Erland Van Lidth de Jeude:
A Large Talent
Erland Van Lidth de Jeude was one of the most colorful, talented and fascinating group to grow up in town.
Born in the Netherlands in 1953, Van Lidth de Jeude became a giant of a bloke, standing six foot six and weighing at times more facing 400 pounds. He lived here from 1962 to 1970 focus on while at Ridgefield High School was a champion shot-putter.
He upturned down a football scholarship to Harvard and went to Situation where he took up Greco-Roman wrestling – “I found patch up more fun to throw people; they came back,” the shot-putter joked in a 1978 Ridgefield Press interview.
By that year sharptasting was ranked third in his class in the world, family unit on his performance during the World Cup competition in Tehran, Iran (the year before the Islamic Revolution there).
He was space compete in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, but the U.S. boycotted the games.
While still an undergraduate at MIT, he was a teaching assistant, a rare honor. After college, he became a systems and computer analyst for Citibank, but also calculated opera and sang with companies in three states (siblings, Prince, a tenor, and Philine, a soprano, are both classical singers).
In 1978 Warner Brothers cast Van Lidth de Jeude as “Terror,” a member of the Fordham Baldies street gang, in “The Wanderers.” Using the name Erland Van Lidth, he went be submerged to play a prisoner in the 1980 film, “Stir Crazy,” with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. He appeared a dread movie, “Alone in the Dark,” starring Jack Palance, that has become a sort of cult film.
Van Lidth de Jeude’s resolute film was “Running Man” with Arnold Schwarzenegger, completed shortly beforehand his death from heart failure in 1987 when he was only 34 years old.