Cornel Wilde

Ouch! Since that photo didn't come through, let's try this one.

Check out the movie "The Naked Prey" (which he also directed). He wears nothing but a tiny loincloth throught the movie and even shows his ass briefly. He was already 53 when this was made but his body still looked great.

Don't forget his "I Love Lucy" episode.

Born Hungarian Jew named Kornel Lajos Weisz. That's Hollywood!

Nice big muscular hunk of a man, total block of wood as an actor.

Shark's Treasure is quite bizarre.

It was advertised as "better than JAWS because it uses real sharks"

R4 Those real names of European immigrants (mostly Jewish) were all so funny and usually very long: Paul Muni was Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, Peter Lorre was Laszlo Lowenstein, Michael Curtiz was Kertesz Kaminer Mano, Mischa Auer was Mikhail Semyonovich Unskovsky...

DL fave Luise Rainer was probably the only one who kept her original name, only she was nicknamed "The Viennese Teardrop" to make people think she's Austrian, not German, so people wouldn't connect her with Nazi Germany (which is quite funny, since Hitler was an Austrian himself).

He was also a murder victim in one of the Murder She Wrote episodes. If I remember correctly he dies wearing blue speedos in a hot tub (luckily there are no close-up shots, as Cornel was almost 80 at the time). But don't worry, Jessica catches his killer at the end of episode so justice gets served.

I had huge crushes on so many guys from the old movies but he wasn't one of them. Maybe it was because he was such a wooden actor as R5 said.

My two big crushes were Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck. My mom would let me stay up late Friday and Saturday nights watching old movies with her. I know, MARY!

Lucy ep.

He needs to go back to making movies. His constant anti-Obama shtick is wearing thin.

Cornel had great tits. Not much of an actor though.

[quote]But don't worry, Jessica catches his killer at the end of episode so justice gets served.

Hey! No spoiler alert?

Handsome guy

R8 I think I remember that episode. Was that the one where Jessica accidentally bumps into one of her old friends and when someone turns up dead she has to prove her friend's innocence? I think Jessica also annoyed the hell out of the local sheriff and almost got killed at the end of the episode but the police showed up just in time to save her. Was that the one?

#13, that statute of limitations has EXPIRED!

[quote]It was advertised as "better than JAWS because it uses real sharks"

It probably is better than the last two [italic]Jaws[/italic] movies.

Currently watching "Gargoyles," a TV movie from the 70's starring Wilde. A little over half an hour into it he has an extended shirtless scene and is looking mighty fine.

It must have been written into his contract to be shirtless in his films. His only really good movie was "Leave Her To Heaven".

Our first baby, we name him Boss Man!

[quote]It must have been written into his contract to be shirtless in his films. His only really good movie was "Leave Her To Heaven".

Also "Shockproof" and "The Big Combo".

He made a few good films, but was generally the weakest thing about them. I mean, I love "Leave Her To Heaven" and "The Greatest Show on Earth" and he was a hot man in his day, but he was the weakest member of the cast in both.

And I've never forgiven him for the dreadful "A Song to Remember", about the composer Chopin and the poet George Sand. Ask him to play a consumptive Polish 19th century man, and all he could bring was his usual hunky stolidity. At least one good movie was made about those two, if you haven't seen "Impromptu" starring DL Fave Judy Davis and Hugh Grant as Chopin and Sand, check it out! Hilarious, touching, romantic, slice of 19th century craziness.

Oh my r18! That Gargoyles movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I don’t remember Wilde being in it. I remember the creepy gargoyles though.

I remember The Naked Prey. He was very sexy in it and I always liked him in the first place.

R25 The Naked Prey.

The Naked Prey.

I saw The Greatest Show on Earth years ago at the Regency for the first time having never seen it on TV and I found it enormously entertaining with a whopper of a finale. I don't understand the hate it gets.

A Song to Remember is not very good but Wilde and Oberon are gorgeous. Paul Muni is the hammiest ham that has ever hammed. He's worse than Pacino in Angels in America. What is so strange is that Muni gives one of the all-time great performances in an American film in Scarface. A stunner of a performance.

A walk through the jungle.

Cornel Wilde. He died when he was 77.

My schoolteacher in the 60s told me that the then-fashionable style for men's pompadours was called a 'Cornell Wilde'.

It seems a odd name because Elvis' pompadours would have been more famous that time.

My parents guffawed at The Naked Prey. And the Andersons had Cornell Wilde for dinner.

R32 Were your parents embarrassed by nudity?

(There's a genre in porn and mainstream movies called 'Embarrassment nudity")

R32 Who are these Andersons you talk about?

r34 Did you read the signature?

r34 Jim, Margaret, Princess, Bud and Kitten.

Cornel Wilde (Sleeping Beauty) with Gene Tierney in Leave Her To Heaven.

Wake up...…..

“The Naked Prey” = naked paean to white superiority

I need him to sign my grapefruit!

R39 You're saying 'The Naked Prey' was a 'paean to white superiority'.

Did he introduce the savages to electricity, engineering, sanitation and trial by jury?

I just wish Cornell could have been chosen by the ghastly De Mille to star in his previous hokey movie.

Cornell would have been much less cheesy that the grotesque Victor—

His was certainly a narrow range, but he was at least adequate in three great movies:

Leave Her to Heaven (Gene's only Oscar nom).

Road House (great noir with Lupino "singing" and a terrifying Widmark).

The Big Combo (knock out noir with Holliman and van Cleef as thug lovers, and Jean Wallace, Cornel 's wife, getting "eaten" offscreen by Richard Conte. In 1955!)

I'd go to Hell for Cornel!

Bite your tongue, R42! The only "Samson and Delilah" is the cheesy camp factor, and yes, Victor Mature rolled with the goofiness because he had a sense of humor.

If someone like Wilde had been hired, and tried to take the material completely seriously, it would have been a stodgy mess instead of a goofy mess.

Sorry, I meant to say "The only value 'Samson and Delilah' has is the cheesy camp factor...".

Also, Vic probably could provide the cheese that Cornel couldn't. Vic did have a good sense of humor. When told that he wasn't eligible to join a country club that didn't allow actors, he said, "Well, that shouldn't be a problem in my case."

Modern sophisticated queens can enjoy the cheesy camp factor but the director was stuck in the 19th century tradition of crude spectacle and exotic tableaux-vivant.

He was actually briefly considered for the role of Samson after Burt Lancaster dropped out, but DeMille went with Victor Mature

Don't forget what else Victor brought to the role.

Cornel was at his hottest in "Leave Her To Heaven". It's a great movie, too.

For those who haven't seen it:

Yeah, Mature was the right man for the "Samson and Delilah" job, he had a sense of humor and had fun with the colorful silliness.

As for Wilde... he didn't have a sense of humor and he wasn't a very good actor, he never did anything that couldn't have been better done by some other actors. He's one of these guys who could only have had a career during the 1940s, when Hollywood was so desperate for photogenic men that anyone with a good jawline could have a studio contract.

R50, so Esther was telling the truth in her bio...

But Cornel was accomplished Qualified for the 1936 Olympics in fencing. Finished a 4-year pre-Med course at Columbia in 3 years and was awarded a scholarship, which he didn't take because of his career shift. He was already 7 when his family brought him to the US.

I guess he qualified for the (Nazi) 1936 Olympics with the name 'Lajos Weisz'.

I can't believe he took a surname from the most famous homosexual in history.

Weisz? Was he any relationship to Rachel Weisz?

He was funny, adorable, and sexy in "It Had To Be You", playing the embodiment of Ginger Rogers' imaginary childhood friend. Sweet.

R51 I wouldn't say it was great movie but it was a gorgeous one.

The director or Leon Shamroy contrived that 90% of scenes were shot at sunset with a golden light saturating everything in Technicolor.

The 3 actors were decorative but rather lame, IMO.

R51

I thought the well-dressed Irishwoman rowing the boat had the acting ability of a stick-insect but I have to say that (even though I'm no pedo) the kid playing the crippled youth looked quite delectable at the beginning of this scene.

Well, tell us about YOUR Oscar° nom!

Anyone undisciplined, pretty amateur can get an Oscar nom if they're coached, directed, groomed, coiffed and edited by experts.

They gave Oscars to Harold Russell and Shirley Temple.

And they deserved it!

Katharine Hepburn said—

‘Movie-acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to learn a living.

Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four".

I think the most memorable thing about Cornell Wilde these days is that he was often cited by Dame Edna Everage as one of her major Hollywood crushes - gather he used to make her very moist down there - given the lasciviousness in her delivery whenever she talked of him... surely that response alone makes him DL noteworthy?

Why was was he named after the world's most famous homosexual?

Cornel West?

In "Hot Blood", Jane Russell shakes her tambourines and drives Cornel Wilde!

She rustles her russells!

She shakes her Jack Russells!

Currently watching Shark's Treasure from 1975. Wilde spends almost the entire film in a black speedo and is looking mighty fine. I'd take a ride on that anytime!

Very lifeless actor, and never more so than in "Greatest Show on Earth", where he desperately tried to be lively and just made a fool of himself. He was at his best in "Leave Her to Heaven", where he's basically an object that the real star of the movie obsesses over. He was an actor who didn't get in Gene Tierney's way or compete with her for attention, he was perfectly cast there!

His worst film was "A Song to Remember", where this big stolid slab of been played the dying Polish composer Frederic Chopin. Oy.

R70 Amazing considering her had to be around 62 at the time.

R28 Most people hate it because it beat High Noon for Best Picture and Singin' In The Rain didn't even get nominated. It isn't an unentertaining film, but it is crazy that DeMille won the Oscar for it, when it pales in comparison to his The Ten Commandments, which likewise lost to a lesser film.

Why does OP think he was short? He was 6'1, and looked it.