Buffoon Of Joy

Bob Woolsey's only solo feature may be a cheap Poppy knockoff, but at least Al Boasberg was trying to deliver a vehicle properly suited to Bob Woolsey's talents. The same can't be said for Bert Wheeler's contemporary Too Many Cooks, a patience-straining timewaster which features no songs, no dancing, no action, and Roscoe Ates as comic relief. It's altogether odd considering that RKO was banking on Bert, not Bob, as the big solo success. Here are some fun newspaper ads from July 25-August 18, 1931.

Comedy Feuds

From The Evening Huronite, August 26th, 1941. Dorothy Kilgallen relates yet another tale of Joe E. Brown's nasty character-pilfering habit. This is also the first and only time I've ever heard it suggested that there was some kind of rivalry between Bobby Clark and, of all people, Bob Woolsey. If Clark and Woolsey got into a fight, who would win? My money's on Clark.

Bert Wheeler and Pat Boone: Together At Last!

Bert Wheeler makes a guest appearance on the Pat Boone Chevy Showroom. His material here is fresh and very funny. I think this clip dates from 1958. If anyone knows for sure, let me know so I can update the tags on the YouTube file.

Old Stone Face meets The Kinkajou!

Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town, 1/27/52. I was pleasantly surprised by how well Ed handles his role here as Bert's foil. And given Sullivan's famously straitlaced persona, the payoff of this routine is, I think, even funnier than when Gleason performed it (better yet, you can actually see the payoff here). Sadly not included, though, is the punchline for the "Is This Worth Fighting For?" song. Incidentally, does anyone out there know where this routine originated? Was this one of Bert's routines from his vaudeville days with Tom Moran?

The Great One meets The Kinkajou!

Jackie Gleason doing an impression of Joe Penner?? MY BRAIN!!!! Bert Wheeler guest stars on the August 26th, 1950 episode of Cavalcade of Stars, Jackie Gleason's first variety series on DuMont, the original Fouth Network. Cavalcade of Stars was DuMont's flagship show, costing $15,000 an episode.. no small sum for the tiniest, cheapest network on the air. Jackie had just this season taken over from original Cavalcade host Jerry Lester, and was in the process of creating such famous characters as The Poor Soul, Reggie Van Gleason III, and Ralph Kramden. Bert and Jackie show great rapport in these routines, and Bert, ever the trouper, even does a rough pratfall. As for the picture quality, if the ancient Sumerians had had television, it would probably have looked something like this.

Bert Wheeler's Worst Movie?

Poor Bert Wheeler. Is it possible that he was so neglected by 1939 that studios had completely forgotten how to cast him in a movie? Last night, courtesy of Bill Sherman, I watched Bert Wheeler's next-to-last feature, The Cowboy Quarterback (1939), for the first time. It is actually worse than I'd expected.. and I've never read anything positive about Cowboy Quarterback. In fact, it may be the most meritless thing Bert Wheeler ever blew his talents on (and, yes, I've seen Too Many Cooks (1931)). One mystery has been solved, however. I'd long wondered who could have been so wrongheaded as to cast Bert Wheeler as a half-wit Nevadan in a football remake of Joe E. Brown's Elmer, the Great (1933). Now it's clear that no one was thinking at all. CC smells like a contractual obligation or a half-assed favor. I can just imagine some Warner's executive saying "Just put him in something cheap and get him out of here!" Whatever the studio's motivations may have been, the film is so slapdash that it seems obvious no one really cared if Bert sank or swam. And it doesn't speak well for Bert's personal fortunes in 1939 that he would have agreed to appear in a 60 minute sub-B comedy in which he has to deliver every line with an absurd drawl.

There is one bright spot between all of this nonsense about Bert Wheeler being a football player from Nevada. About three-quarters of the way through the picture, Bert momentarily drops his "character" and does a variation on his signature vaudeville routine, the "singing a sad song while eating a sandwich" bit. It's a brief if genuine Bert Wheeler moment, but even this pales in comparison with Bert's performance of the same routine in The Diplomaniacs (1933).

Poor Bert. I still think that the one film he could have turned his career around with would have been a musical remake of Charley's Aunt. No comedian ever went wrong with Charley's Aunt.

Bert and his first wife and stage partner Betty in better times, circa 1915

"Fiddle Faddle Foo"

Bill Sherman has posted an insightful review of Bert Wheeler’s first post-Woolsey feature, Cowboy Quarterback (1939), on his blog. The film sounds quite uniquely horrible, plot-heavy and cheap, with Wheeler playing against type as an idiot bumpkin. Poor Bert apparently didn’t know what to do with himself after Woolsey’s death in 1938 and neither, it seems, did the studios. He had done extremely well as a solo act for years before finally teaming with Woolsey in Rio Rita in 1929, but a decade later he was on the way out, still young and energetic but not particularly in demand. He could have coasted for perhaps another six years at RKO had Woolsey lived, but his decline was underway before his partner’s death. RKO’s attempts to keep pace with changing trends in comedy, as well as the overall rising fortunes of the studio, meant a subsequent decline in the quality of Bert and Bob’s features, and by 1938’s unfortunate High Flyers, they were clearly relegated to B status. Woolsey’s death was a convenient opportunity for the studio to cut Bert loose, but Bert almost literally had nowhere to go.. in movies, at least. He followed Cowboy Quarterback with Las Vegas Nights (1941), remembered primarily as Frank Sinatra's unbilled screen debut. Las Vegas Nights has a good reputation but it was Bert’s final feature just the same. He resurfaced in 1950 at Columbia in one of Jules White’s horrible assembly-line comedies, Innocently Guilty, a remake (like every Columbia short in 1950) of a previous Columbia short, Charley Chase’s The Big Squirt (1937). At the age of 55, Bert Wheeler looks uncomfortable going through the standard Columbia knockabaout. It’s unpleasant, to say the least.

And be sure to visit kiddierecords.com this week to download The Noisy Eater (week 46), a bizarre children’s record Jerry Lewis recorded for Capitol’s Bozo series. Lewis plays a kid whose parents throw him out of the house for being a sloppy at the dinner table (talk about your tough love). Cast out into the cruel world, Jerry only ends up offending other potential surrogate families with his poor table manners. Happily for Jerry, dinner with “a fat man and his skinny wife” (the Fat Man sounds a hell of a lot like Billy Bletcher), both cursed with table manners as poor as Jerry’s, convinces him to turn his life around and return home. His parents, either out of guilt or as a bribe, give Jerry five bucks, which of course in those days was like a million dollars. The Noisy Eater is one of four Bozo records featured this week, the others being Bugs Bunny and Aladdin’s Lamp (with Mel Blanc), Walt Disney’s Rob Roy, and a hilariously condensed version of George Pal’s Destination Moon (with June Foray, beyond a doubt). Kiddierecords.com is one of the internet’s true pop treasures, and some of the records they’ll be featuring in December look especially good; A Christmas Carol with Ronald Colman, Howdy Doody’s Christmas Party, and best of all, Pinky Lee Tells the Story of Inkas the Ramferinkas!