Cornel WildeCornelius Louis Wilde ( 1912 – October 16, 1989) was an American actor.

He was born in 1912, in Prievidza, Hungary (in an area which later became Czechoslovakia and even later Slovakia) as Kornel Weisz to Hungarian Jewish parents Béla Weisz and Renée Vojtech. He immigrated to the United States with his family, which included an older sister Edith, in 1920. A talented linguist, and astute mimic, he had an ear for languages which became apparent later in his acting career. He qualified for the United States fencing team prior to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, but quit the team just prior to the games saying that it was in order to take a role in the theater. As a Hungarian Jew, he may also have felt it risky to return to Nazi Germany for the sake of the Olympics. Hired as a fencing teacher by Laurence Olivier for his 1940 Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, Wilde was given the role of Tybalt in the production. Because of this role, he was noticed by Hollywood.





Life and work
Wilde entered Columbia College of Columbia University as a member of the Class of 1933 but dropped out after his freshman year. He had several small film roles until he played the role of Frédéric Chopin in 1945's A Song to Remember, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He spent the rest of the decade appearing in romantic and swashbuckling films, but he also appeared in some significant films noir, opposite Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Road House (1948) and Shockproof (1949). Wilde's career entered an interesting creative stretch when in the 1950s he created his own film production company, producing the film noir The Big Combo (1955) and played the lead. In 1957, he played the role of the 13th century Persian p