Cornel Wilde.

By age 14, Cornel Wilde had graduated from Townsend Harris High School and entered City College of New York’s pre-med program, completing it in three years. Born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Privigye, Kingdom of Hungary now Prievidza, Slovakia, he had immigrated to New York City with his Jewish family in 1920. His father Vojtech Béla Weisz and mother Rayna Vid Anglicized the family name to Wilde. A natural athlete, he became a champion fencer and was selected for the U.S. Olympic team for the 1936 Berlin Games, but he quit the team to pursue an acting career.

Wilde made his Broadway debut in Having a Wonderful Time before catching Hollywood’s attention as Tybalt in Laurence Olivier’s 1940 Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. He signed with Warner Bros. and gained widespread attention with an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember 1945. During the 1940s he starred in romantic and swashbuckling roles, including The Greatest Show on Earth 1952 for Cecil B. DeMille, where he performed trapeze stunts despite a fear of heights. In the 1950s he formed his own production company and directed film noirs like The Big Combo 1955 and Storm Fear 1955. His most celebrated directorial work, The Naked Prey 1965, received critical praise as a survival adventure. Later roles included minor appearances in films and television episodes such as Murder, She Wrote.

Wilde married actress Patricia Knight born Marjorie Heintzen on September 21, 1937; they lied about their ages to get work. They had a daughter, Wendy Wilde, born February 22, 1943. The couple divorced on August 30, 1951. On September 4, 1951, he married actress Jean Wallace, with whom he had a son, Cornel Wallace Wilde, born December 19, 1967. They remained married until their divorce on December 10, 1982. Wilde was a polyglot, speaking Hungarian, French, German, English, Italian, and Russian. He died of leukemia on October 16, 1989 in Los Angeles, three days after his 77th birthday, and was interred at Westwood Memorial Park.

Cornel Wilde received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to motion pictures. His performance in A Song to Remember set a benchmark for biographical musical roles, and his directorial work The Naked Prey is a classic of survival cinema. Wilde’s influence can be seen in later adventure films, and his film noir collaborations with director Joseph H. Lewis are studied in the genre. At his death, he was editing his autobiography The Wilde Life and working on a sequel to The Naked Prey. He is most remembered for his Oscar-nominated turn as Chopin and his rugged, intelligent heroism on screen.