Let’s start with the elephant in the room. Monday was Mickey Rooney’s 93rd birthday. I’ve posted several things about him during the day and I’m not going to go into a long bio paragraph because he is someone the VWRS talks about all the time, so closely intertwined are the Rooney and Weidler careers during the 1938-1941 period. News accounts show, in fact, that Mickey presented Ginny with her Parents magazine award as most popular female juvenile star for 1940 because he had won the male star award in 1939. Let me finish this by mentioning that I’d love to get a good address for Mickey, my letters are returned as undeliverable. Here the Mick and the feisty one have a stare down over the dishes in LOVE IS A HEADACHE (1938).
Si Jenks (1876) played an old coot in westerns before and after he had reached true coot-i-ness. He played the loyal bartender, Kentuck, in the film THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT (1937). In a rare bit of casting there were two coots in that film, as Al “Fuzzy” St. John played Uncle Billy. Billy was not quite so loyal. Jenks would, unlike many of his contemporaries, step away from the comforts of the western sets once in awhile and appear in mainstream pictures, usually as a working stiff like a janitor or gardener. Some of those other films include GONE WITH THE WIND, TOPPER, and TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME. Here he is riding with Oakhurst after the gambler was run out of the newly respectable Poker Flat.
Kathryn Bates (1877) had a career of 12 small roles of which her role of Mrs. Rogers in GIRL OF THE OZARKS (1936) was the first at age 59. Her biggest role was that of a committeewoman in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. She has but one scene in the copy of GOTO I was able to see and from that comes this photo where she is shocked and frightened when young Edie threatens her husband with a shotgun because he had her granny “throwed” in jail. From left to right are Elizabeth Russell, Russell Simpson, Lois Kent, and Bates.
Clifford Vaughan (1893) was the orchestrator/arranger for TROUBLE FOR TWO (1936). Vaughan worked on over 150 films and did a lot of his later work for Walt Disney. He was the orchestrator for OLD YELLER, but did NOT write that song that still runs through my head. As this record cover indicates, he did do some composition, however.
Walter Pidgeon (1897) spent much of his early career playing the “other man” in films. It was in one of these roles that he first was in a film with Ginny, playing Bill Dennis in TOO HOT TO HANDLE (1938) where Clark Gable got Myrna Loy and he didn’t. He is probably better remembered in a Weidler context, however, for appearing as himself in a scene in THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION (1943) with Virginia, Jean Porter, and his frequent leading lady, Greer Garson. Pidgeon was nominated for two Oscars for MADAME CURIE and MRS. MINIVER, and also appeared in the sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET.
Fredrick Y. Smith (1903) was an editor at MGM and did the cutting and paring on GOLD RUSH MAISIE (1940), BABES ON BROADWAY (1941) and THIS TIME FOR KEEPS (1942). He also edited ANOTHER THIN MAN, LIBELED LADY, and several other entries in the Maisie series. I didn’t find a photo of him, so here’s a photo of Virginia he didn’t cut out of BoB.
Actress Beatrice Curtis (1906) was a party guest in THE LONE WOLF SPY HUNT (1939). She worked regularly at Columbia, filling in scenes as an extra and working on shorts like those of the Three Stooges. She reached starring credit in her final film, a Willis Kent exploitation film called SOULS IN PAWN in which she played a student with a pregnancy problem despite being about 34 years old at the time.
Lois James (1921) was a chorus girl in BABES ON BROADWAY. She served the same basic purpose in STRIKE UP THE BAND and BABES IN ARMS. She was a bathing beauty in KNUTE ROCKNE, which confused me until I remembered that there were one or two scenes where a bathing beauty might have come up.
Finally, child actress Barbara Goodrich (1927) is another special TIG based on her playing a “kid” in several of the OUR GANG of the period when Ginny’s brothers were appearing in them. She really didn’t do much else in films. She is at far left in the photo.
