Fame and popularity can be fleeting. Wheeler
and Woolsey or is it Woolsey and Wheeler were an enormously popular film
duo in the 1930's and I bet most people if presented with the names today
would think it was a bathroom cleaner or an English brand of tea. They were
doing gangbusters though in a series of 21 films for RKO when Wheeler or
was it Woolsey passed away in 1938 from kidney disease. They had been paired
in the Broadway show of Rio Rita and when it was made into a film they were
brought in. Dixiana in 1930 was a Bebe Daniels film but as the comedy relief
they were the best thing in it and so RKO made them the featured players
in Half Shot at Sunrise which is quite amusing. This one not as much but
still has some solid laughs. How could it not? It is a joke a second. Their
humor consists of rapid fire insults, puns, idiocy and double-entendres (pre-code).
If they were Chinese, you would call it Mo lei tau. Totally scatter shot,
often making no sense but at times funny. In the realm of the Marx Brothers
but not as inspired. Today it feels like there is a layer of dust on most
of the jokes - many likely stolen from vaudeville - but every now and
then one hits the mark. There is also the adorable Dorothy Lee.
The petite Lee was to star in most of their films as the Betty Boop a Doop
high pitched dizzy dame who usually falls in love with Wheeler. She is like
cream on a sundae. Wheeler is the innocent blushing not too bright one of
the pair while Woolsey is the cigar smoking wheeler dealer not too bright
con man of the pair. Woolsey gets most of the jokes. Wheeler gets the girl.
In this one they are riding a double-seated bicycle when a traffic cop stops
them for breaking the law "Can't it be fixed". Woolsey ends up selling him
a life insurance policy and Wheeler has managed to get into a car that has
stopped with Lee driving it. She mentions that her mother (the very tall
Jobyna Howland) is rich and Lee has been given a hotel to run. At the word
"rich", the insurance policy is ripped up and now they are hotel management
experts. The hotel turns out to be a wreck with a clerk at the desk who looks
to have died a decade ago and a sleepy hotel detective played by Hugh Herbert
- who has yet to develop his eccentric comedy shtick. They quickly get it
ship shape and throw a gala affair for the crème-de-le-crème
of society. Two gangs of crooks show up to steal the jewelry from the safe
and there is a big shootout at the end. But the plot is secondary. It is
the jokes. The mother "I met my second husband by accident. He ran
over my first husband".
