Robert Woolsey
American comedian
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.
Early life
Robert Rollie Woolsey (sometimes spelled Rolla or even Raleigh) was born on August 14, 1888, in Carbondale, Illinois to James Monroe Woolsey and Sarah Eunice Woolsey (née Noble), 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 (and only sometimes out of) trouble.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q326679. VIAF identifies the subject as 54954043. The Library of Congress control number is n88051326. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1938, 1925 and 1928.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Woolsey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.