Early Life
Born in Nashville, Tennessee on September 29, 1890, Wilkerson originally began to study medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania until his father, a renowned gambler, died unexpectedly leaving behind a mountain of debts. This forced Wilkerson to cease his medical training in order to find employment to support himself and his mother. Two weeks later, on a World Series bet, a friend from medical school won a movie theater located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Wilkerson agreed to manage the tiny Nickelodeon in exchange for half the profits. He found the fledgling film industry very much to his liking. Between 1918 and 1929 he held an assortment of movie jobs ranging from film sales to production of one-reelers for a small picture company. For a spell he was also district manager at Universal Pictures under Carl Laemmle. By 1929 he had acquired a partnership in a Manhattan trade paper devoted to the film business. Realizing the limitations of a New York base, Wilkerson began dreaming of starting the first daily trade paper for the motion picture industry in the place where the movies were being made - out west, in Hollywood.
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