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It is Prime Day, and in honor of this special day I ask everyone in the VWRS community to do one thing. Go to your Alexa enabled device (you know you have one somewhere) and ask in a loud clear voice, “Alexa, who was Virginia Weidler?”*Alexa knows.*-The VWRS cannot confirm that this works with Siri, Cortana, or that unnamed Google assistant. Results may vary.
Happy birthday today to Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx.Comedian, television host and the second greatest singer of Lydia, The Tattooed Lady. Newspapers reported he was present when Virginia sang it, but could it have also been the other way around? We hate to speculate.
After a special proclamation from our governor that the VWRS is
indeed essential, we are back on duty. There was a brief delay while we
debated with VWRS union steward Miranda Sommerfield over whether
fictitious characters serving as loyal assistants are actually
essential…but clearly they are. With a quick doubling of their
salaries, everyone is back in action.
If you are confused by the paragraph above, I suggest you go to the actual VWRS Facebook page and read the pinned glossary for an explanation.
My first post back is a retraction from at least four years ago. I have
attached the original graphic which accompanied that post. I had found a
gossip item from 1943 indicating that Virginia had turned down a chance
to be in a picture with Frank Sinatra because the role called for a
bobbysoxer and Ginny wanted more mature roles after she had finished at
MGM with THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION and BEST FOOT FORWARD.
In 2015,
I determined that the film being spoken about was probably MEET MISS
BOBBY SOCKS, which ended up starring Bob Crosby instead of Frankie and
had Louise Erickson as the “soxer”. I based this on the plot sounding
right, the time being right, and the fact that Frank had been featured
in a Columbia musical around that same time.
This week I
discovered I was probably wrong. TCM showed a rather awful B musical
this week called DING DONG WILLIAMS. It is about a clarinet player hired
to write a musical score for a picture when he can’t read or write
music. He can only play. And the perky production assistant who loves
him is played by singer, dancer and RKO jitterbug Marcy McGuire. Not
being an expert on Ms. McGuire, I looked her up. To my surprise I found
that when Sinatra played himself, third billed to Michele Morgan and
Jack Haley, in HIGHER AND HIGHER, Marcy played a girl who swoons at
Frankie’s feet. That sounds like it probably is the role. I skipped it
before because Frank wasn’t the lead.
Marcy has a career much
shorter, but of a similar path to Virginia’s. She started in her teens
and was quickly moved by RKO into jitterbug roles similar to what Gloria
Jean and Peggy Ryan were stuck in at Universal. She slowed her career
when she married actor Wally Cassell in 1947 and retired by 1952.
Virginia also married in 1947 and although she last appeared in a
feature in 1943 she continued to act on stage, radio and television
until about…1952.
So HIGHER AND HIGHER is now the film I think
the gossips were pointing toward, although I am unsure how serious RKOs
efforts toward landing her were. After all, Marcy was comfortable in the
soxer/jitterbug roles and was already under contract.-
This
is Ginny’s 73rd wedding anniversary. The story is that she and Lionel
eloped, but I’ve always wondered if this was a family approved elopement
rather than the kind dramatized in films. After all, both she and
Lionel Krisel were great catches and I have to doubt either family would
have disapproved.
It’s Ginny’s birthday! It’s Ginny’s birthday! And we would like to wish her all the very best It’s Ginny’s birthday! It’s Ginny’s birthday! And it’s so nice to have you back to be our guest (h/t to Bill Martin / Phil Coulter…and George Harrison)
It is here! That day of days. And we should have a little more time to participate than in most years, I’m guessing.
As usual, we at the VWRS celebrate Ginny’s birthday-number 93 by my
count-by watching Ginny’s films and clips and eating cottage cheese
(Ginny’s favorite food), although I will be lenient on the CC
requirement this year only.
There are three Ginny films on
YouTube, two in complete form and one broken up into around ten separate
parts. My ginny fan channel there still has our short clips as well.
I have also opened up my public page as I do each year. There you will
find five films, several clips, and Jean Porter’s wonderful salute to
Ginny from Classic Images magazine.
My page can be accessed from https://tinyurl.com/ginnyday. Click on the item you wish to view…and be patient. I have tested them and they do load for viewing.
There are three Ginny films on YouTube, two in complete form and one
broken up into around ten separate parts. My ginny fan channel there
still has our short clips as well.
It
is a necklace with an interesting backstory, the Manchester Necklace.
And it has fallen into the hands of a noted art collector. Everyone
seems to want it…some willing to do anything to get it.
Despite this, I suspect the little girl from Philadelphia would have just two words for it.
Yes, I know they aren’t the same, but my ginnyfan mind still went there.
I also suspect the made for TV mystery would have been better with Ginny there, pestering the detectives.
It is time for the BIG! TIG! REVEAL! Today we congratulate the John Hyland Army for correctly guessing yesterday’s TIG!er.
* I was in two films with Virginia Weidler. I was Major Lieber in AFTER TONIGHT (1933) and Elder Goode in MAID OF SALEM (1937). Virginia was Nabby in that one.
* I am best remembered for a film I made starring two other TIG!ers (actors who worked with Virginia).
The TIG!ers were William Powell (THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION) and Myrna Loy
(STAMBOUL QUEST and TOO HOT TO HANDLE) and the film was THE THIN MAN
(1934). I, not Powell, was The Thin Man.
* I was a working Broadway actor prior to making the trip to Hollywood.
From 1905 to 1932. I played a lot of shady characters. I even found
time to write plays and to make a few silent films while in New York.
*Criminals, Doctors, Majors, and two ‘Pop’s.
Some of the characters I played in Hollywood. I also played Dr. John
Abbott in the Dalton Trumbo written, Garson Kanin directed A MAN TO
REMEMBER (1938). The film was a remake of a Lionel Barrymore film, ONE
MAN’S JOURNEY (1933) and both come with the ginnyfan seal of approval.
*Preston Foster, Edward Arnold, Fred MacMurray, Warren William, and Donald Meek. Other TIG!ers I worked with.
Who am I?
Edward Ellis, born November 12, 1870.
If you wish to play TODAY IN GINNY! check out the Virginia Weidler Remembrance Society Facebook page!
We used to do this all the time as a quiz. If you still want to play the quiz, you have to go to our Facebook site. Only once in a blue moon did anyone ever answer a quiz here.
Today is the birthday of Virginia castmate Delos Jewkes. He was born in 1895 and appeared in 42 films and television shows. He was also on the soundtrack of many films.
Possessing a very deep singing and speaking voice, he found work often where that was called for. Cecil B. DeMille used him as the voice of God in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
His Ginny appearance was in the 1942 musical BORN TO SING. The finale was a rendition of the wonderful BALLAD FOR AMERICANS featuring baritone Douglas McPhail in his final film performance. Jewkes was in the chorus.
You may have seen Delos if you watched The Andy Griffith Show. He made three appearances there, two as church choir member Glenn Cripe. The video is of his most memorable TAGS moment. he shows up around 2:25 of the video and is featured, along with Don Knotts, thereafter.
“ … the smartest, most regular-looking, cleverest girl in the room…”
When
I first started this “calling” in 2012, it was under the mistaken
impression that Virginia Weidler’s story was a sad one. I hope the
research we have all done here has pretty well established that it was
not. Sadly for all of us, the story was too short, but she lived a good
life and had an amazing family.
Still, it was the sad story that
made me start digging for everything I could, later enlisting Danny and
John’s help, and seeking people who knew more than I about the feisty
one. The first site, at TCM’s now defunct Fan Forum, was called In
Search Of…Virginia Weidler. Not wanting Leonard Nimoy to sue me, I
changed it on Facebook to the much more appropriate Virginia Weidler
Remembrance Society.
Early in my search, I found this blog post,
written by Beth Daniels, that I think sums up the kinds of feelings
Virginia’s work brings out much better than I ever have or ever could.
That part of her old site now seems unavailable, but she was nice enough
to share the post with me so we all can read it once more.
__________________________
Birthday of the Week: Virginia Weidler 3/11/2011
I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to write about Virginia Weidler.
As the smartest, most regular-looking, cleverest girl in the room, she
meant the world to my sister and me. We loved her like a great friend
for many years. She was the closest thing to a real person in the
classic films we adored and one couldn’t help but watch her and hope
she’d say or do more.
If you haven’t seen her in anything, you
must see The Philadelphia Story. Then maybe Young Tom Edison. She’s good
if less herself in The Women, but that’s not her fault.
By the
time she was 17, Virginia had made 45 films and had been in the business
for 12 years. She retired shortly after Best Foot Forward, a wise move,
got married and had two children. She died in 1968 at the age of 41.
Here she is as a rabid autograph hound in her penultimate picture, The
Youngest Profession (1943). Her line, “What’s more important, Walter
Pidgeon or liver and onions?” has become something of a motto for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHD9bbyiTAo
Virginia Weidler would have been 84 today. Happy Birthday, Buddy.
An interesting quote lifted directly and wholly from IMDb:
[When asked about her career in later years,] Virginia would always
change the subject as quickly as possible without being rude. She never
watched her old movies or replied to requests for interviews. Although
she was never one to criticize, I think our boys got the impression that
their mother didn’t think very much of the motion picture industry.“ –
Lionel Krisel, Weidler’s husband ___________________________
” … the smartest, most regular-looking, cleverest girl in the room…“
That is it in a nutshell. Detractors sometimes derided her as "plain”,
but that just isn’t true. She was girl-next-door pretty, not Hollywood
pretty. And her ability to play tomboy well probably didn’t help her
standing with that detractor crowd, either.
I did a lot of
research to find out that Virginia is probably the best friend I never
met. Beth and her sister figured that out just by watching the films.
