Bert Wheeler (April 7, 1895 – January 18, 1968) was an American comedian who performed in vaudeville acts, Broadway theatre, American comedy , and television. He was teamed with Broadway comic Robert Woolsey, and they went on to fame as Wheeler & Woolsey.[
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Early career
Wheeler was born Albert Jerome Wheeler in Paterson, New Jersey on April 7, 1895.[ He began his career performing in vaudeville in an act with Russ Brown.]
Wheeler & Woolsey
Bert Wheeler was working on Broadway with Robert Woolsey -- not as a comedy team, but as performers playing character roles in the same show. A screen adaptation of their stage hit Rio Rita (1929) launched them in motion pictures.
Rio Rita's production company, RKO Radio Pictures, was slow to see the potential of Wheeler & Woolsey. The studio signed Bert Wheeler to a movie contract during production, but not Robert Woolsey. It wasn't until the financial returns came in for Rio Rita that RKO signed both Woolsey and ingenue Dorothy Lee to appear in further films alongside Wheeler.[Edward Watz, Wheeler & Woolsey: The Vaudeville Comic Duo and Their Films, 1929-1937, McFarland, 1994, pp. 74-75. .]
From their first starring vehicle, The Cuckoos (1930), Wheeler & Woolsey established themselves as a popular comedy team, and their films were dizzy conglomerations of joke-book dialogue, awful puns, elaborate visual gags, witty musical numbers, and scantily clad chorus girls (with Woolsey offering double-entendre jokes all the while).
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 failed, and they returned to performing as a team. They continued to make popular feature films until 1937, when Woolsey became too ill to work.
Director Charles Reisner tried to keep Wheeler at the studio, proposing a series of comedy features co-starring Wheeler and Dorothy Lee.[Jamie Brotherton and Ted Okuda, Dorothy Lee: The Life and Films of the Wheeler and Woolsey Girl, McFarland, 2013, p. 108. .] The studio declined, reasoning that audiences would expect to be seeing Woolsey as well. Wheeler was released by the studio. The next scheduled Wheeler & Woolsey picture, the 1938 musical Radio City Revels, was retooled as a vehicle for Jack Oakie; Wheeler's wardrobe was assigned to comic dancer Buster West.
After Woolsey
In 1938, after Robert Woolsey died, Bert Wheeler struggled to restart his career. His friend and former film costar Dorothy Lee agreed to tour with him in a vaudeville act early that year. He landed occasional roles in movies through 1941; his last feature film, Las Vegas Nights (1941), found Wheeler working with a new partner, comedian and comedy writer Hank Ladd.
During the 1940s Wheeler became a nightclub comedian. In 1943 he worked on radio on The Frank Sinatra Show.[ ] In 1945 he co-starred with Jackie Gleason in a nightclub engagement; five years later Gleason invited him to appear several times on his TV variety hour Cavalcade of Stars. Wheeler's last theatrical films were two slapstick short films for Columbia Pictures, filmed in 1950 and produced by Jules White: Innocently Guilty and The Awful Sleuth.
Wheeler also kept up a busy schedule of live performances in nightclubs and on the legitimate stage, in such plays as Harvey (in the leading role of Elwood P. Dowd, earning rave reviews as Frank Fay's summer replacement in 1946) and Three Wishes for Jamie. In 1955 Wheeler co-starred with Keith Larsen in the CBS western series Brave Eagle; Wheeler played the "half-breed" Smokey Joe, known for his tall tales and tribal wisdom.
Wheeler continued to work in nightclubs, theater, and television through the 1960s, either alone or with comedian and singer Tom Dillon.
Death
Bert Wheeler died of emphysema in New York City on January 18, 1968.
Filmography
(As per the AFI database)|
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| Rio Rita | 1929 | Chick Bean | film debut |
| Dixiana | 1930 | Peewee | |
| The Cuckoos | 1930 | Sparrow | |
| Half Shot at Sunrise | 1930 | Tommy Turner | |
| Hook, Line and Sinker | 1930 | Wilbur Boswell | |
| Caught Plastered | 1931 | Tommy Tanner | |
| Too Many Cooks | 1931 | Albert Bennett | without Woolsey |
| Peach-O-Reno | 1931 | Wattles | |
| Cracked Nuts | 1931 | Wendell Graham | |
| Hold 'Em Jail | 1932 | Curly Harris | |
| Girl Crazy | 1932 | Jimmy Deegan | |
| Diplomaniacs | 1933 | Willy Nilly | |
| So This Is Africa | 1933 | Wilbur Wheeler | |
| Kentucky Kernels | 1934 | Willie Doyle | |
| Hips, Hips, Hooray! | 1934 | Andy Williams | |
| Cockeyed Cavaliers | 1934 | Bert Winstanley | |
| The Nitwits | 1935 | Johnny | |
| The Rainmakers | 1935 | Billy | |
| Silly Billies | 1936 | Roy Banks | |
| Mummy's Boys | 1936 | Stanley Wright | |
| On Again-Off Again | 1937 | William "Willy" Hobbs | |
| High Flyers | 1937 | Jerry Lane | |
| The Cowboy Quarterback | 1939 | Harry Lynn | without Woolsey |
| Las Vegas Nights | 1941 | Stu Grant | without Woolsey |
| Innocently Guilty | 1950 | Hodkinson G. Pogglebrewer | short subject, without Woolsey |
| The Awful Sleuth | 1951 | Bert Wheeler | short subject, without Woolsey |
Marriages
Wheeler was married five times. His only child, with Speer, was Patricia Anne Wheeler.
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Margaret Grae (m. 27 April 1915 to 15 November 1926) divorced.
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Bernice Speer (m. 15 April 1928 to 19 February 1936) divorced, they had 1 child.
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Sally Haines (m. 26 February 1937 to 1939) divorced.
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Patsy Orr (c1940 to c1950) divorced.
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Olga Desmondae Rieman (m. 1951 - 8 August 1966) to her death.
Home video releases
Nine of Wheeler's 21 feature films were released in a DVD collection entitled "Wheeler & Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection" in March 2013 by Warner Archive.
His 1929 Vitaphone playlet Small Timers and his 1950 Columbia shorts have not yet been released to video.
External links
