Robert Woolsey
Robert Rollie Woolsey was an American stage and screen comedian and half of the 1930s comedy team Wheeler & Woolsey.
Early life
Robert Rollie Woolsey was born on August 14, 1888, in Carbondale, Illinois to James Monroe Woolsey and Sarah Eunice Woolsey, both also born in Illinois. According to the World War I Draft register, filled out and signed by Woolsey, his name is given as Robert Rolla Woolsey. Woolsey, who had brown eyes and hair with a slight and slender build 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. 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 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.
Personal life
From 1921 to his death in 1938, Woolsey was married to Georgia girl Mignone Park Reed, daughter of Mrs. Mary Reed.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." He died on October 31, 1938, aged 50, from kidney failure and cerebral malaria.
Filmography
| 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 Horton | |
| High Flyers | 1937 | Pierre Potkins | Final film role. |