Cornel Wilde

Dashing actor Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912, in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia), to a Jewish family.

In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Americanized their names and Kornel took the name Cornelius Louis Wilde. He spent much of his youth traveling in Europe, developing a continental flair as well as an affinity for languages. He received a scholarship for medical school, but turned it down in favor of his new love, the theatre. A natural athlete and a champion fencer with the U. S.

Although most records indicate Wilde was born in New York City, the 1930 U.S. Census and the California Death Records database both state that he was born in Hungary.

Olympic fencing team, he quit the team just prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in order to take a role in a play.

In 1937, he married Marjory Heinzen (later known as Patricia Knight), and they both shaved a few years off their ages in order to get work, Wilde thereafter claiming publicly that he was born in New York in 1915, though he continued to list his correct Hungarian birth in 1912 on government documents.

Shortening his name to Cornel Wilde for the stage, he appeared in the Broadway hit "Having a Wonderful Time", but it was not until he was hired in the dual capacities of fencing choreographer and actor (Tybalt) in Laurence Olivier's 1940 Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet" that Hollywood spotted him.

He spent the balance of the 1940s in romantic, and often swashbuckling, leading roles.

Daughter with first wife: Wendy Wilde, born February 22, 1943. Wendy is NOT the 1950s actress of the same name. Son with second wife Jean Wallace: Cornel Wilde, Jr.

He played a few minor roles before leaping to fame and an Oscar nomination as Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945).

He and Ida Lupino became good friends while filming Road House (1948). They found common ground in their liberal political beliefs.

In the 1950s his star dimmed a little, and aside from an occasional blockbuster like Greatest Show On Earth (1952), he settled mainly into adventure films. A growing interest in directing led him to form his own production company with the goal of directing his own films.

A vintage year for "beefcake bondage" in his film career was 1952. In At Sword's Point (1952), he appeared bound and stripped to the waist in a torture chamber where his torso was burned with a hot iron. In California Conquest (1952), he appeared stripped to the waist and bound to a tree where he was lashed across the chest with a whip. Perhaps in a nod to these situations (but without the bondage), three years later, in his appearance on television in I Love Lucy: The Star Upstairs (1955) he strips to the waist before going 'offstage' to take a bath.

Several of his ventures into film noir in this period, both his own and other directors', are quite interesting (Big Combo, The - 1955 (1955) and Storm Fear (1955), for example).

He produced, directed and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), a tour-de-force adventure drama that brought him real acclaim as a director. His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films.

Featured in "Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir" by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry (McFarland, 2003).