1. Cornel Wilde was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in 1945's A Song to Remember.
41 Facts About Cornel Wilde
1. 2.
Cornel Wilde was born in 1912 in Privigye, Kingdom of Hungary, although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City.
3.
Cornel Wilde was named for his paternal grandfather, and upon arrival in the United States via first class passage aboard Dutch steamer at the age of seven in 1920, his name was Anglicized to Cornelius Louis Wilde.
4.
Cornel Wilde entered Columbia University in New York City as a freshman in the fall of 1929.
5.
Cornel Wilde fenced for the Columbia Lions fencing team, and won the National Novice Foils Championship held at the New York Athletic Club in 1929.
6.
Cornel Wilde made his Broadway debut in 1935 in Moon Over Mulberry Street.
7.
Cornel Wilde appeared in Love Is Not So Simple, Daughters of Etreus, and Having Wonderful Time.
8.
Cornel Wilde did the illustrations for Fencing, a 1936 textbook on fencing and wrote a fencing play, Touche, under the pseudonym of Clark Wales in 1937.
9.
Cornel Wilde toured with Tallulah Bankhead in a production of Antony and Cleopatra; during the run he married his co-star Patricia Knight.
10.
Cornel Wilde supplemented his income with exhibition fencing matches; his wife did modelling work.
11.
Cornel Wilde wrote plays, some of which were performed by the New York Drama Guild.
12.
Cornel 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.
13.
Cornel Wilde had an uncredited bit part in Lady with Red Hair, then got a small part in High Sierra, which included a scene with Humphrey Bogart.
14.
Cornel Wilde had small roles in Knockout and Kisses for Breakfast.
15.
Cornel Wilde was then signed by 20th Century Fox who gave him a good role in a B picture The Perfect Snob.
16.
Cornel Wilde was the romantic male lead in Life Begins at Eight-Thirty, supporting Monty Woolley, and supported Sonja Henie in Wintertime.
17.
In 1946, Cornel Wilde was voted the 18th-most popular star in the United States, and in 1947 the 25th-.
18.
In January 1946, Cornel Wilde was suspended by Fox for refusing the male lead in Margie.
19.
Cornel Wilde was in a comedy at Columbia with Ginger Rogers, It Had to Be You.
20.
Cornel Wilde then left Fox, which he later regarded as a mistake.
21.
At Columbia, Cornel Wilde was in Shockproof, another noir, with his then-wife Patricia Knight.
22.
Cornel Wilde made Swiss Tour, aka Four Days Leave, an independent film in Switzerland.
23.
Cornel Wilde returned to Fox for Two Flags West, then went to RKO for At Sword's Point, a swashbuckler with Maureen O'Hara.
24.
Cornel Wilde focused on adventure stories: Saadia for MGM, Star of India for United Artists.
25.
Cornel Wilde had a part in the all-star executive drama Woman's World for Fox, then went back to action and adventure with Passion for RKO.
26.
Cornel Wilde produced and starred in another film for Theodora with Wallace, Storm Fear from a script by Horton Foote.
27.
Cornel Wilde later said it was his worst mistake because having even a small role in a big blockbuster would have given him career momentum.
28.
Cornel Wilde produced, directed and starred in two films for Theodora that were released through Paramount Pictures: The Devil's Hairpin, a car-racing drama, and Maracaibo.
29.
Cornel Wilde called them "an acceptable A-B, meaning a picture with a B budget but A pretensions".
30.
Cornel Wilde had the lead in Edge of Eternity for director Don Siegel.
31.
Cornel Wilde went to Italy to star in Constantine and the Cross.
32.
Cornel Wilde produced, directed, and starred in The Naked Prey, in which he played a man stripped naked and chased by hunters from an African tribe that was affronted by the behavior of other members of his safari party.
33.
Cornel Wilde followed this with a war movie, Beach Red, shot in the Philippines.
34.
Cornel Wilde announced Namugongo, another movie in Africa, about the White Fathers missionaries in the Kingdom of Buganda, but it was never made.
35.
Cornel Wilde had a supporting role in The Comic, directed by Carl Reiner.
36.
Cornel Wilde wrote, produced, and directed the science fiction film No Blade of Grass.
37.
Cornel Wilde returned to film shortly thereafter and wrote, directed, and starred in the exploitation film Sharks' Treasure, a 1975 film intended to capitalize on the "Shark Fever" popular in the mid-1970s in the wake of the success of Peter Benchley's Jaws.
38.
Cornel Wilde acted in The Norseman and The Fifth Musketeer.
39.
Cornel Wilde became stepfather to Wallace's two sons, Pascal and Thomas, from her marriage to Franchot Tone.
40.
Cornel Wilde died of leukemia on October 16,1989, three days after his 77th birthday and just weeks after he had been diagnosed with the blood disease.
41.
Cornel Wilde is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles.