![]() ![]() In 1945, Columbia Pictures began a search for someone to play the role of Frédéric Chopin in A Song to Remember. He was the romantic male lead in Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942), supporting Monty Woolley, and supported Sonja Henie in Wintertime (1943). It was followed by a war movie Manila Calling (1942). Wilde was then signed by 20th Century Fox who gave him a good role in a B picture The Perfect Snob (1941). He also had small roles in Knockout (1941) and Kisses for Breakfast (1941). Wilde had an uncredited bit part in Lady with Red Hair (1940), then got a small part in High Sierra (1941), which included a scene with Humphrey Bogart. Although the show only had a small run his performance in this role netted him a Hollywood film contract with Warner Bros. Wilde was hired as a fencing teacher by Laurence Olivier for his 1940 Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet and was given the role of Tybalt in the production. Wilde wrote plays, some of which were performed by the New York Drama Guild. Wilde supplemented his income with exhibition fencing matches his wife also did modelling work. He toured with Tallulah Bankhead in a production of Anthony and Cleopatra during the run he married his co-star Patricia Knight.Īcting jobs were sporadic over the next few years. He did the illustrations for Fencing, a 1936 textbook on fencing and wrote a fencing play, Touché, under the pseudonym Clark Wales in 1937. He also appeared in Love Is Not So Simple, Daughters of Etreus, and Having a Wonderful Time. He made his Broadway debut in 1935 in Moon Over Mulberry Street. As a result, most publicity records and subsequent sources wrongly indicate a 1915 birth for Wilde.įrom The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) TheatreĪfter studying at Theodora Irvine's Studio of the Theatre, Wilde began appearing in plays in stock and in New York. In preparation for an acting career, he and his new wife Marjory Heinzen (later to be known as Patricia Knight) shaved years off their ages, three for him and five for her. He qualified for the United States fencing team for the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, but quit the team before the games in order to take a role in the theater. ![]() ![]() Wilde attended the City College of New York 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. at age seven in 1920, his name was Anglicized to Cornelius Louis Wilde.Ī talented linguist and an astute mimic, he had an ear for languages which became apparent later in his acting career. He was named for his paternal grandfather, and upon arrival in the U.S. His Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Béla Weisz (Anglicized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Renée Mary Vid (Rayna Miryam). Wilde was born in 1912 in Privigye, Kingdom of Hungary (now Prievidza, Slovakia), although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City. ![]()
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