It seems that all of my old movie buddies are dying this year. I just got the news that Susu Tyrrell has died.When I was in my late teens, I helped out on a play that Susu was in and we became very close for several years. She had been my favorite actress when I was 13 or so, and I adored her siren's song of a voice, which I had first discovered in Ralph Bakshi's WIZARDS. Susu leaves behind some wonderful performances which win her new fans all the time: as the broken-down lush Oma in FAT CITY (which won her an Academy Award nomination), as Ramona Rickett, Johnny Depp's hillbilly grandma in CRY-BABY, in Andy Warhol's BAD as virtually the only good person in it, as Queen Doris in Rick Elfman's FORBIDDEN ZONE, as Tim McIntyre's sister in FAST WALKING, and many, many others.
Susu was a bizarre combination of tenderness and foulness. She could be extremely sweet or vicious enough to curdle Blackbeard's blood. I loved her very much, all the same. She was a heavy drinker and abused her body horribly when she was younger, which led to her losing her legs around 2000. She seemed hell-bent on destroying herself, in all honesty, and I'm surprised that she lived as long as she did. I don't say that with an ounce of malice, but in total honesty.
I have so many unforgettable memories of Susu: singing Howlin' Wolf's "Wang Dang Doodle" with her at her East LA home (which looked like a deranged Mexican wax museum-- it was amazing); cruising around L.A. with her in her station wagon with her surfboard screwed on top of it, with Tupac's "California Lovin'" blasting on the radio; watching her get her poodle, Catshit Willie Einstein, to do tricks; or quietly watching TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT and SECONDS with her. She liked my cartooning as much as I liked her acting and she always very vocally (as was her way) encouraged me to keep at it.
When Susu was growing up in Connecticut, there was a graveyard near her house where she used to play. In it, there was the gravestone of a baby girl who had died during an epidemic, maybe typhoid. The girl's epitaph read "This poor child was so soon done for/We often wonder what she was begun for." Susu said that she felt that way about her own life, at the time. I'm glad that she even lived past 65.
There's a story that Susu told me that I think a lot of people
haven't heard. Susu was living in a bad barrio in L.A. for a while and a
gang girl named Nica who was her upstairs neighbor. Nica knocked a
couple of Susu's front teeth out, among other things. One day, Susu
heard a terrible wailing from upstairs and went to investigate. Susu
found Nica there-- she had OD'ed and died, and there was Nica's little
baby boy, crying and crying. Susu saw to it that that little boy was
adopted and raised well, and she didn't advertise that fact or make
herself out to be a big heroine for having done it. That's real
character.
RIP, ShuShu.
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