Anecdotes

An epileptic seizure triggered Wilding's fall down a long flight of stairs in 1979. The head injuries received in that fall proved fatal.

His best friend was the British actor Stewart Granger. The Wildings (Elizabeth Taylor) and the Grangers (Jean Simmons) were often seen on the town together in the 1950s.

With five failed marriages between them, Wilding and Margaret Leighton allegedly had a difficult time finding someone to marry them in 1964. They were denied not only by their church, but by many justices of the peace in the Los Angeles area. Wilding finally convinced a local judge by bribing him with a hundred-dollar bill.

He gave up acting (a job he often claimed he hated) for a time, and became an agent working for the agency established by another ex-actor, his friend Hugh French. His clients included Richard Burton, then the husband of Wilding's ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor. However, Wilding proved a failure as an agent ("I didn't know how to make deals", he said) and went back to acting.

Although he gave up a career as a studio artist, Wilding enjoyed painting far more than acting and continued sketching for the rest of his life.

Separated from first wife Kay Young in December 1945, but the two did not divorce for another six years.

Father of Christopher Edward Wilding and Michael Wilding Jr.

Was engaged to actress Marie McDonald in 1956.

Allegedly had a homosexual affair with playwright Noël Coward in the mid-1930s. In 1964, Wilding filed a $3 million libel suit against gossip columnist Hedda Hopper for implying that he was gay in her book, "The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth." The suit was settled for $100,000.

His film appearance in Pastorale went unseen as the film wasn't released.

Father-in-law of Brooke Palance.