Florence Tullis

On the morning of October 14, 2006, Tullis was driving her three-wheel motorcycle when the right tire fell off and she lost control; she was thrown from the motorcycle after it struck a curb and her body hit a telephone pole. Tullis suffered serious injuries, including both legs broken and a punctured lung. Friends and family members said they had no idea Tullis was hurt until they read a short story in the Oct. 16 issue of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that reported an unidentified 70-year-old woman on a three-wheel motorcycle had been in an accident. Tullis died of an infection on November 11 that same year at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, California. She was 70. Tullis wanted her body to be donated to science or be cremated.

She completed a prison sentence for possession of methamphetamines in April 2005.

In May 2002, she was sentenced to 16 months in prison for admitting she violated probation on a drug charge.

At the time of the film's release, Tullis had worked as a counselor helping drug addicts, and she planned to work at the Shanti Project, a workshop for the terminally ill, including patients with AIDS. In 2001, Tullis was reportedly working as a psychic counselor and living in a trailer park outside of Los Angeles. At the time of her death, Tullis was living in Glendora with her sister Dorothy Stuart and her niece Helen Cunningham.

In 2001, she was placed on three years' probation for drug possession.

Anna Hamilton Phelan, screenwriter of Mask, said of Tullis in 2001, "This was not the PTA mother of the year, but she was the perfect mother for Rocky. She never made him feel sorry for himself."

In October 1999, she pleaded no contest to two drug charges. Earlier in the year, Azusa police had found methamphetamine and pipes used to smoke the drug in her mobile home. Her two-year prison sentence was changed to probation.

In 1996, she was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to a meth possession charge.

In a 1985 interview with People, Tullis said "They tried to say his intelligence was impaired, but it wasn't true. I think they wanted to keep him out of the classroom because [they thought] it would bother the other kids' parents."

In 1985, Tullis' elder son, Joshua, became a writer based in San Francisco. A year later, he was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, a deadly skin cancer, as a result of AIDS. Joshua was homosexual and came out to his mother when he was a teenager. According to Joshua, "My mother has always been very supportive. She didn't want to totally accept it. She wanted me to be bisexual. She wants grandkids. She called me once, a couple of years later. She wanted me to go to a sperm bank. She really wants grandkids. I told her, 'No way!'" In 1987, Joshua died of AIDS at the age of 32. "People say, 'Oh, it's too bad they died so young,' I say, you don't understand. My kids lived every day of their lives. Every moment," Tullis said of the experience of outliving her two children.

Both parents raised Rocky following their divorce, with Rusty having primary responsibility. About three weeks before he died, Rocky's headaches intensified, and he had to resort to a wheelchair. Tullis alerted the hospital that the end was probably near. "He'd said he didn't want to be on one of those machines, and I promised him if the hospital did that I'd pull the plug," she says. "He wanted to die at home." On the night of October 3, 1978, Tullis and a group of biker friends had a party to cheer up Rocky. At midnight, he awoke with a headache; she comforted him, and as she had done since the beginning, sent him to his room to make himself well. The next day, Tullis was at her lawyer's office working out details for beating a drug bust she says was a mistake. Her then-lover Bernie called her at the lawyer's office with the news that Rocky had died. Rocky's body was donated to the UCLA genetics research center for science and then cremated. Tullis married her third husband Bernie Tullis, but they separated after six weeks of marriage, both of them still grief-stricken over Rocky's death. The character Gar, played by Sam Elliott in the 1985 film Mask, is based on Bernie. After Rocky's death, Tullis moved to San Francisco and took up Buddhism. At one point in her life, Tullis resumed the name Mason.

When she was 17, Tullis married her first husband, truck driver Tommy Mason; two years later, their son Joshua was born. The marriage was dysfunctional, and shortly after the birth of Joshua, Tullis moved back with her parents on Coney Island. There, she worked as an exhibit hawker. In 1961, she married her second husband Roy Dennis. That same year, they moved to Covina, California. Their son Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis was born on December 4, 1961.

Florence "Rusty" Tullis (née Steinberg; May 29, 1936 – November 11, 2006), also known as Rusty Dennis, Rusty Mason and Rusty Dennis Mason was an American woman known for being the mother of Rocky Dennis, who was diagnosed with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia. Their story was depicted in the 1985 film Mask, in which Tullis was portrayed by Cher.