Bert Wheeler (April 7, 1895; Paterson, New Jersey – January 18, 1968; New York City) and Robert Woolsey (August 14, 1888; Oakland, California – October 31, 1938; Malibu, California) were a famous American film comedy team of the 1930s who are almost totally unknown by today's public, although vintage-film buffs have rediscovered the team via cable television and home video.
The former Broadway stars re-created their stage roles in the 1929 movie musical Rio Rita.[1] This established them as movie comedians, and they went on to make very popular comedy features through 1937, all for RKO Radio Pictures except the 1933 Columbia release So This Is Africa. Curly-haired Bert Wheeler played the ever-smiling innocent, and bespectacled Robert Woolsey played the genially leering “big idea” man that often got the pair in trouble. The vivacious Dorothy Lee usually played Bert's romantic interest.
The Wheeler & Woolsey pictures are loaded with joke-book dialogue, catchy original songs, painful 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.
FLIRT: Sing to me!
WHEELER: How about One Hour with You?
FLIRT: Sure! But first, sing to me!
Among the team's better features: 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); The Cuckoos (based on Clark and McCullough's Broadway show The Ramblers[2]), Caught Plastered, Peach O'Reno, and Diplomaniacs.
The team faltered in late 1935; the last five Wheeler & Woolsey pictures were weakened by the combination of bad scripts, lower budgets, and uninspired direction. Their 1935 film The Nitwits was remade as a Brown and Carney film Genius at Work in 1946[3]. In The Nitwits the killer was called "The Black Widow" but in Genius at Work the killer was called "The Cobra." The team might have continued indefinitely, but Woolsey died of kidney disease on 31 October 1938[4], ending the partnership. Wheeler continued to work off and on until his death on 18 January 1968[5]. 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[6].
The duo, although largely forgotten now, were at the peak of their careers in the 1930s and were the biggest inspiration to the very well remembered Morecambe and Wise.
In the 1955-1956 television season, Wheeler co-starred with Keith Larsen, Kim Winona, and Anthony Numkena in the CBS western series Brave Eagle[6]. Wheeler played the halfbreed Smokey Joe, known for his tall tales and tribal wisdom, to supplement Larsen's title role of Brave Eagle, a young Cheyenne chief, Winona's character of Morning Star, and young Numkena's role as Brave Eagle's foster son, Keena.
| Year | Title | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheeler | 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 Simpson | |
| Hook, Line and Sinker | Wilbur Boswell | Addington Ganzy | |
| 1931 | Everything's Rosie | — | Dr. J. Dockweiler Droop |
| Cracked Nuts | Wendell Graham | Zander Ulysses Parkhurst | |
| The Stolen Jools (short) | Himself | Himself | |
| Too Many Crooks | Albert "Al" Bennett | — | |
| Caught Plastered | Tommy Tanner | Egbert G. Higginbothom | |
| Oh! Oh! Cleopatra (short) | Mark Antony | Julius Caesar | |
| Peach O'Reno | Wattles | Julius Swift | |
| 1932 | Girl Crazy | 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) | Himself | Himself | |
| 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 | 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 | |
| 1939 | The Cowboy Quarterback | Harry Lynn | — |
| 1942 | Las Vegas Nights | Stu Grant | — |
| 1950 | Innocently Guilty | Hodkinson G. Pogglebrewer | — |
| "—" indicates that he did not appear in this film. | |||
   | Bert Wheeler on IMDB - Bert Wheeler (I) |
| | Wheeler & Woolsey - Wheeler and Woolsey - America's Great Comic Duo |
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