Wheeler & Woolsey, "I know what's funny."
Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were a vaudeville comedy duo in the 1920s and movie stars in the 30s.
When I classify them as a comedy duo in the 1920s, I mean to say they were both concurrently working in the vaudeville circuit and on Broadway independently of another. Of the two, Bert Wheeler managed to eke out a meatier success in his own comedy routines while he was teamed with his first wife, Margaret Grae. Getting his start doing an apparently miraculous Charlie Chaplin impersonation in competition that Chaplin himself lauded, his live act in the Follies had a reputation for unpredictability, with sometimes dangerous gags that curiously seemed difficult to describe by witnesses, usually ending with the cryptic chestnut: “You had to be there.”
Wheeler’s early fortunes didn’t last long. He had a personal demeanor as a giving person, lending money to people and never asking for anything in return. This and his generally poor business acumen lead to eventual personal and artistic problems, and relations to his showbiz partner soured which resulted in divorce.
Robert Woolsey’s start was less remarkable. After sustaining a major back injury as a horse jockey, it was enough for him to throw in the towel in that sector. He moved to showbusiness, where he was consistently received as milquetoast, but scored profile in the role of Mortimer Pottle in WC Fields’ Broadway hit Poppy. Somewhat syncopated with Bert Wheeler’s Follies spectacles, people who met Robert Woolsey outside of work, and somewhat famously, describe Woolsey as, and I’m paraphrasing, “He told this incredibly funny joke, but I don’t remember what it was”.
Fate star-crossed them together. The two were somewhat arbitrarily teamed for the musical Rio Rita on Broadway in 1927, which was enormously successful. It was subsequently brought to the movies, and though it was recast it retained the crucial element, Wheeler and Woolsey. Produced by then fledgling poverty row studio RKO, an extraordinary amount of the studio’s money and resources were channeled into what was promised to be the largest musical event in the history of the movies, nay, the most colossal one since Birth of a Nation or Intolerance. RKO banked on it entirely, and the studio’s survival depended on this movie alone.
And so, successful it was; a production of its kind was practically unprecedented, for a musical anyway, as was its massive success. On a $35,000 unadjusted budget, the film received approximately $900,000+ (that’s ~$16 million now) at the box office, the largest earner in 1929. Audiences took notice of the duo, who were also well received. Wheeler and Woolsey had no intention of staying paired, but studio heads had different ideas.
Wheeler and Woolsey are not generally known today. However at one point they were very popular, a household name even, and after Rio Rita, continued to be in movies that made a lot of money. In Pre-Code era Hollywood, the duo were making more at the box office than the, even-to-this-day, more well known Marx Bros and W.C. Fields combined. They were also prolific in their short partnership, ending with Robert Woolsey’s death in 1938. During their time of operation (1929-1937) they made 21 movies together, and one each solo. The two were so well known and well liked, they ended up with extensive coverage in film fan magazines, on trading cards, their own comic strips, and even as cameos in various animated shorts.
Currently, there is but one catalog of the two, a biography of sorts, and a ledger summarizing their movies in the book Wheeler & Woolsey: The Vaudeville Comic Duo and Their Films, 1929-1937, perhaps the definitive tome about the team at this point. By “definitive” I also mean the only one exclusively concerning the duo; numerous on the broader subject of “comedy groups of the 30s” exist, but otherwise so little information is publicly available about them.
These days, their reputation is much different, that is to say, by and large, nonexistent. The institution of Wheeler and Woolsey is hardly mentioned at all in any big cineaste bodies, ever, let alone within the same lot as the 3 Stooges, Harry Langdon, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and so on, in other cinephile communities. Even the comparative Ritz Brothers got a recent turn on the Criterion Channel with the Allan Dwan directed, Don Ameche starring, The Three Musketeers. They rarely even occupy footnote space. Perhaps not undue (to be discussed in this entry), however a mystery remains as to why they are excluded from the broad history of movies in the first place, at all, by major institutions, and in environments which so-callingly push that all film history is important. Same with their heroes and quasi-predecessors, Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough, but that’s for another time.
Something of a sense of duty compels me to push these two along. Perhaps it’s because their act itself comes off so complicated that those in control of its rights now consider that they were meant to remain buried, or other dubious reasons. It’s sure as hell easy to do, they aren’t craved by audiences now; Wheeler and Woolsey have zero commercial value, nor any academic interest. Regardless of this, there are plenty of faithful people, hard to say if they are fans or just archival-bent, or both, out there these days waving a flag for them on various webspaces. You could include this one.
One possible explanation to their obscurity is that they made little to no comedy shorts, or “two-reelers”, like most of the others. It’s an arena that helped keep those that did make them in public memory, especially when Television came around and was desperate for programming. Only one of their two-reelers known to exist, Oh! Oh! Cleopatra! (1931), is publicly available but no known footage survives (was recently rediscovered)— only the soundtrack, the script, and some stills. It suggests the existence of other short films but these have yet to be realized.
So basically, their output exists solely in feature length films, and many of these films, due to the Production Code and the still edgy nature of their “bests”, they were not allowed rereleases and would not be rediscovered until home video. Fortunately (or unfortunately) enough, all of these films are now on DVD from Warner Archive, and one, Kentucky Kernels, is on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, which is kind of crazy.
Another potential reason is what few films they made, all things considered. Despite a high level of activity and the frequency of their output, 21 films altogether, it is in a shorter window (8 years), with an altogether smaller product sum compared to the massive catalogues of Laurel and Hardy or the Stooges with their 2-reelers, which had a lot of TV play throughout the century. They seemed to thrive exclusively in the Pre-Code era. Slapstick and gags laden with innuendo gave some of their early movie material a racy edge, and when the Motion Picture Production Code locked in, it clipped their penguin wings.
Robert Woolsey died in 1938, cutting short any momentum they may have still had; Bert Wheeler sallied on with showbiz, and had asked frequent Wheeler/Woolsey costar and friend Dorothy Lee to continue with him in vaudeville, which at this point had already been in hard decline for years. Later, Bert Wheeler was in a few solo efforts, on TV programs and afterwards in sketches that seemed like they were produced by friends he had in the industry. Never again would Bert Wheeler be at the level of prestige and popularity he shared with Robert Woolsey in Hollywood, or his then-wife on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies. He never had the repeat fortune of an incidental inclusion on any production, like Rio Rita before, would have yielded. He was quickly forgotten.
^F*ck me.^
Many comic teams and personalities have met similar fates under the machine of time. Eddie Cantor, Olsen and Johnson, and Red Skelton are a few; even Bob Hope to a degree, though many of Hope’s films have made the journey to Blu Ray, which says something. Some of these acts have suffered for political reasons, though modern evaluations of their comedy are part of it as well. Yet these names are still fairly familiar even to more casual classic movie cinephiles. Why?
In Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey’s case, part of their poison, artistically, I would argue is they were unable to intuitively tap into a universality, or in anything, per movies basis, strange, or something that reaches outside of their context. A hook. They don’t speak to something more unchanging, or more reaching, subjectively, like the others have. A beneath-the-surface archetyping, or in other words, a chord of the human condition.
The Marx Bros and Laurel/Hardy had a consistent flow of surreality, where, like Georges Melies films, we come back to them no matter how rudimentary the filmmaking seems. WC Fields was the grumpy, child hating, misanthropic, selfish alcoholic man that lives inside all of us. The Three Stooges feed our outwardly precondemned need of wanton, cruel violent release, like Tom & Jerry cartoons. These all exhibit attitudes that are, more or less, unacceptable to current filmmaking. Collectively, these communicate to our cores, sate a thirst of rebellion, not making sense in, and against, a world that forever eludes comprehension.
Also, maybe most importantly, Wheeler and Woolsey are mostly just not very funny to modern tastes. From posterity, it is astounding that they were considered funny at all. This renders any interest in them now almost strictly historical.
From that, it is worthy to note that Bert Wheeler has two known, and known available, solo shorts after Woolsey’s demise: The Awful Sleuth and Innocently Guilty. Combined with the solo efforts of both in their prime, what could be considered experiments in their box office potential without the other, Bert Wheeler’s Too Many Cooks, and Robert Woolsey’s Everything’s Rosie, it is clear that neither of them did very well without the other. I’m speaking box office terms initially, but it is compounded that, in an evaluative review now, both of their solo efforts are exponentially worse than when they’re together, if that can be believed.
Wheeler and Woolsey are landlocked within a context of a broader comedy, perhaps too broad. The movies they made, while at one time cranked out fast and loose, commonly felt a few steps behind. For the average moviegoer in the Depression thirties I imagined this mattered not very much. However, looking backward, their act, on film anyway, lacks focus or clearer motives, if at all, or subject behavior consistent enough to stop the compass from spinning.
In some of their films, this is a strength. A strength especially when they lash out at practically everything, they had a peculiar anarchy. This is so much that any attempt at tracking any allegiances, even to themselves, is vague at best. Where this fails them, however, is the two on screen seem perpetually confused at how they became friends or partners in the first place, which is funny because it’s not far from the truth. They have no sense of having personal history (nearly vacuous) within the movies extending to without, and it seems they figured it was never crucial, as long as they could keep working and the checks kept coming.
The universal touch is usually unnecessary, but juxtaposition to other acts further misfortune to their survival. Laurel and Hardy for one, conversely to Wheeler and Woolsey, no matter at what point, no matter how mean or brutal they are to one another, no matter how much they screw everything up, at the core of their relationship, their chemistry lends a palpable sense of time, dependence, fraternity, and love, like they couldn’t live without each other. This of course, proved to be true in its own right, evidenced with Stan Laurel quitting showbiz altogether when Oliver Hardy passed, and I think it is not just because Stan couldn’t get gigs or continue to be marketable without him. At any rate, it is a distinction so organic, right and realized, and in the light of pleasure while lending an uncanny sense of depth. It is so powerful that its absence when watching the Stooges or Abbott and Costello, or while Wheeler and Woolsey wax gags, it leaves a bad taste or lacks warmth.
What Wheeler and Woolsey’s context is or pertains to, this seeks to kick around or explore, or at the very least, keep them in conversation.
Why? I don’t know. My relationship with the duo is.. complicated, yet magnetic. Most of their movies are pretty awful, and their showbiz personalities, taken separately or not, are already cloyingly obnoxious, and bear an air of derivative dilution. Purely second-rate. Many times repeat gags appear that are also seen parallel to the Marx Bros, primarily. It was well known that vaudeville and similar cultural hubs are and were a scene, and scenes by nature are to some degree incestuous, and gags were shared. To dispel this plagiarizing trait, WC Fields was world famous for the obsessive copyrighting of his routines.
When these gags inevitably appear in Wheeler and Woolsey films they are executed less confidently, are stale, and without flavor. However, at very few times, they can show an athleticism, a spark, and when they are in the league of something genuinely funny, it comes about in bizarre, sometimes unique ways, even when they remind you of their contemporaries. Plenty of ripe examples of this are in Hold Em Jail (arguably their bona fide best work), Diplomaniacs (an essential Pre-Coder), Hook Line and Sinker, Hips Hips Hooray, and the, in rare shape, surrealist elevator gag in So This Is Africa. I would be lying if this kind of conflict of their profile isn’t a motivation. It is a mystery of some kind.
After having seen (and owning in my collection, not a boast but is) all of their movies available I’ve grown to classify them as a sort of “perfect” Pre-Code entity: awful, sometimes funny, awkward, confusing, cringe, obsolete, very offensive, but, at least to me, endearing in a way you love to hate, and maybe that’s why they are remembered at all. They are either hard to pin down or easily despised. Perhaps there is its own pleasure in seeing a bad act with people you don’t like doing poorly time and time again. Perhaps there can be fun in confusion. Perhaps there is a joy in, figuratively and literally speaking, throwing popcorn at the screen and yelling at them to die. Can this kind of a film have as much value as something good?
I would argue that it does. “Bad” movies on their own have value, everything has its place. Bad movies can offer examples that can help in understanding why some movies “work” or don’t. Sometimes they can reveal conventions that can be so hidden by better movies. They can be an emotional release.
Old-hat “meller-drammer” programs and likewise more famous ones, like The Rocky Horror Show, who encourage ire from patrons, thrive on such interaction, a mocking interplay from the audience. It is a manipulation with the populi towards a negative, but the shows are ultimately, generally lifted by this relationship. It is a showbiz possibility, and one that if it engages those present in such an intended way, it is successful. Wheeler and Woolsey’s participation in this tradition I realize is a retroactive effect, and accidental, but nonetheless, appropriation is part of how we inherently process movies. It plays into our psyches as voyeurs, through no fault of the duo, but nevertheless.
It’s worthy to note, in a baffling turn, that in many of their pictures they worked with some of the greatest talents of the time. These are people who either already did great films or would come into their own as they matured: directors Eddie Cline (frequent Buster Keaton collaborator, Million Dollar Legs, The Bank Dick), Norman Taurog (several Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin films, many Elvis Presleys, dozens of comedies), George Stevens (Shane, Giant, Swing Time, The More The Merrier), Mark Sandrich (many Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals), cameraman of many classic film Noir Nick Musuraca (Cat People, Out of the Past, The 7th Victim, Clash By Night, The Spiral Staircase), writer Herman Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane, Dinner at Eight, The Last Command), actresses Thelma Todd (hundreds of comedies, Hal Roach studios favorite), Lupe Velez, Betty Grable, Edna May Oliver, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, singer Ruth Etting, Roscoe Arbuckle wrote gags for them under an uncredited pseudonym, Boris Karloff appeared, and so did Ben Turpin.
As it exists now, there are approximately 40 minutes (4-5 reels) of missing footage from Rio Rita. Personally, I crave this footage this as much as everything missing from Von Stroheim’s Greed, Murnau’s 4 Devils, or that footage from Orson Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons that was supposedly tossed into the ocean, and honestly, many others. The uncanny thing is me wanting this is probably funnier than anything Wheeler and Woolsey ever did.
This entry is the result of a couple years’ worth of tweaking, re-tweaking, research, experience, reflection, exposure, and thin patience. Thanks for reading.