occurring on the same day. That's multi-tasking at its finest!)


The marriage between Gilson and her was stormy. Gilson was rough, liked to drink and would often become confrontational as a result. ("Toxic masculinity" is a term that comes to mind.) There were several instances of domestic unrest between them. But on one occasion, when Gilson struck Edwards while she was holding their baby and he was hit, that was the last straw. She moved in with her sister and brother-in-law in Van Nuys.

With her own three young children (all 6 or younger) and her nephew in her care while her sister and her husband were out, Gilson called up. After verbally abusing her and threatening her on the phone, he came to the house where Edwards' brother-in-law had left her a loaded shotgun as protection. When Gilson refused to back away and continued to make threats, including killing her and the kids, she fired into his heart (from about a foot or less away) and he was dead. After only a half-hour of deliberation, the coroner ruled it a justifiable homicide.

Dead at age 28, Gilson's final film was Convicts 4 (1962), which starred Ben Gazzara, Sammy Davis Jr. and Stuart Whitman. He had TV appearances on The Gallant Men and The Dakotas in the can, which aired posthumously. A close friend of another rough & tumble actor, Steve McQueen, the soon-to-be superstar was a pall bearer at Gilson's funeral.

As for Edwards, then 24, she had to deal with the shattering reality of having slain the father of one of her three young children while still, despite all, being in love with him. Even cleared, the scenario harmed her position at Warners and her contract was allowed to lapse. She worked for a little while behind the scenes (in screen animal training) and reportedly was offered further film work (but only if she would send her children to boarding school in order to present an un-entangled public image.) Declining to do that, she ultimately faded into the general populace and passed away in 2017 at age 79.

The End.

4 comments:

Gingerguy said...

You blew me away with a brunette Dyan Cannon, "wiggles" is hilarious. This is a sad story but gave me a chance to get to know Saundra Edwards. She's gorgeous and in some shots is reminiscent of Ava Gardner, What a figure and good for her for being handy with a gun when you need to be. I do kind of remember him from "The Crowded Sky" he reminded me of Dennis Hopper a little. I didn't know actresses were able to have a real career after Playboy in the 50's, she looks amazing in all the photos

joel65913 said...

I was somewhat familiar with this sad tale but your post filled in so many details!

Sometime within the last year I watched the opus that is Young and Wild. As I often do when I see performers who have good size roles in a film but are unknown to me I'll do some investigating to find out a little about them. Usually I'll start with IMDB and when I saw that Gilson died at 28 I was shocked, it's always a shock when you run across something like that-I remember looking up Robert Francis after seeing The Caine Mutiny, he was so clearly being groomed for stardom but I'd never heard of him only to discover that he was killed in a plane crash at 25 after only four films. That was tragic but pretty clear cut, Gilson story is sad and sordid.

How awful for Saundra Edwards! No wonder she chose to not pursue a career in front of the cameras afterward. Had she had any kind of success at all she would have been faced with a barrage of surely upsetting questions from insensitive reporters.

Thanks for another fascinating Hollywood tidbit!

Poseidon3 said...

Gingerguy, he did have a Dennis Hopper-ish quality, though I figure he was quite a bit taller. I recently re-watched "The Crowded Sky" and it is so campy. The interior monologues of the characters while the camera zooms into their kissers! But I love the moment of impact. Saundra had lovely coloring, the dark hair and green eyes.

joel65913, I'm the same way. Always startled to discover a person only to find that they died very young. Francis is a fascinating case in that he was bound to become a movie lead sometime soon until... Some of these old time Hollywood scandals and tragedies; the mind reels at what they'd be like in today's "information age" (where so often a "celeb" heading out for coffee or a jog and being spotted is "big news!")

somecka said...

Gilson looked like he could have been Robert Mitchum's younger brother. In fact, he very much resembles Chris Mitchum, Robert's son. This explains Gilson's unbelievable appeal to beautiful women. He was involved with Joan Collins in the late 1950's, one of the most beautiful women ever in Hollywood. I think Gilson was repulsive to look at, but then again, I'm not female. Watch some of his TV guest roles, such as in The Lawman, and he just reeks of a bully. Turns out he was abusive to Playboy centerfold Saundra Edwards, whose toxic attraction to him endangered herself, their infant son, her sister, and the lives of Edwards' three children. He hit her while she was holding their 9-month-old son, hitting the baby as well. That is when she left him to go live with her sister and brother-in-law. She was a sick woman and obviously needed psychiatric counseling. I am glad that her career was ruined. Karmic justice.