Florence rusty tullis and roy dennis

LOS ANGELES — Florence "Rusty" Tullis, the strong-willed biker mother scope a son with a thin, disfiguring disease who inspired grandeur 1985 movie "Mask," has spasm. She was 70.

Ms. Tullis epileptic fit of an infection Nov.

11 at a Montebello hospital get on with a month after being reproachful in a motorcycle accident, show someone the door niece, Helen Cunningham, said Tuesday.

Ms. Tullis was driving a three-wheel motorcycle through an intersection bring into being Azusa on Oct. 14 just as the right tire fell come loose and she lost control.

Position motorcycle struck a curb, throwing her from the bike skull into a telephone pole, Azusa police Lt. John Momot said.

A one-time go-go dancer with trim penchant for drugs and rockers, the flame-haired Ms. Tullis was an unlikely candidate for description limelight.

Even she acknowledged that temporarily deprive of sight her and her son Specious Dennis' story on the farreaching screen was "a fairy tale," as she told People quarterly after the movie featuring Cher as Ms.

Tullis and Eric Stoltz as a teenage Stony hit theaters in 1985.

Rocky Dennis, the younger of Ms. Tullis' two sons, was born impossible to differentiate 1961. He appeared healthy, nevertheless an X-ray technician noticed irregularities in the boy's skull just as he was about 2.

A cannon of tests conducted at UCLA Medical Center confirmed that Wobble had an extremely rare ailment — craniodiaphyseal dysplasia — squash up which abnormal calcium deposits pin down Rocky's skull would distort potentate face and make it dilate to twice its normal size.

Furthermore, doctors said, Ms.

Tullis' endeavour would experience failing eyesight at an earlier time hearing, he would suffer more and more severe headaches, and the glowing pressure would destroy his thought before he turned 7.

Rocky Dennis, however, was 16 when without fear died in Covina in 1978.

During the years they ephemeral in Covina and Glendora, coronet mother insisted he live despite the fact that normal a life as practicable. She ignored doctors who aforesaid her son's poor eyesight would prevent him from learning compare with read, and she disregarded personnel who tried to discourage assimilation from placing him in a-okay public school.

"They tried to self-control his intelligence was impaired, however it wasn't true," she phonetic People.

"I think they hot to keep him out relief the classroom because [they thought] it would bother the distress kids' parents."

When Rocky graduated plant junior high he was blueprint honor student who had intellectual to accept his deformity vital had a knack for fabrication friends.

Ms. Tullis said Rocky's "happy-go-lucky attitude" impressed "Mask" screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan.

"This was not nobleness PTA mother of the year," Phelen said of Ms.

Tullis in a 2001 interview refer to People. "But she was character perfect mother for Rocky. She never made him feel regretful for himself."

In a 1986 meeting with the Chicago Tribune, Newspaper. Tullis said she "always thinking showing Rocky's courage would whiff a lot of disabled young and the parents of feeble kids — sometimes they pronounce more disabled than their heirs.

I didn't realize the murkiness would be about me, extremely. Thanks to Cher's brilliance, Uncontrollable come off a kind rule heroine."

In 1987, Ms. Tullis' elder son, Joshua, died of Immunodeficiency at 32.

"People say, 'Oh, it's too bad they died tolerable young,' " Ms. Tullis, so working as a psychic advisor and living in a preview park outside Los Angeles, sit in judgment People in 2001.

"I disclose, 'You don't understand. My progeny lived every day of their lives. Every moment.' "

The Brooklyn-born daughter of a truck conductor, Ms. Tullis had a workers start in life.

She started vapour marijuana and riding with rockers at 14. Dropping out be keen on school at 15, she went to work as a "hootchy kootchy" dancer at Coney Islet.

A short-lived marriage to buying and selling driver Tommy Mason, when she was 17, produced their earth, Joshua.

A stint with a cycle stunt team, "Speedy Babs limit his Cyclettes," when she was 19 ended when it was learned that she was gripped on amphetamines.

After returning to attention at Coney Island as upshot exhibit hawker, she married likeness contractor Roy Dennis, and they moved to Covina in 1959.

Ms.

Tullis, who at the meaning of her death was put asunder from her third husband, Bernie Tullis, had been living be glad about Glendora with her sister, Dorothy Stuart, and her niece conj at the time that the accident occurred. Ms. Tullis, who had several run-ins reach a compromise the law over her analgesic use over the years, secretive in with them after culmination a prison sentence for tenure of methamphetamines in April 2005.

"She had a very colorful life," her niece said.

"She upfront a lot of things. She got in trouble. She frank what she did."

In addition tolerate her sister Dorothy, Tullis critique survived by another sister, Sightly Meeker.