Lois Wilde

Biography

Lois Wilde, a long-forgotten leading lady of late 1930s westerns and outdoor dramas, was only briefly on the screen before she was forced to leave the business due to injuries incurred in a car-related accident. The talented blue-eyed blonde began quite early in the entertainment business. Born Edithea Lois Wild in Los Angeles on August 14, 1907, her parents, William Wild and Ruth J. Gulick, separated before Lois was a year old. Her mother then took her and an older sister to Brooklyn to live where the mother had family. Over a decade later her parents would remarry. A child model for various well-known artists/painters, including Howard Chandler Christy and Norman Price, Lois went on to pose frequently for photo shoots and magazine ads. She also was trained in dance and at age 10, after being spotted in a dance recital, was hired by the Metropolitan Opera Company as a child ballerina. It was none other than Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. himself who caught one of her performances and bought out the 15-year-old's contract from the Met in order to secure specialty showcases for her in his Follies extravaganzas. The petite knockout also won beauty titles during this period, including "Miss Brighton Beach" and "Miss Ziegfeld," and went on to become a finalist in the "Miss America" contest in 1923. Billed as Lois Wild (without the "e") at the time, her stage and Broadway work, in addition to her bread-and-butter modeling chores, were a major focus of her career in the mid-'20s. however, that career was sidelined when she was crippled and confined to a wheelchair after a botched surgery for a hysterectomy in the early 1930s. She eventually moved to a warmer climate (Los Angeles) in order to speed up her recovery process. Returning to stage work again, she made do as a film ghostwriter from time to time until she found an opening in the movies as an actress in 1936. Freelancing among the more modest Poverty Row studios, the (now) sandy-haired beauty made her debut in The Millionaire Kid (1936) as second femme lead to Betty Compson. She went on playing decorative love interests in a number of "B" adventures, and also added the "e" to her marquee name with her second picture. Her co-stars would range from western icon Gene Autry in The Singing Cowboy (1936) to Rin Tin Tin Jr. in the Canadian Mountie tale Caryl of the Mountains (1936). She appeared in the 12-chapter Republic serial Undersea Kingdom (1936), another Mountie saga called Wildcat Trooper (1936), and the westerns Stormy Trails (1936), Hopalong Rides Again (1937), Brothers of the West (1937) and Danger Valley (1937). Overall, she was hardly challenged by the somewhat limited range of roles and movies offered but, in her defense, she would not be around long enough to know what her capabilities as a dramatic actress might have been. After her work in "Danger Valley", Lois' career came to a screeching halt. In the summer of 1938, a speeding car in which she was a passenger hit in a dip on a Beverly Hills street. The tremendous jolt broke her neck. It took for her to recovery, which pretty much put her out of the movie business. She later worked as a nurse's assistant for a plastic surgeon. From time to time she would appear unobtrusively in film bits and at times even did TV commercials. Following the death of her fourth husband in 1987 (her prior three ended in divorce), she moved to Massachusetts to be near her daughter from her first marriage, and died in North Attleboro at age 87.