Kim Wilde 1989

[Mary Hargrove]

Everyband has their sordid Sunset Strip stories and KK Wilde is amongst the best of the batch; having been looked at by every major record label (and eventually being signed to Warner Brothers Records) to high profile live shows (starting with their very first gig at the Whisky A Go-Go) to having their music played in television (Life Goes On) and 2 songs in the movie Showdown In Little Tokyo to scoring endorsement deals with Charvel Guitars and Bedrock Amps.

The creation of the band KK Wilde began in 1989, when local LA band, Kid Curry; comprised of vocalist/songwriter Kris Kurry and guitarist Eddie Wilde set out to take Hollywood and eventually the rest of the world by storm.

Early on, Kris and Eddie, had been in development talks with Epic Records before deciding to freshen up the lineup with bassist Steve Scott and nineteen-year-old Brian Black (who arrived to the audition with his cymbals in a pizza warmer).

Wilde's acting career began in 1935, when he made his debut on Broadway. In 1936 he began making small, uncredited appearances in films. By the 1940s he had signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, and by the mid-1940s he was a major leading man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in 1945's A Song to Remember. In the 1950s he moved to writing, producing and directing films, and still continued his career as an actor. He also went into songwriting during his career.

Wilde was born in 1912[2][3] in Privigye, Kingdom of Hungary (now Prievidza, Slovakia),[4][5] although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City.[6][7] His Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Bla Weisz (anglicized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Rene Mary Vid (Rayna Miryam). He was named for his paternal grandfather, and upon arrival in the United States via first class passage aboard Dutch steamer[3] at the age of seven in 1920,[4] his name was Anglicized to Cornelius Louis Wilde.[2]

A talented linguist and an astute mimic, he had an ear for languages that would later appear in his acting career. 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.[8]

He 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.[9][10] 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.[citation needed]

He did the illustrations for Fencing, a 1936 textbook on fencing[11] and wrote a fencing play, Touch, under the pseudonym of Clark Wales in 1937.[12] 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.[13]

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 only had a small run, his performance in this role netted him a Hollywood film contract with Warner Bros.[12]

In 1945, Columbia Pictures began a search for someone to play the role of Frdric 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).[15] A Song to Remember was a big hit, made Wilde a star and earned him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Columbia promptly used him in two more films, both swashbucklers: as Aladdin in A Thousand and One Nights with Evelyn Keyes[16] and as the son of Robin Hood in The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (made 1945, released 1946).

In 1946, Wilde was voted the 18th-most popular star in the United States, and in 1947 the 25th-.[17] Fox announced him for Enchanted Voyage.[18] It ended up not being made; instead he was reunited with Crain in Fox's musical Centennial Summer (1946).

In the 1950s Wilde and his second wife, Jean Wallace, formed their own film production company, Theodora, named after Theodora Irvine. Their first movie was the film noir The Big Combo (1955), a co production with Security Pictures that was released through Allied Artists. Wilde and Wallace played the leads. That year he also directed an episode of General Electric Theatre.[22][23]

Wilde produced, directed, and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), in which he played a man stripped naked and chased by hunters from an African tribe that was affronted by the behavior of other members of his safari party. The original script was largely based on a true historical incident about a trapper named John Colter being pursued by Blackfeet Indians in Wyoming. Lower shooting costs, tax breaks, and material and logistical assistance offered by Rhodesia persuaded Wilde and the other producers to shoot the film on location in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is probably his most highly regarded film as director.[29]

Wilde's other TV performances include an appearance in the 1957 episode of Father Knows Best "An Evening to Remember." He appeared as an unethical surgeon in the 1971 Night Gallery episode "Deliveries in the Rear" and portrayed an anthropologist in the 1972 TV movie Gargoyles.

In 1937, he married actress Patricia Knight. She starred alongside him in Shockproof (1949). Their daughter, Wendy, was born on February 22, 1943. The family lived at Country House on Deep Canyon Road, Los Angeles.[31] They divorced in 1951.[32]

Five days after his divorce, he married actress Jean Wallace.[33][34] Wilde became stepfather to Wallace's two sons, Pascal and Thomas, from her marriage to Franchot Tone.[35] Their son, Cornel Wallace Wilde, was born on December 19, 1967. Wilde senior and Wallace starred together in several films including The Big Combo (1955), Lancelot and Guinevere (1963), and Beach Red (1967). They divorced in 1981.[36]

Wilde died of leukemia on October 16, 1989, three days after his 77th birthday and just weeks after he had been diagnosed with the blood disease. He is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles.[37]

Wild! is the fourth studio album by English synth-pop duo Erasure. Released in 1989, it was the follow-up album to their 1988 breakthrough The Innocents. The album was produced by Erasure, along with Gareth Jones and Mark Saunders and released by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US.

Although the album did not generate any entries on the Billboard Hot 100, Wild! is highly regarded amongst Erasure's fanbase[citation needed] as one of their best albums, containing now-classic singles like "Drama!", "Blue Savannah" and "Star". In the US, several songs gained exposure on college radio[citation needed] and three songs charted on Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. "You Surround Me" was not released as a single in the United States.

In the UK, Wild! continued Erasure's mainstream success: it became their second consecutive number-one album and its four singles all hit the UK top 20. The album also charted well in Germany, where it hit number sixteen.

Subsequent to their acquisition of Erasure's back catalogue, and in anticipation of the band's 30th anniversary, BMG commissioned reissues of all previously released UK editions of Erasure albums up to and including 2007's Light at the End of the World. All titles were pressed and distributed by Play It Again Sam on 180-gram vinyl and shrinkwrapped with a custom anniversary sticker.

A two-disc version of the album was released by BMG in the UK and Europe on 29 March 2019 to commemorate the original 1989 release. It features the remastered album on disc one and a selection of rarities, B-sides, live tracks, and new remixes on disc two.[8]

Our valuation services include: free online auction valuations, virtual valuations, home visits and valuation days at our salerooms, where clients can receive advice on selling at Dreweatts from our market-leading specialists.

OSCAR WILDE: MONTGOMERY HYDE. H. (1907-1989). LAST LETTERS OF OSCAR WILDE TO ROBERT ROSS, 1898-1900. A very interesting and rare Wilde item, transcribed by Montgomery Hyde at a time when the full contents of these letters were almost certainly only available or circulating in just a few copies (perhaps no more than two). 8vo., (270 x 220mm), bound within brown paper wrappers, typescript title to front, tied with thin green ribbon, 60 typescript letters (ex 63), comprises: 2pp. Preparatory Note by H. Montgomery Hyde, London, October, 1949; 1pp. Abbreviations, the letters typed to single sides of 100 leaves, each letter numbered I - LXIII top centre of page, (letter nos. 37, 38, 39 are not present), numbered abbreviations to lower r.h. corners of pages, 'M.M. 64 - 90', (Max Mayerfield), and 'D. (Dulau & Co. Ltd.), 68 -130', with numerous names, references to individuals or homosexuality underlined in red ink; the first letter, '[Paris] May '98', the final letter, numbered LXIII, '(dictated), Hotel d'Alsace, Rue des Beaux Arts, Paris, Wednesday, [November 1900]', Preparatory Note by H. Montgomery Hyde: 'The following 63 letters and post-cards were the last written by Oscar Wilde to his friend and literary executor, Robert Ross. They cover the period from May, 1898 to November, 1900, thus completing the series begun by Wilde in Reading Gaol and partly published in De Profundis (1908 1.) and continued after his release in France and Italy under the later published titles of After Reading (1921) 2. and After Berneval (1922) 3. The letters were transcribed by me after copies made by Walter Ledger, the well known Wilde collector, from a type-written transcript of the originals which had previously been prepared by Stuart Mason, Wilde's biographer. 4. Ross to whom the originals were addressed, left them to Vyvyan Holland, Wilde's surviving son, and on the latter's instructions they were put up for auction, after Ross's death, in the Dulau sale rooms in London in 1929, when they were purchased by the late Mr. Gabriel Wells acting on behalf of William Andrews Clark. They are now in the Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, California. Extracts from this correspondence appeared in the Dulau Sales Catalogue, but the expurgation to which they had been subjected was so drastic as to render most of the personal references unintelligible. In the complete text given here the omissions are shown in red. Some of the letters have also been published in a German translation by Dr. Max Mayerfield, Oscar Wilde, Letze Briefs (1925), but here again the omissions, though less than in the Dulau Catalogue, are by no means inconsiderable . . . , 1. Edited by Robert Ross. 2. Anonymously edited by Stuart Mason. 3. Edited by More Adey. 4. The Ledger Version is now in the Robert Ross memorial Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 5. One letter, dated April 16, 1900, had been previously published in one part by Robert Ross in his Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde (1914). 6. Dulau Catalogue at pp. 16-17'. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), was an Irish poet and playwright. He was convicted of gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in one of the first celebrity trials and imprisoned 25 May 1895-19 May 1897. Wilde left England for France on the evening of his release, and developed meningitis in 1900 whilst living in Paris: Robert Ross (1869-1918). was as an ex-art editor at the Morning Post, and his role as literary godfather was of primary importance to the Sitwells. Osbert had met Robert Ross before the First World War, and during the war years he got to know him well. Ross's bachelor rooms at 40 Half Moon Street are nostalgically recalled in 'Noble Essences' and it was through Ross that the Sitwells met amongst others, Edmund Gosse, Arnold Bennet, Siegfried Sassoon Wilfred Owen and Reginald 'Reggie Turner. 'Reggie' was one of the few friends who remained loyal to Oscar Wilde and supported him after his release from prison. Osbert Sitwell put a comic version of his friend Reggie Turner as 'Algy Braithwaite,' into his verses 'On the Continent', 'Reggie' left England to live in Florence, concerned that some of the hostility toward Wilde might continue to be directed towards him. Oscar Wilde's correspondence to Reggie is part of the Lady Eccles Collection bequeathed to the British Library. Harford Montgomery Hyde (1907-1989) was a barrister, politician and author and a significant figure in the legalisation of homosexuality. He became a Member of Parliament in 1950 and during that decade was a vocal supporter of homosexual law reform. However, when the Wolfenden Report ('The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution') was introduced into the House of Commons in 1958, he was deselected by his party, the Ulster unionists, for supporting its implementation. In 1972 he was the author of the first history of homosexuality in Great Britain and Ireland, The Other Love: an historical and contemporary survey of homosexuality in Britain. In 1948, the year before he transcribed these letters from Wilde to Ross, he had published The Trials of Oscar Wilde, which was followed by other books on the author, as well collaborating on the screenplay of the 1960 film of the same name, starring Peter Finch. Montgomery Hyde's Wilde collection was purchased by Donald and Mary Hyde (no relation). Mary Hyde, Lady Eccles as she become on her second marriage, bequeathed her Oscar Wilde collection to the British Library in 2003. All of the letters have now been published in full in Holland and Hart-Davis, The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, 2000, pp.1069-1195.

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