Virginia Weidler
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Virginia Weidler (March 21, 1926 – July 1, 1968) was an American child actor, popular in Hollywood films during the 1930s and 1940s.
Born in Eagle Rock, California, Weidler made her first film appearance in 1933. Over the next few years she played minor roles in films for RKO and Paramount Studios. Neither studio made full use of her abilities, and when Paramount did not extend her contract, she was signed by MGM.
Her first film for them was opposite their leading male star Mickey Rooney in Love Is A Headache (1938). The film was a success and over the next few years Weidler was regularly employed by the studio, usually playing precocious tom-boys. She was one of the all-female cast of The Women (1939), as Norma Shearer's daughter, a role that was uncharacteristically sentimental for her.
Her next major success, and the film for which she is perhaps best remembered, was The Philadelphia Story (1940) in which she played the wise-cracking younger sister of Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). She continued acting but by this time was maturing, and as a teenager was less popular with audiences. After a string of box-office disappointments, her film career ended with her final performance in 1943. By her retirement at the age of 17 she had appeared in more than forty films, and had acted with some of the biggest stars of her era, including Clark Gable and Myrna Loy in Too Hot to Handle (1938), Bette Davis in All This and Heaven Too (1940), and Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Babes on Broadway (1941), but she was not able to continue her success as an actor into adulthood.
She married after her retirement and distanced herself from her Hollywood career, and for the rest of her life politely refused any requests for interviews. She died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, after suffering the effects of heart disease for several years.
