COCKEYED CAVALIERS

 

COCKEYED CAVALIERS is a 1934 RKO comedy starring Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey. The team of Wheeler & Woolsey were featured in a number of RKO pictures in the 1930s, but very few are familiar with the duo today. 

Wheeler & Woolsey's comedies are filled with silly puns, double entendres, and Pre-Code suggestiveness. The weirdness of the films stick out more than the duo themselves. Robert Woolsey was the more assertive of the pair, and the best way I can describe him is that he was a combination of George Burns and Groucho Marx. (Woolsey wore glasses and was almost always smoking a cigar.) Woolsey usually played a fast-talking con artist, while his partner Bert Wheeler was a naive whiny-voiced dolt who didn't really have any major personality traits, other than constantly having a puzzled expression on his face. The two often sang and performed funny dances in their outings. They managed to be popular enough to star in numerous features, but I expect if viewers were to come across them for the first time in 2025, they would be scratching their heads wondering why the pair were the top comedians at a major Hollywood studio. 

COCKEYED CAVALIERS sees them placed in what appears to be late 17th Century--early 18th Century England. The pair are on the run, due to Bert being a kleptomaniac (he has the magical ability to steal anything from anyone at any time). W & W come across a young woman (Dorothy Lee) running away from a forced marriage. (Dorothy has disguised herself as a young boy, which only makes her look more feminine.) The now trio wind up at the manor of a portly Duke (Robert Grieg), who needs medical attention. Robert pretends to be the King's physician, with Bert as his assistant. Staying with the Duke is his gorgeous niece, Lady Genevieve (Thelma Todd). Bob does his best to cozy up to the flirty Lady, who is married to a Baron (Noah Beery) who spends most of his time hunting, while Dorothy tries to stay inconspicuous, since the Duke is the one she is supposed to marry. 

The plot of COCKEYED CAVALIERS doesn't really matter--it's just an excuse to involve W & W in some goofy antics taking place in Merrie Olde England. Dorothy Lee starred in most of the W & W films (so many she was basically the third member of the team). As usual, Lee and Bert Wheeler become a romantic couple, at least when he finally figures out that she is a she (the fact that W & W actually believe Dorothy's posing as a boy shows how dopey these guys are). Dorothy Lee provided the W & W movies with beauty and spunk, although one has to wonder why her characters would be interested in someone as nondescript as Bert. 

The best parts of this film involve the scenes between Robert Woolsey and Thelma Todd. Thelma had already appeared with W & W in HIPS HIPS HOORAY (the duo's best feature), and she and Woolsey continue the comic rapport they had developed in that picture. Thelma had also already played a very similar role to Lady Genevieve in Laurel & Hardy's FRA DIAVOLO/THE DEVIL'S BROTHER--in that one she's another flirty aristocratic wife married to a nobleman (James Finlayson). Todd is devastatingly lovely as always, and the impressive period costumes she wears show off plenty of cleavage. 

COCKEYED CAVALIERS was directed by Mark Sandrich, who had already worked with W & W on HIPS HIPS HOORAY. Sandrich would go on to direct a number of the famed Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, and COCKEYED CAVALIERS is an example of his ability to weave musical numbers and dances into a smoothly-running main story. At a point during one of W & W's silly dance routines, the action is presented in slow-motion--a very unique choice for 1934. 

The frantic climax of COCKEYED CAVALIERS comes off as too rushed--nearly the entire sequence is sped up, and the movie ends quite abruptly. One wonders if some RKO executives felt the movie needed trimming. (The climax might also annoy animal lovers--it involves a wild boar, and it's obvious that in most of the sequence an actual boar was used, even in close proximity to W & W.) 

Wheeler & Woolsey are certainly an acquired taste, but COCKEYED CAVALIERS benefits from Thelma Todd's presence. It also has cameos by Franklin Pangborn, Billy Gilbert, and Charlie Hall. It's more amusing than laugh out loud funny--I personally believe that Wheeler & Woolsey worked far better in a modern American Pre-Code environment.