Born 1927 in Los Angeles, California, American child actress Virginia Weidler was popular in Hollywood films during the 1930s and 1940s. She made her first film appearance in 1931. Her first credited role was as Europena in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), a role she won at age seven after having been seen in the play Autumn Crocus. Virginia made a big impression on audiences as the little girl who would “hold my breath ’til I am black in the face” to get her way.
For the next several years, Virginia appeared in many memorable films from George Stevens’s Laddie (1935) to a pivotal supporting role in Souls at Sea (1938) starring Gary Cooper and George Raft. Despite being under contract to Paramount, just as many of her roles of the period took place while on loan to RKO-Radio Pictures.
When Paramount did not extend her contract, Weidler was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938. Her first film for MGM was with their leading male star Mickey Rooney in Love Is a Headache (1938). The film was a success and she was later cast in larger roles. Weidler was one of the all-female cast of the 1939 film The Women, as the daughter of Norma Shearer’s character.
Her next major success was The Philadelphia Story (1940) in which Weidler played Dinah Lord. Her film career ended with the 1943 film Best Foot Forward. At her retirement from the screen at age 16, she had appeared in more than 40 films, and had acted with some of the biggest stars of the day, including Clark Gable and Myrna Loy in Too Hot to Handle, Bette Davis in All This and Heaven Too, and Judy Garland in Babes on Broadway.
After her retirement, Weidler gave no interviews for the remainder of her life. She died at age 41 at her Los Angeles home in 1968. Take a look at these lovely photos to see portraits of a very young Virginia Weidler in the 1930s and 1940s.
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