Robert Woolsey

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Robert Rollie Woolsey (August 14, 1888 – October 31, 1938) was an American stage and screen comedian and half of the 1930s comedy team Wheeler & Woolsey.[1][2][3]

Early life

Robert Rollie Woolsey (sometimes spelled Rolla or even Raleigh)[4] was born on August 14, 1888, in Carbondale, Illinois[2][5] to James Monroe Woolsey and Sarah Eunice Woolsey (née Noble), both also born in Illinois.[5] According to the World War I Draft register, filled out and signed by Woolsey, his name is given as Robert Rolla Woolsey.[6] Woolsey, who had brown eyes and hair with a slight and slender build[2] tried to capitalize on his size, as a young adult, by becoming a jockey. After he fell from a horse and sustained a fractured leg, he quit racing and turned instead to the vaudeville stage.[7] In 1925 he was featured as "Mortimer Pottle" in W. C. Fields's Broadway hit Poppy.

Wheeler and Woolsey

Woolsey was teamed with comedy star Bert Wheeler in 1928, for the Broadway musical Rio Rita. RKO Radio Pictures filmed the play in 1929, launching Wheeler and Woolsey as movie personalities. Woolsey's comic character was a fast-talking, genially leering, cigar-smoking, wisecracking, and self-confident operator -- but one who was not always as smart as he thought he was. Ready for any hare-brained scheme, he would often lead Wheeler's more naive, gullible and sweet-natured character into (and only sometimes out of) trouble.

Woolsey made only two films without Wheeler. In 1930 he hosted a "Voice of Hollywood" short, playing a radio announcer who introduced movie stars to the audience. In 1931 RKO tried to generate twice the Wheeler & Woolsey income by splitting the team, with Wheeler and Woolsey starring solo in one film each. Woolsey's solo effort was Everything's Rosie (1931).

Personal life

From 1921 to his death in 1938, Woolsey was married to Georgia girl Mignone Park (Minnie) Reed, daughter of Mrs. Mary Reed.[8]

Illness and death

Woolsey became terminally ill in 1936 and struggled to finish his last picture, High Flyers, which was released in 1937. He was then confined to bed for almost a full year, ending his performing career.

Bert Wheeler last saw him in June 1938: "I knew Woolsey was very, very ill, and when I saw him lying there suffering, I knew what he was going through... He didn't have a chance and he knew it, and he didn't try to fight it."[9] He died on October 31, 1938, aged 50, from kidney failure and cerebral malaria.[10]

Filmography

(As per the AFI database)[11]

Title Year Role Notes
Rio Rita 1929 Ned Lovett
Dixiana 1930 Ginger Dandy
The Cuckoos 1930 Professor Cunningham
Half Shot at Sunrise 1930 Gilbert
Hook, Line and Sinker 1930 Addington Ganzy
Everything's Rosie 1931 Dr. J. Dockweiler Droop Woolsey solo, without Wheeler.
Caught Plastered 1931 Egbert G. Higginbotham
Peach O'Reno 1931 Julius Swift
Cracked Nuts 1931 Zander Ulysses "Zup" Parkhurst
Hold 'Em Jail 1932 Spider Robbins
Girl Crazy 1932 Slick Foster
Diplomaniacs 1933 Hercules Glub
So This Is Africa 1933 Alexander Woolsey
Kentucky Kernels 1934 "The Great" Elmer Dugan
Hips, Hips, Hooray! 1934 Dr. Bob Dudley
Cockeyed Cavaliers 1934 Robert Maltravers
The Nitwits 1935 Newton
The Rainmakers 1935 Roscoe the Rainmaker
Silly Billies 1936 Dr. Philip "Painless" Pennington
Mummy's Boys 1936 Aloysius C. Whittaker
On Again-Off Again 1937 Claude (Augustus) Horton
High Flyers 1937 Pierre Potkins Final film role.

DVD releases

Nine of Wheeler and Woolsey's 21 movies were released in a DVD collection entitled "Wheeler & Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection" in March 2013 by Warner Archive.[12]

{U.S. Census Records indicate he was born in Carbondale, Jackson Co, IL}

References

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  1. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  3. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  5. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  7. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  8. ↑ Brotherton, Jamie and Okuda, Ted, Dorothy Lee: The Life and Films of the Wheeler and Woolsey Girl, McFarland, 2013. Template:ISBN
  9. ↑ Edward Watz, Wheeler and Woolsey: The Vaudeville Comic Duo and Their Films, McFarland, 1994, p. 291.
  10. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  11. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  12. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

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External links

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