The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-02-10
In Hollywood.
BY ERsKTNE JOHNSON
 NEA Staff Correspondent


 You gotta give little Mert Wheeler a lot of credit. It's rough going when a high-powered screen comedy team is broken up. But Bert is climbing back on the bandwagon.
 ''Just like starting all over again" !" he says.
 Nine years ago the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey was the hottest thing in pictures. They was as big as Abbott and Costello today. They co-Starred in 45 com- edies, earned neat six million dollars for the RKO studio.
 The one morning in 1887 Wool sey's heart acted up. They carried him off the set on strtecher and he never returned. A double com- pleted the picture with Wheeler.
 For six months Wheeler wan- dered around town in daze. After working as a team with the same partner in 45 pictures-well, the old fight was gone.
 When Bert was ready to return to work, Hollywood would have none of him. Wheeler without Woolsey!" Casting directors and producers winced. "It's no good. It's like coffee without sugar. The guy is washed up.
 q couldn't understand it." Wheeler said. T used to get laughs before I met Woosley. So decided the only thing to do was to start all over again."
 BACK TO THE BOARDS
 Bert went to England and played the musical comedy halls and was 8 big hit. Then, just before war broke out, he returned to New York and became the star oftwoh and became the star of two hit Broadway shows, ''Priorities" and Laugh Time. The road company of Laugh Time'' finally brought him back to Hollywood, where every talent scout and Hollywoodite in the audience agreed he was the funniest thing in the show.
 They offered him three movie roles. But Bert turned them down. 'They were the same old stuff musical comedy routines," he said.
 The comedy Bert Wheeler would like to do on the screen now is far different from the old slapstick stuff which once earned him $100,0OO a picture. He describes it as comedy relief in dramatic pie tures." Like the role John Gar field played in Destination Tokyo With a background of 30 years in show business, he probably could do it well.
 Meanwhile, he has spot on a national radio program and enough personal appearance and vaude- vile offers to give an agent nerv- ous indigestion. If don't get the right kind of role in Hollywood this time," he says, ''I'u go back on the road until the right spot does come along"
 We know a lot of swell stories about Bert, but the one we like best concerns the only time Frank Fay was left speeches..
 When vaudeville was at it's peak, Fay was cracking boxoffice records at the Palace theater in New York City. He'd been playing the theater 57 consecutive weeks, and was still packin' in the customers when Wheeler was booked on the same bill. Before Bert opened, Fay went to his dressing room and suggested they do an afterpiece together. "We1l just wo out and do some fancy ad libbing." Fay said, Wheel CT tried to get out of it, knowing Fay as the best ad libber in hte business, but Fay was insistent and there was nothing Bert could do. ACE AD-LIB
 So the boys went out together and Fay started talking but Wheel CT just stood. there and didn't say a word. Finally Fay got mad and asked Bert why he didn't say something. Go Bert said, Frank do you want me to get bigger