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.