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 Bert's romantic interest. The Wheeler & Woolsey movies are loaded with joke-book dialogue, original songs, puns, and sometimes racy double-entendre gags: WOMAN : Were you looking at these? WOOLSEY: Madam, I'm above that. WOOLSEY : 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! Such double-entendre gags were a hallmark of early W&W 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. , 1935. 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 and one with Woolsey. This experiment failed, and they returned to performing as a team. Among the team's features are The Cuckoos, Caught Plastered, Peach O'Reno, Diplomaniacs, and Hips Hips Hooray and Cockeyed Cavaliers. Sandrich was replaced by George Stevens. After Stevens left the series, the team faltered. In some of these later films Bert and Bob don't 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. In 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 1945, Wheeler headlined briefly with Jackie Gleason at Slapsy Maxie's, and 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 CBSwestern series Brave Eagle; Wheeler played the halfbreedSmokey Joe, known for his tall tales and tribal wisdom. 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. The duo, although largely forgotten now, were at the peak of their careers in the 1930s and were the biggest inspiration to the British team of Morecambe and Wise.
Availability
Nine of the 21 movies the duo made together were released in a DVD collection entitled "" in March 2013 by Warner Archive. Rio Rita made its way to DVD in February 2006. Girl Crazy and Peach O'Reno were released as a two disc set in December 2010. Four additional W&W films were released individually through the Warner Archive in May 2012: The Rainmakers; Diplomaniacs; On Again-Off Again; and Kentucky Kernels. Warner Archives released the " in October 2016. This includes the following 6 films: Too Many Cooks; Everything's Rosie; Dixiana; The Cuckoos; Cockeyed Cavaliers; and Silly Billies. So This Is Africa has yet to be released on DVD. Three films have fallen into the Public Domain. Dixiana was first made available on DVD in its complete version by the Roan Group after was able to locate color elements. This release suffers from problematic framing.
