Early Life and Career
Born in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California in 1927, Virginia Weidler made her first film appearance in 1933. Over the next few years, she was cast in minor roles for RKO and Paramount Pictures. Neither studio made more extensive use of her and when Paramount did not extend her contract, she was signed by MGM 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 Weidler was now cast in larger roles, most often as precocious tom-boys. She was one of the all-female cast of the 1939 film The Women, as Norma Shearer's daughter.
Her next major success was The Philadelphia Story (1940) in which she played Dinah Lord, the witty younger sister of Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). As a teenager she was less popular with audiences. After a string of box-office disappointments, her film career ended with the 1943 film Best Foot Forward. At her retirement by age 17, she had appeared in more than forty 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.
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