Cockeyed Cavaliers

A Duke's fleeing fiancée & a brutal Baron's wayward wife find unexpected help from two COCKEYED CAVALIERS.

This was the most lavish film to star the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey (Bert Wheeler is the short fellow with the curly hair; Robert Woolsey is the skinny guy with the cigar) and it is a funny, frantic farce from start to finish. With a plot full of mistaken identities, distressed damsels, ferocious boars & goofy chases, Director Mark Sandrich never allows the pace to slow down for long.

Pert Dorothy Lee & beautiful, doomed Thelma Todd more than hold their own with the Boys and their antics. Robert Greig, as the Duke, is the perfect picture of a very obese sensualist. Noah Beery, as the Baron, is wonderful, as usual, as a beefy bully.

Movie mavens will spot Franklin Pangborn as a harmonious town crier and Billy Gilbert as a jolly innkeeper, both unbilled.

The Boys introduce the boisterous tavern song 'And The Big Bad Wolf Was Dead' - during which Beery gets to unleash his impressive basso profundo. Miss Lee & Hot Toddy join the Boys in trilling 'Dilly Dally.'

Cockeyed Cavaliers has Wheeler and Woolsey as a Restoration period kleptomaniac and his good friend. Wheeler and his taking ways land Bert and Bob in the village stocks in a very funny sequence. Rescuing them is their perennial leading lady Dorothy Lee who has been contracted to become a lady in waiting for Duke Robert Grieg's duchess Thelma Todd with the idea is that the Duke will take his pleasures.

Lee rescues the guys while she is fleeing in male drag. But they wind up back at Grieg's court with Bert and Bob pretending to be visiting royal physicians with their apprentice. Bert finds out Lee is a girl and Bob expresses some nasty thoughts to the duchess.

It's all climaxed with wild wild boar hunt. Very funny stuff although Woolsey plays the whole film without his ever present cigar which hadn't been invented yet.

This is the one where the boys are in the 1600s (although you'd never guess from Woolsey's cigar and specs!), where Bert is a kleptomanic - the scene early on where he manages to steal a necklace, four horses, and finally a carriage in quick succession is a hoot - while Bob tries to keep their heads on (literally). Cutie Dorothy Lee, meanwhile, is trying to escape being married to burly oldie Robert Grieg the randy Duke, and runs away disguised as a boy.

Highlights of this fun film are the two songs - the first, The Big Bad Wolf is Dead, might go on a bit, but gives the boys a chance to do a dance routine, plus Noah Beery joining in with his magnificent bass voice; the second, Dilly Dally, is a catchy number for the boys, Dorothy, and lovely Thelma Todd (who had so much potential but would die in tragic circumstances just a year later). I also got quite a buzz from the scene in the inn which referenced the previous year's Garbo pic, Queen Christina (where the 'boy' admits she is a girl). Then of course there is the wild boar hunt, a triumph of trick photography.

Director Mark Sandrich would move on to direct Top Hat and other well-remembered movies shortly after, but this one does him and his cast proud.

"Cockeyed Cavaliers" is one of the best of the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy films. Set in medieval England, Bert and Bob are a couple of characters who are frequently in trouble with the law because of Bert's habit of "lifting" things. Some of the humor in this one is when odd and unusual things disappear right under people's noses, due to kleptomaniac, Bert Winstanley. For instance, a team of horses from in front of a carriage, then the carriage, etc. The musical aspects are okay, but don't add much to the comedy.

The boys are put in stocks in public where the public has a field day tossing vegetables at them. Later, they take over the identities of the king's physician and assistant, and make a call on The Duke of Weskit to cure his illness. Oh, yes, the females in the story are Thelma Todd as Lady Genevieve and Dorothy Lee as Mary Ann Dale. One of the best supporting actor butlers of the golden age of Hollywood is in this film - Robert Greig as The Duke. Some other familiar faces are Noah Beery, Billy Gilbert, and Franklin Pangborn.

The best of the humor here is in the situations and antics, although the dialog is peppered with one-liners, mostly by Woolsey. The latter was much funnier in its day than in modern times because of its delivery. Some actors - especially comedians, had carried a vaudeville habit of speaking to the audience into films. Woolsey isn't as obvious as Groucho Marx or Red Skelton, for instance, but one can still see it in his tongue-in-cheek one-liners that are usually accompanied by raised eyebrows or darting side-glances. Two great entertainers later made films in which one or both of them would speak to the audience directly. In the Road Show films and some others of the 1950s, Bing Crosby ad Bob Hope would step aside in a scene to make a comment to the audience, looking directly into the camera. It may have been a little extra funny to some back then, but it was a characteristic that I think hampered the appeal of such films for audiences in the future.

Anyway, this is a funny film with Bert and Bob looking even more hilarious when they don the fancy English costumers. Here are some favorite lines from this film.

Robert Waltravers (Bob Woolsey), "She's liable to have us beheaded." Bert Winstanley (Bert Wheeler), "Beheaded? Can she d that?" Bob, "Sure, she can be had." (sic)

Bert, "You know, the doctor says I'm a kleptomaniac." Bob, "Yeah, well why don't you take something for it?" Bert, "I've taken everything."

Bert, "Do you think we ought a send for a lawyer?" Bob, "Certainly not. We're in enough trouble as it is."

Similar to Laurel and Hardy, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were a (lesser known) comedy team of the 1930's. "Cockeyed Cavaliers" is the only one of their movies I've ever seen. It's a lively, fun little movie, full of obviously deliberate anachronisms featuring Wheeler and Woolsey as a couple of ne'er do wells in 17th century (?) England, who get mistaken for the King's physicians.

The movie has an imaginative musical opening, and several musical numbers scattered throughout (The Big, Bad Wolf was great fun.) Wheeler and Woolsey get to join in the song and dance routines, and they even find romance along the way. There are also a fair number of laughs around Woolsey's character being a kleptomaniac who steals - literally - anything and everything, up to and including horses and carriages. It's a little difficult to accept that Dorothy Lee (who played Woolsey's love interest) could have been mistaken for a boy - but I guess that's just part of the movie's quirky charm.

I'm just not much of a fan of the comedy teams of this era unfortunately. (No - not even Laurel & Hardy.) But, still, this is an enjoyable enough movie to pass some time with. Fans of the genre if this era would rate this much higher than I do. (6/10)