American photographer, cinematographer, and union organizer.
Although his interest in photography began when he was 10 years old, he studied mining in college. In the summer after his junior year at the University of Arizona he worked for the Lubin Manufacturing Company’s Tucson unit.. He returned to his college studies, earned his BS in Mining engineering and rejoined Lubin, this time in New Mexico. There he met director, Romaine Fielding, who asked Wilky to take over for him at the camera. In August 1913, he made his first picture, ” The Rattle Snake.”
In October 1915, a camera-smitten Wilky left Lubin and New Mexico for California. He landed a job at Universal Studios but shortly afterward left to join the American Film Company. With the wartime economy during WWI, the company collapsed. Wilky managed to find himself, through an assortment of jobs and contacts, at Paramount Studios working with the DeMilles. His star was on the rise as a cinematographer but his social conscience and union activities got in the way. In the late 1920s, Wilky was active in union organizing activities of the International Photographers Union. The major studies blacklisted him and he was relegated to low-budget films as second cameraman. He finished his career at Columbia in the 1950s.
He died of a heart attack in Walnut Creek, California, on December 25, 1971.