Cornelius Louis Wilde in Privigye, Kingdom of Hungary (now Prievidza, Slovakia), although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City. Wilde's Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Béla Weisz (anglicized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Renée Mary Vid (Rayna Miryam), and he was named Kornél Lajos after his paternal grandfather. The family emigrated to the United States via first class passage aboard a Dutch steamer in 1920, when Kornél was seven years old. Wilde entered Columbia University in New York City as a freshman in the fall of 1929. He fenced for the Columbia Lions fencing team, and won the National Novice Foils Championship held at the New York Athletic Club in 1929.
Wilde qualified for the United States fencing team for the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Third Reich Berlin, but he quit the team before the games and took a role in the theater. In preparation for an acting career, he and his new wife Marjory Heinzen (later to be known as Patricia Knight) shaved years off their ages, three for him and five for her. As a result, most publicity records and subsequent sources wrongly indicate a 1915 birth for Wilde.
Career
Theatre
After studying at Theodora Irvine's Studio of the Theatre, Wilde began appearing in plays in stock and in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1935 in Moon Over Mulberry Street. He also appeared in Love Is Not So Simple, Daughters of Etreus, and Having Wonderful Time.
He did the illustrations for Fencing, a 1936 textbook on fencing and wrote a fencing play, Touché, under the pseudonym of Clark Wales in 1937. He toured with Tallulah Bankhead in a production of Antony and Cleopatra; during the run he married his co-star Patricia Knight.
Acting jobs were sporadic over the next few years. Wilde supplemented his income with exhibition fencing matches; his wife also did modelling work. Wilde wrote plays, some of which were performed by the New York Drama Guild.
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. Although the show had only a small run, his performance in this role netted him a Hollywood film contract with Warner Bros.
Signed by 20th Century Fox, he got above-title billing in The Perfect Snob (1941); studio publicity falsely claimed it was his first film. It was followed by a war movie Manila Calling (1942). He was the romantic male lead in Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942), supporting Monty Woolley, and supported Sonja Henie in Wintertime (1943).
In 1945, Columbia Pictures began a search for someone to play the role of Frédéric Chopin in A Song to Remember. They eventually tested Wilde, and agreed to cast him in the role after some negotiation with Fox, who agreed to lend him to Columbia and one film a year for several years. Part of the deal involved Fox borrowing Alexander Knox from Columbia to appear in Wilson (1944). A Song to Remember was a big hit, made Wilde a star and earned him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor. and as the son of Robin Hood in The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (made 1945, released 1946).
Back at Fox, he played the male lead in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), with Gene Tierney and Jeanne Crain, an enormous hit at the box office. Bandit was also a big hit when it was released.
In 1946, Wilde was voted the 18th-most popular star in the United States, and in 1947 the 25th-. Fox announced him for Enchanted Voyage. It ended up not being made; instead he was reunited with Crain in Fox's musical Centennial Summer (1946).
In January 1946, Wilde was suspended by Fox for refusing the male lead in Margie (1946). This suspension was soon lifted so Wilde could play the male lead in the studio's big budget version of Forever Amber (1947).