Virginia Weidler

One of Virginia Weidler's earliest directors sadly predicted that the precocious young miss would never become a major juvenile star like Shirley Temple or Jackie Cooper: "All she can do is act." Indeed, in a 1930s Hollywood festooned with child stars, Weidler may well have been the first child character actress. The daughter of an architect father and German opera-singer mother, Weidler made her first screen appearance at the age of 3. She created a minor sensation as Europena, most contentious of the many Wiggs children, in 1934's Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. While playing opposite John Barrymore in The Great Man's Votes (1938), her scene-stealing propensities were so pronounced that, at one point, Barrymore threw her off his knee and bellowed "Who the hell do you think you're acting with, you silly little brute. Silly, hell!--crafty, God damn you, crafty!" The next day, the two actors were on the best of terms again, but, true professional that she was, she'd gotten the message: never try to upstage a Barrymore! Weidler's last important role was as the irksome younger sister of Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Her film career finished by 1943, Weidler staged an unsuccessful comeback as a nightclub singer, then retired from show business in favor of a happy and enduring marriage. Virginia Weidler died of a heart attack in her early forties.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide