Dave Wood

Thanks to the generosity of my grandma (or was she just trying to get me out of her hair?), I had enough money to see every movie as it appeared at the sparkling new Pix Théâtre in Whitehall. I loved every feature: The Durango Kid and Boston Blackie series, swashbucklers with Errol Flynn, “How Green was my Valley” and “God is My Co-Pilot.” One Sunday movie that blew me away was “A Song to Remember,” a Technicolor spectacular, starring the dashing Cornel Wilde as Polish composer Frederic Chopin.

I can’t claim that my cousin Bill and I were classical music lovers when we settled in for the film featuring the dashing Cornel, but we most certainly got hooked when the composer Frederic appeared and we witnessed the signature segment when Chopin gives a benefit recital concerto on a magnificent concert grand in London to raise money for Poland’s independence.  Wilde/Chopin looked haggard from his battle with TB, but he bravely flourished his tails, sat down and opened the performance of his own composition, “Militaire Polonaise.” He attacked the keys boldly: Dum-de-dum, da-da-da-da-da! DUM-da-DUM! Spatters of Chopin’s red blood appeared on the piano’s white ivories!

But the London audience doesn’t see that and applauds wildly. My heart thumped. Bill and I knew little of European history. What we do know of is Independence, a small town five miles away, where Polish people live. As Bill and I walked home down Scranton Street in silence, more touched than when we watched Margaret O’Brien’s drunken father in the movie “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” play “Annie Laurie,” and then die, like Chopin, of Tuberculosis!

Midway home Bill stopped by Ludvig Solsrud’s moss rose beds and said, “Let’s go again, tonight! I’ll ask mom for more money.” He did! And so did Aunt Alma, a talented watercolorist and our family’s only patron of the arts. On second viewing we were still impressed. (Later Wilde movies, like “Leave Her to Heaven” and “The Greatest Show on Earth,” were not nearly as “impactful” (as current jargon would describe them!) 

But then along came” The Naked Prey,” a fantastic adventure directed and acted in by Wilde himself. After that I’d occasionally mention my love of the Chopin movie to cinema aficionados and they pooh-poohed it, dismissing it as MGM technicolor crowd pleasing trash. I realize I’m no aficionado, but this put-down sticks in my craw.

So now, 78 years later, technology permits me to go more deeply. My smart nephew has lined me up with YouTube, which is fuller of information than Great Books of the Western World. All I had to do was say “Cornell Wilde” to my TV screen and I was bombarded with his family life, his career on the U.S. Olympic fencing team. I watched several TV interviews with him in later life. He was an Academy Award nominee for his Chopin performance including kudos from pianists who admired his ability to mimic the movements of a real pianist.

He shared one bitter memory telling how the casting guru disapproved of the choice of Wilde as Chopin. “This guy preferred Larry Parks to me! Parks was great as Al Jolson, but he had a New York accent you could cut with a knife. I’ve lived all over the world.”

This discovery got me hooked because YouTube recounts how Wilde spent his later career. He teamed up with his second wife, the beauteous Jean Wallace, to act and direct 11 more movies, mostly in the Noir mode. No Technicolor blockbusters, just gloom and fog and wonderful photography. His greatest film, according to the aficionados, was “The Big Condo,” starring himself, his wife, Richard Conte and, believe it or not, Lee Van Cleef! I called it up and it scared the bejesus out of me! And I’m on my way to find more Wilde flicks on YouTube.

Thank you, nephew Vaughn!