In his youth he worked as a pin-boy at a bowling alley and storeroom clerk for a summer resort,[5] before moving to New York City around the age of twenty.

[1] These early performances held in the drawing rooms of wealthy New Yorkers gained him the notoriety to soon join the ranks of full-time entertainers.

[7][8] In describing his monologues the Syracuse Herald wrote in a 1907 article: "His pathos, his humor, his indescribable droll and uplifting optimism keeps bubbling forth all through the evening".

The Washington Post wrote in 1915 of his coping with physical disabilities (dwarfism and kyphosis), "Wilder coaxed the frown of adverse fortune into a smile.

At one point in his career Wilder was willing to take a cut in pay in order to play a vaudeville circuit he felt catered to an audience that better appreciated his humor.

[2] During the Great Depression Grace Wilder served as director of the Puppets and Marionettes department of the Public Works Administration (PWA) Drama Division.

[22] According to one of his obituaries, puppetry was a childhood interest of her father's who would entertain his neighbors with Punch and Judy shows charging two cents admission or a nickel for reserved seating.

[23] Marshall P. Wilder Jr. (1913–1964) became a pioneer in the development of television when in 1931 he participated in the first successful transmission of a signal to a ship stationed some 50 miles offshore.