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 Unga Khan, der Herr von Atlantis (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.
