AUTOGRAPHED
ROBERT WOOLSEY
SIGNED 5x7 PHOTO
BERT WHEELER
SIGNED SHEET MUSIC
Wheeler & Woolsey were vaudeville and stage comedians who became a film comedy double act after being first teamed in a Ziegfeld Broadway musical. They starred together in RKO comedy films from the late 1920s. The team comprised Bert Wheeler (1895–1968)- of New Jersey and Robert Woolsey (1888–1938) of Illinois.
The Broadway theatre performers — Woolsey had starred with W C Fields in Poppy — were initially teamed as the comedy relief for the 1927 Broadway musical Rio Rita, and came to Hollywood to reprise these roles for the film version which starrred Bebe Daniels. The film's success convinced them, and the studio, to become a permanent team, and they continued to make very popular comedy feature films from 1930 until 1937, all for RKO Radio Pictures—except the 1933 Columbia Pictures release So This Is Africa (which was made during a contract dispute with RKO).
Curly-haired Bert Wheeler played an ever-smiling innocent, who was easily led and not very bright, but who would also sometimes display a stubborn streak of conscience. Bespectacled Robert Woolsey played a genially leering, cigar-smoking, fast-talking idea man who often got the pair in trouble. The vivacious Dorothy Lee usually played Wheeler's romantic interest.
The Wheeler & Woolsey movies are loaded with joke-book dialogue, original songs, puns, and sometimes racy double-entendre gags:
Woman (coyly indicating her legs): Were you looking at these?
Woolsey: Madam, I'm above that.
Woolsey (worried about a noblewoman): She's liable to have us beheaded.
Wheeler: Beheaded?! Can she do that?
Woolsey: Sure, she can be-head. (i.e., "She can be had.")
Flirt: Sing to me!
Wheeler: How about "One Hour with You"?
Flirt: Sure! But first, sing to me!
Such double-entendre gags were a hallmark of early Wheeler & Woolsey comedies, although they were severely curtailed after the reconstitution of the Production Code in 1934. Dressing in drag and other forms of gender inversion were also staples of their films.
By 1931 Wheeler & Woolsey were so popular that RKO attempted to generate twice the Wheeler & Woolsey income by making two solo pictures—one with Wheeler (Too Many Cooks) and one with Woolsey (Everything's Rosie). This experiment sputtered, and they returned to performing as a team. Among the team's features are The Cuckoos (based on Clark and McCullough's Broadway show The Ramblers), Caught Plastered, Peach O'Reno, Diplomaniacs, Hips Hips Hooray, and Cockeyed Cavaliers (both 1934, both co-starring Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee, and both directed by Mark Sandrich (just before he was promoted to the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals). Sandrich was replaced by George Stevens.
Once Stevens also left the series, their films faltered. In some of these later efforts, Bert and Bob do not even appear as a team, but as strangers who encounter each other by chance.
Woolsey's health deteriorated in 1936, and after struggling to complete High Flyers in 1937, he was no longer able to work; he died of kidney disease on October 31, 1938, ending the partnership.
By the early 1940s, after Woolsey had died, Wheeler struggled to restart his career and asked Dorothy Lee to tour with him in vaudeville. She agreed to help her old friend.
In the mid-1940s, Wheeler headlined briefly with Frank Fay on stage, and Jackie Gleason at Slapsy Maxie's; Bert would later appear on Gleason's Cavalcade of Stars TV program.
Wheeler continued to work off and on through the 1960s. His later appearances were mostly on television; his last theatrical films were two slapstick shorts for Columbia Pictures, filmed in 1950 and produced by Jules White. In 1955 Wheeler co-starred with Keith Larsen in the CBS western series Brave Eagle.
Wheeler also starred with John Raitt and Anne Jeffreys in the Broadway musical Three Wishes for Jamie in 1952, and continued to perform in summer stock theater and in nightclubs, either alone or with a partner (first writer-comedian Hank Ladd, later comedian-singer Tom Dillon, who wound up writing an intro for a Wheeler & Woolsey bio).
Filmography
Bert Wheeler
Robert Woolsey
1929 Small Timers (short) Himself —
Rio Rita Chick Bean Ned Lovett
1930 The Cuckoos Sparrow Professor Cunningham
Dixiana Peewee Ginger Dandy
Half Shot at Sunrise Tommy Turner Gilbert Simpkins
Hook, Line and Sinker Wilbur Boswell J. Addington Ganzy
1931 Everything's Rosie — Dr. J. Dockweiler Droop
Too Many Cooks Albert "Al" Bennett —
Cracked Nuts Wendell Graham Zander Ulysses Parkhurst
The Stolen Jools (short) Themselves
Caught Plastered Tommy Tanner Egbert G. Higginbotham
Oh! Oh! Cleopatra (short) Mark Antony Julius Caesar
Peach O'Reno Wattles Julius Swift
1932 Girl Crazy (Gershwin musical) Jimmy Deegan Slick Foster
The Hollywood Handicap (short) Himself —
Hold 'Em Jail Curley Harris Spider Robbins
1933 So This Is Africa Wilbur Alexander
Diplomaniacs Willy Nilly Hercules Glub
Signing 'Em Up (short) Themselves
1934 Hips, Hips, Hooray! Andy Williams Dr. Bob Dudley
Cockeyed Cavaliers Bert Winstanley Bob Maltravers
Kentucky Kernels Willie Elmer
1935 The Nitwits Johnnie Newton
A Night at the Biltmore Bowl (short) Himself —
The Rainmakers Billy Roscoe Horne, the Rainmaker
1936 Silly Billies Roy Banks Prof. Philip "Painless" Pennington
Mummy's Boys Stanley Wright Aloysius C. Whittaker
1937 On Again-Off Again William Hobbs Claude Augustus Horton
High Flyers Jeremiah "Jerry" Lane Pierre Potkin
1950 Innocently Guilty (short) Hodkinson G. Pogglebrewer —
1951 The Awful Sleuth (short) Bert Wheeler
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