Marc Wilder(1929-1983)

Dancer, choreographer, and actor Marc Wilder was described by the "Hollywood Reporter" as "one of the best dance partners for female dancers in the history of the film musical". His career coincided with the post-war efflorescence of the classic movie musical and the ubiquitous television variety shows of the following decades which re-teamed him with an array of the Hollywood's legendary leading ladies.

Born in Italy, likely in the town of Tortoreto, Teramo, where his mother lived, Marcello Maiorani came to the United States as an infant. His father was a naturalized American citizen who had emigrated from his native Abruzzi to the Rochester, New York area at age nineteen and returned to Italy fifteen years later to marry. Shortly after Marcello's birth, the family made their way to Los Angeles, where they settled permanently. A future as a dancer was apparently envisioned for Wilder from an early age, as he was enrolled at age ten in the Meglin School, the well-known training ground for top child performers including Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, and numerous others. Wilder's father died while Marc was still a student at Belmont High School in Los Angeles, and his mother remarried shortly after. At age eighteen he studied ballet with Eugene Loring at the American School of Dance.

Taking on the name by which he would professionally be known, Wilder began appearing as a dancer in films and musical revues, quickly garnering high praise as lithe, handsome, and masculine. Although his earliest performance has not been identified, he was reported to have appeared in several films by late 1949. He traveled to Paris in 1951 to perform as a featured dancer in the Lido cabaret show. Back in Hollywood, Wilder appeared regularly in films, on television, and occasionally on stage. Although Wilder did his share of dancing undistinguished amid the chorus, his talent, versatility, and good looks afforded him numerous opportunities to partner individually or in small groups with many of the top leading ladies. The more memorable of these moments in the limelight include his numbers in The I Don't Care Girl (1953) with Mitzi Gaynor and Matt Mattox, The Tender Trap (1955) with Debbie Reynolds, Anything Goes (1956) with Zizi Jeanmaire and Buzz Miller, Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) with Cyd Charisse, and Can-Can (1960) with Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse.

Wilder appeared in several productions by the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. In 1953, Jack Cole cast him in "Kismet", in which he performed the show-stopping number "Not Since Nineveh". He repeated this performance on Broadway, in the ensuing film version (Kismet (1955)), and in the show's 1962 LACLO revival. His later foray on Broadway in "Vintage 60" (1960) was unfortunately unsuccessful. Wilder increasingly moved into choreography and acting roles in small productions in the 1960s. He toured with Juliet Prowse's club act intermittently between 1964 and 1967. On the small screen, Wilder was a frequent presence on the multitude of variety shows and spectaculars, including appearing as a regular on the The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), and numerous times on The Hollywood Palace (1964), with, among others, Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, and Alice Faye.

Wilder passed away at the young age of 53, one of the first well-known casualties of AIDS in the Hollywood community.