His Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Weisz (Americanized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Renée Mary Vid. Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now Slovakia), although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City. He is also survived by two stepsons, Pascal Franchot Tone of Hamilton, Mass., and Thomas Jefferson Tone of Ottawa, and three grandchildren.Ĭornel Wilde was a Hungarian-American actor and film director. The film maker also had a daughter, Wendy, of Berkeley, Calif., by his first wife, the actress Patricia Knight, whom he married in 1937 and was divorced from in 1951. They had a son, Cornel Wallace Wilde, of Beverly Hills, Calif. Wilde's independent productions was Jean Wallace, whom he married in 1951. Throughout my work is the idea, over and over, that we must all learn to respect one another.'' Wilde remarked: ''I am very concerned about the environment and psychological health of this beautiful planet. Reviewing his deepest preoccupations in 1986, Mr. Wilde's other films included ''A Thousand and One Nights'' (as Aladdin, in 1945), ''Leave Her to Heaven'' (1945), ''The Bandit of Sherwood Forest'' (as Robin Hood's son, in 1946), ''Centennial Summer'' (1946), ''Forever Amber'' (1947), ''Omar Khayyam'' (in the title role, in 1957) and ''The Fifth Musketeer'' (as D'Artagnan, in 1979). Wilde was nominated for an Academy Award. The baroque script was criticized by most reviewers and prompted the critic James Agee to denounce the movie as ''infuriating and as funny a misrepresentation of an artist's life and work as I have ever seen.'' Criticism notwithstanding, Mr. The film also provided Merle Oberon (playing George Sand) with the celebrated advice to Chopin to ''discontinue that so-called Polonaise jumble you've been playing for days.'' That performance won him a Hollywood contract and the role of Chopin in ''A Song to Remember.'' The public flocked to buy recordings of works by the composer and to see the handsome actor who, in one vivid scene, coughed blood on the piano keys. He gained his first major notice as Tybalt in the Laurence Olivier-Vivian Leigh production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' on Broadway in 1940. Wilde won a scholarship to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and was a leading member of the 1936 American Olympic fencing team, but he abandoned his ambitions to be a surgeon and a champion fencer to pursue an acting career. In New York he studied at Townsend Harris High School and City College while working as a Macy's toy salesman and commercial artist. He spent much of his youth accompanying his father on business trips to Europe and became fluent in several languages. The actor and film maker was named Cornelius Louis Wilde at his birth on Oct. Other Wilde productions included ''Storm Fear,'' ''The Devil's Hairpin,'' ''Maracaibo,'' ''Sword of Lancelot,'' ''No Blade of Grass'' and ''Shark's Treasure.'' The films met with mixed success and were praised by reviewers for having bold aspirations but some reviewers said several of them were naive, simplistic and brutal. a graphic, unflinching and honest drama of men in combat'' with ''simple, unrestrained and stinging honesty, semidocumentary vigor'' and ''crisp economy.'' Reviewing the latter film, Howard Thompson of The New York Times credited Mr. These included ''The Naked Prey'' (1966), in which he was relentlessly hunted through a jungle, and ''Beach Red'' (1967), a passionately pacifist work. Wilde formed his own company, Theodora Productions, and began directing, producing and starring in modest-budget movies shot overseas. He was able to stretch his talent, however, in such roles as a paroled convict in ''Road House'' (1948), an embattled parole officer in ''Shockproof'' (1949), a dedicated policeman in ''The Big Combo'' (1955), a daring aerialist in ''The Greatest Show on Earth'' (1952), an ambitious executive in ''Woman's World'' (1954) and a heroic emperor in ''Constantine and the Cross'' (1961). The tall (6 foot 1 inch), muscular and dashing actor was often cast in routine swashbucklers and action melodramas.
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