Cornel Wilde
Encyclopedia
Cornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.

Early life

Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza
Prievidza
Prievidza is a city in the central-western Slovakia. With 51,200 inhabitants it is one of the biggest municipalities in the Trenčín Region.-Features:...

, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 (now Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

), although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. His Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Weisz (Americanized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Renée Mary Vid. He was named for his paternal grandfather, and upon arrival in the U.S. at age 7 in 1920, his name was Americanized to Cornelius Louis Wilde. A talented linguist and an astute mimic, he had an ear for languages which became apparent later in his acting career. Wilde attended the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 as a pre-med student, completing the four-year course in three years and winning a scholarship to the Physicians and Surgeons College at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. He qualified for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 fencing team prior to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, but quit the team just prior to the games in order to take a role in the theater. In preparation for an acting career, he and his new wife Marjory Heinzen
Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight was an American actress who appeared in a few movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was born as Marjorie Heintzen.-Personal life:...

 (later to be known as Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight was an American actress who appeared in a few movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was born as Marjorie Heintzen.-Personal life:...

) shaved years off their ages, three for him and five for her. As a result, most publicity records and subsequent sources wrongly indicate a 1915 birth for Wilde.

Career

After study at Theodora Irvine's Studio of the Theatre, Wilde began appearing in plays in stock and in New York. He made his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 debut in 1935 in Moon Over Mulberry Street. He wrote a fencing play, Touché, under the pseudonym Clark Wales in 1937. Wilde was hired as a fencing teacher by Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 for his 1940 Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production of Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

 and was given the role of Tybalt in the production. His performance in this role netted him a Hollywood film contract.

He had several small film roles until he played the role of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

 in 1945's A Song to Remember
A Song to Remember
A Song to Remember is a 1945 Columbia Pictures biographical film which tells a fictionalised life story of Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin...

, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 as Best Actor. In 1945 he also starred in A Thousand and One Nights
A Thousand and One Nights (film)
A Thousand and One Nights is a tongue-in-cheek Technicolor fantasy film set in the Baghdad of the One Thousand and One Nights, starring Cornel Wilde as Aladdin, Evelyn Keyes as the genie of the magic lamp, Phil Silvers as Aladdin's larcenous sidekick, and Adele Jergens as the princess Aladdin...

 with Evelyn Keyes
Evelyn Keyes
Evelyn Louise Keyes was an American film actress. She is best-known for her role as Suellen O'Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.-Early life:...

. He spent the rest of the decade appearing in romantic and swashbuckling films, but he also appeared in some significant films noir, opposite Gene Tierney
Gene Tierney
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...

 in Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills...

 (1945), Road House
Road House (1948 film)
For the 1989 film, see Road House .Road House is a film noir drama directed by Jean Negulesco, with cinematography by Joseph LaShelle. The picture features Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark, among others....

 (1948) and Shockproof
Shockproof
Shockproof is a 1949 movie starring Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight.The director of Shockproof, Douglas Sirk, said he took the assignment because the movie dealt with one of his favorite themes: the price of flouting taboos....

 (1949), the latter film also starring his then wife Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight was an American actress who appeared in a few movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was born as Marjorie Heintzen.-Personal life:...

.

In the 1950s, Wilde created his own film production company and produced the film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 The Big Combo
The Big Combo
The Big Combo is an American film noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and stylistically photographed by cinematographer and noir icon John Alton with music by David Raksin....

 (1955). Wilde played the male lead alongside his second wife Jean Wallace
Jean Wallace
Jean Wallace was an American television and film actress.-Biography:Born Jean Walasek in Chicago to John T. Walasek and Mary A. Walasek , Wallace began her career as a model then got her first small movie role at the age of seventeen...

. That same year, he appeared in an episode of I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

 as himself. In 1957, he played the role of the 13th century Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...

 poet
Persian literature
Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

 Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....

 in the film Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam (film)
Omar Khayyam is an American movie directed by William Dieterle, filmed in 1956 and released in 1957...

.

He produced, directed, and starred in The Naked Prey
The Naked Prey
The Naked Prey is a 1966 adventure film starring Cornel Wilde, who also directed and produced. It was released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the South African veld, the film is a wilderness survival story loosely based on the experiences of explorer John Colter, who was pursued by Blackfoot...

 (1966), in which he played a naked man being tracked by hunters from an African tribe affronted by the behavior of members of a safari party. The original script for The Naked Prey was largely based on a true historical incident about a trapper named John Colter
John Colter
John Colter was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition . Though party to one of the more famous expeditions in history, Colter is best remembered for explorations he made during the winter of 1807–1808, when Colter became the first known person of European descent to enter the region now known...

 being pursued by Blackfeet
Blackfeet
The Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans of the Algonquian language family based in Montana, having lived in this area since around 6,500 BC. Many members of the tribe live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...

 Indians in Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

. Lower shooting costs, tax breaks, and material and logistical assistance offered by Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...

 convinced Wilde and the other producers to shoot the film there.

Wilde's other notable directing efforts include Beach Red
Beach Red
Beach Red is a 1967 World War II film starring Cornel Wilde and Rip Torn. The film depicts a landing by the U.S. Marine Corps on an unnamed Japanese held Pacific island...

 (1967) and No Blade of Grass
No Blade of Grass (film)
No Blade of Grass is a 1970 British-American apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Cornel Wilde and starring Nigel Davenport, Jean Wallace and John Hamill. It is an adaptation of the novel The Death of Grass by John Christopher...

 (1970).

During the early 1970s, Wilde took a break from motion pictures and theater to turn toward television. He appeared as an unethical surgeon in the 1971 Night Gallery
Night Gallery
Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...

 episode "Deliveries in the Rear" and portrayed an anthropologist in the 1972 TV movie Gargoyles. He returned to film shortly thereafter and wrote, directed, and starred in the exploitation film Sharks' Treasure
Sharks' Treasure
Sharks' Treasure is a 1975 American adventure film written, produced and directed by Cornel Wilde and starring Cornel Wilde and Yaphet Kotto.-Plot:...

, a 1975 film intended to capitalize on the "Shark Fever" popular in the mid-1970s in the wake of the success of Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley
Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg...

's Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...

.

Personal life

He married the actress Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight was an American actress who appeared in a few movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was born as Marjorie Heintzen.-Personal life:...

 in 1937. She appeared with him in Shockproof (1949). They had a daughter, Wendy (born February 22, 1943), and divorced in 1951.

He married the actress Jean Wallace
Jean Wallace
Jean Wallace was an American television and film actress.-Biography:Born Jean Walasek in Chicago to John T. Walasek and Mary A. Walasek , Wallace began her career as a model then got her first small movie role at the age of seventeen...

 in 1951. Wallace, formerly married to actor Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty and many other films through the 1960s...

, co-starred with Wilde in several films including The Big Combo (1955), Lancelot and Guinevere, aka Sword of Lancelot (1963), and Beach Red (1967). Her two children from her marriage to Franchot Tone became Wilde's stepsons. They also had a son together, Cornel Wallace Wilde Jr. (born December 19, 1967). They divorced in 1981.

Death

Wilde died of leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...

 three days after his 77th birthday. He was survived by a daughter and a son (one from each marriage); two stepsons, Pascal Franchot Tone and Thomas Jefferson Tone; and three grandchildren. Wilde is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood....

 in Westwood, California
Westwood, Los Angeles, California
Westwood is a neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles .-History:...

.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Cornel Wilde has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

 at 1635 Vine Street
Vine Street
Vine is a street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California that runs north-south from Melrose Avenue up past Hollywood Boulevard. The intersection of Hollywood and Vine was once a symbol of Hollywood itself...

.

As director

  • General Electric Theater
    General Electric Theater
    General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald W. Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.-Radio:...

     (1955) (episode "The Blond Dog")
  • Storm Fear (1955)
  • The Devil's Hairpin (1957)
  • Maracaibo (1958)
  • Constantine and the Cross
    Constantine and the Cross
    Constantine and the Cross is a 1962 historical drama film about the early career of the emperor Constantine, who first legalized and then adopted Christianity in the early 4th century...

     (1962)
  • Lancelot and Guinevere
    Lancelot and Guinevere
    Lancelot and Guinevere is a British 1963 film starring Cornel Wilde, his real-life wife at the time, Jean Wallace, and Brian Aherne...

     (1963)
  • The Naked Prey
    The Naked Prey
    The Naked Prey is a 1966 adventure film starring Cornel Wilde, who also directed and produced. It was released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the South African veld, the film is a wilderness survival story loosely based on the experiences of explorer John Colter, who was pursued by Blackfoot...

     (1966)
  • Beach Red
    Beach Red
    Beach Red is a 1967 World War II film starring Cornel Wilde and Rip Torn. The film depicts a landing by the U.S. Marine Corps on an unnamed Japanese held Pacific island...

     (1967)
  • No Blade of Grass
    No Blade of Grass (film)
    No Blade of Grass is a 1970 British-American apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Cornel Wilde and starring Nigel Davenport, Jean Wallace and John Hamill. It is an adaptation of the novel The Death of Grass by John Christopher...

     (1970)
  • Sharks' Treasure
    Sharks' Treasure
    Sharks' Treasure is a 1975 American adventure film written, produced and directed by Cornel Wilde and starring Cornel Wilde and Yaphet Kotto.-Plot:...

     (1975)

As actor

  • High Sierra
    High Sierra
    High Sierra is an early heist film and film noir written by W.R. Burnett and John Huston from the novel by Burnett. The movie features Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart and was directed by Raoul Walsh on location at Whitney Portal, halfway up Mount Whitney.The screenplay was co-written by Bogart's...

     (1941)
  • Life Begins at Eight-Thirty
    Life Begins at Eight-Thirty
    Life Begins at Eight-Thirty is a 1942 drama film starring Monty Woolley as a washed-up, alcoholic actor, Ida Lupino as his daughter, and Cornel Wilde as her boyfriend. It is based on the play The Light of Heart by Emlyn Williams.-Synopsis:...

     (1942)
  • Leave Her to Heaven
    Leave Her to Heaven
    Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills...

     (1945)
  • A Song to Remember
    A Song to Remember
    A Song to Remember is a 1945 Columbia Pictures biographical film which tells a fictionalised life story of Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin...

     (1945)
  • A Thousand and One Nights
    A Thousand and One Nights (film)
    A Thousand and One Nights is a tongue-in-cheek Technicolor fantasy film set in the Baghdad of the One Thousand and One Nights, starring Cornel Wilde as Aladdin, Evelyn Keyes as the genie of the magic lamp, Phil Silvers as Aladdin's larcenous sidekick, and Adele Jergens as the princess Aladdin...

     (1945)
  • The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946)
  • Centennial Summer
    Centennial Summer
    Centennial Summer is a 1946 film directed by Otto Preminger. The musical, that stars Jeanne Crain and Cornel Wilde, is based on a novel by Albert E. Idell.It was produced in response to the hugely successful MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis...

     (1946)
  • Forever Amber
    Forever Amber (film)
    Forever Amber is a 1947 film directed by Otto Preminger and starring Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde. It was based on the book of the same name. It also starred Richard Greene, George Sanders, Glenn Langan, Richard Haydn, Dolores Hart, and Jessica Tandy...

     (1947)
  • It Had to Be You
    It Had to Be You (1947 film)
    It Had to Be You is a 1947 romantic comedy film starring Ginger Rogers and Cornel Wilde.-Cast:* Ginger Rogers as Victoria Stafford * Cornel Wilde as George McKesson/Johnny Blaine* Ron Randell as Oliver H.P. Harrington...

     (1947)
  • Road House
    Road House (1948 film)
    For the 1989 film, see Road House .Road House is a film noir drama directed by Jean Negulesco, with cinematography by Joseph LaShelle. The picture features Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark, among others....

     (1948)
  • Shockproof
    Shockproof
    Shockproof is a 1949 movie starring Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight.The director of Shockproof, Douglas Sirk, said he took the assignment because the movie dealt with one of his favorite themes: the price of flouting taboos....

     (1949)
  • Two Flags West
    Two Flags West
    Two Flags West is a 1950 Western drama set during the American Civil War, directed by Robert Wise and starring Joseph Cotton, Jeff Chandler, Linda Darnell, and Cornell Wilde...

     (1950)
  • At Sword's Point
    At Sword's Point
    At Sword's Point is a 1952 Technicolor Drama directed by Lewis Allen, starring Cornel Wilde and Maureen O'Hara. The film was completed in 1949, but was not released until 1952....

     (1952)
  • California Conquest
    California Conquest
    California Conquest is a 1952 American film, directed by Lew Landers, and starring Cornel Wilde and Teresa Wright. The film is set in the early 1840s, and deals with a conspiracy by native Spanish Hidalgos to deliver the then-Mexican territory of California to the Russian Empire.-Plot:Don Arturo...

     (1952)
  • The Greatest Show on Earth
    The Greatest Show on Earth
    The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 drama film set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The film was produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture...

     (1952)
  • Treasure of the Golden Condor
    Treasure of the Golden Condor
    Treasure of the Golden Condor is a 1953 adventure Technicolor film directed by Delmer Daves. It stars Cornel Wilde and Constance Smith. It is a remake of the 1942 film Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, which starred Tyrone Power...

     (1953)
  • Star of India
    Star of India (film)
    Star of India is a 1954 British adventure film directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, Herbert Lom and Walter Rilla. Its Italian title was Stella Dell'India.-Cast:* Cornel Wilde - Pierre St...

     (1954)
  • Woman's World
    Woman's World (film)
    Woman's World, also known as A Woman's World, is a 1954 drama film about corporate America. Three men compete for the top job at a large company.-Plot:...

     (1954)
  • The Big Combo
    The Big Combo
    The Big Combo is an American film noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and stylistically photographed by cinematographer and noir icon John Alton with music by David Raksin....

     (1955)
  • The Scarlet Coat
    The Scarlet Coat
    The Scarlet Coat is an Eastmancolor 1955 American historical drama and swashbuckler directed by John Sturges, based upon the events in the American Revolution in which Benedict Arnold offered to surrender the fort at West Point to the British in exchange for money.The film purports to tell the...

     (1955)
  • Hot Blood (1956)
  • Omar Khayyam
    Omar Khayyam (film)
    Omar Khayyam is an American movie directed by William Dieterle, filmed in 1956 and released in 1957...

     (1957)
  • Lancelot and Guinevere (1963)
  • The Naked Prey (1966)
  • Beach Red (1967)
  • The Comic
    The Comic
    The Comic is a 1969 drama/black comedy film co-written, co-produced and directed by Carl Reiner. It stars former Disney regulars Dick Van Dyke as Billy Bright and Michele Lee as Bright's love interest...

     (1969)
  • Sharks' Treasure (1975)
  • The Fifth Musketeer
    The Fifth Musketeer
    The Fifth Musketeer is a 1979 film adaptation of the last section of the novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, père, which is itself based on the French legend of the Man in the Iron Mask....

     (1979)


External links

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