Was teamed with Robert Woolsey for the Broadway production "Rio Rita",
the teaming was so successful, that they were signed by RKO to repeat
their stage roles in a movie version. Wheeler & Woolsey were the first comedy team to emerge as stars from sound pictures with their partnership lasting until Woolsey's death in 1938.
In later years he teamed with a new partner, Tommy Dillon, a young chap
he worked with in Las Vegas and Manhattan's Latin Quarter.
Bert Wheeler had one child with actress Bernice Wheeler. Their daughter, Patricia Anne Wheeler, was born in 1936 and died of cancer in 1968.
Nine of the 21 movies he and Woolsey made together were released in a DVD collection entitled "Wheeler & Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection" in March 2013 by Warner Archive.
Like the Three Stooges, Wheeler and Woolsey were rather short men. Bert was only 5'4" while his partner, Robert Woolsey, towered over him at 5' 5 1/2".
Soon after the death of his friend and partner Robert Woolsey in October of 1938 Bert Wheeler announced plans for a nonfiction book to be entitled "We Girdle the Globe". The book was to be dedicated to Woolsey and made up of direct quotes from a 12,000 word diary that Wheeler and Woolsey wrote together during a trip around the world in 1933. Apparently no such book was ever published.
In a September 1937 article Bert Wheeler named opera singer Lily Pons as one of his idols.