The Other Wheeler and Woolsey
The Untold Story of the Wives of the Famous Comedy Duo
My great grandfather Bert Wheeler and his partner Robert Woolsey were one of the most successful comedy teams of the 1930s. Second only to Laurel and Hardy at the movie box office, these veterans of vaudeville and Broadway were primarily responsible for keeping the fledgling RKO Radio Pictures afloat during the Great Depression years. Nowadays the boys and their films are largely forgotten, though they have gained more recognition in recent decades due to the published efforts of film historians like Leonard Maltin and Edward Watz. The increased availability of their films on cable television, video and DVD has also modestly expanded the pool of the comedy team’s devoted fans (Warner Archive, for example, recently released a ninefilm DVD collection of their movies, with possibly more to come). With the increase in exposure and popularity comes a renewed interest in the personal lives of the boys and their loved ones.
Wheeler and Woolsey both ascended to movie stardom as married men. By the time the comedy duo arrived in Hollywood to begin filming their first movie together, Rio Rita, they were each hitched to ladies who had themselves spent years in vaudeville and on Broadway. Bert was paired with my great grandmother, Bernice Speer, a diminutive, dark-haired hoofer from San Francisco. Though only twenty-two-years-old when she married Bert, Bernice had already spent more than a decade on stage in roles ranging from ballerina to nightclub dancing girl. Bob, meanwhile, was married to Mignonne Reed, a southern belle-turned-entertainer who hailed from the uppermost crust of Savannah society. Trained as a professional dancer, Mignonne appeared on stage with Bob in a number of Broadway shows, where she fell in love with the wisecracking comic.
While Bert and Bob’s partnership ended when Bob died in 1938, the friendship between Bernice and Mignonne endured long after the names of Wheeler and Woolsey disappeared from the theater marquee. For over fifty years, “the other Wheeler and Woolsey” lived in close proximity, enjoyed each other’s company, and kept tabs on the other’s family. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I had little idea that these two ladies, each of whom lived right next to me, had once rubbed shoulders with some of the most famous people in show business. At that time my great grandmother lived in a modest apartment located one block away from my residence. Once referred to as “Mrs. Bert Wheeler,” she was then known as Audray Myland, a name change she made based on the advice of a numerologist. She rarely spoke about her former career, much less about her past life with Bert. I knew even less about Mignonne, who stood out to me as a kid mostly because she lived in the largest and most glorious house of anybody I knew. Much like Bert and Bob, the stories of Bernice and Mignonne had by then seemingly succumbed to the mists of time, a loss facilitated by the ladies’ chosen silence on the matter. It was only after they were gone that I came to learn of Wheeler and Woolsey’s amazing ride and the roles that their wives played in it. And in the process I discovered that Bernice and Mignonne each had a story to tell, even if they were not the ones to tell it.
Bernice Speer
Bernice Speer was born on December 16, 1905 in Anderson, California, the first child of William and Nellie Naves Speer. Despite a naturally shy temperament, Bernice took to the stage by age eleven, specializing in French, Russian, Spanish and American ballets. A post card dating from this early period shows little Bernice in a scene from “Le Secret”, a performance which required her to dress like a musketeer, complete with a cavalier hat, plume and hair shortened to fit her boyish role.
At the age of thirteen, Bernice and her mother Nellie traveled from California to New York to launch Bernice’s dancing act on the Keith circuit. En route, they stopped for short engagements at venues like the Palais de Danse in Detroit, where Bernice was hailed as a “winsome lassie … with child-like grace and the touch of the finished artist of years.” After a very successful stint at the Palais, Bernice traveled to Chicago to appear at one of the winter gardens there. All along the way, Nellie, who served as Bernice’s manager, continued to educate her daughter in the fine arts, putting her through musical and stage courses while they endured the rigors of the road.
Bernice eventually emerged in Chicago, where she appeared with Nat Nazarro, Jr.’s jazz sextet at the Majestic Theatre and other local venues. Described as an agile and graceful dancer, Bernice’s footwork reportedly drew prolonged applause and, on at least one occasion, virtually stopped the show. Al Capone is said to have viewed one of her performances. Feeling badly after Bernice slipped during a routine, the gangster handed her a hundred dollar bill. “Thank you, Mr. Caponay” she exclaimed in astonished gratitude. “It’s Capone” he replied, correcting her pronunciation.
By 1921, Bernice had moved on to the brighter lights of New York City. There she obtained a role in a dance revue bearing her name, Bernice Speer and Boys. The show opened with a special scrim drop depicting a painted girl costumed exactly like Bernice, who was revealed upon its rise. She began with a song and was joined by two dancing boys. After a costume change, she appeared again as a dancing doll in a number that was well received. According to Variety, the show was “not ready for big time, but has possibilities, Miss Speer having youth, ability and charm.”
Bernice went on to appear in Their 7 Harmony Hounds (1921), Japanese Revue (1921), The Ginger Box (1922), Tea for Two — I Mean Three (1922), Devil Land (1923), George Cohan’s The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly (1923–1924), and A Trial Honeymoon (1924). Bernice starred in The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly with soon-to-be-famous singer and dancer, Ruby Keeler, with whom she would become good friends.
In 1925, Bernice and Ruby went to work for the infamous Texas Guinan, New York’s wisecracking and flamboyant nightclub queen. A former actress who had starred in silent films, Guinan’s real claim to fame was as hostess of a number of speakeasies awash with liquor and filled with scantily-clad dancing girls. In 1924, Guinan collaborated with bootlegger and racketeer Larry Fay to open the El Fey night club on west 47th Street. When federal prosecutors padlocked the El Fey for violating anti-liquor laws, the improvisational Guinan took Bernice Speer and the rest of her dancing girls on the road. The “El Fey Cabaret” was essentially a reproduction of a typical night at the El Fey, including waiters, ten chorus girls, a tenor singer, and extras dressed up as prominent New Yorkers sitting around dinner tables. Guinan herself presided over the bacchanalia (minus the liquor, of course). The show premiered at the Hippodrome and proved to be a success. A short time later, “the El Fey” nightclub was reincarnated as “the Del Fey”, located just two blocks away from its predecessor. Guinan was again “packing them in like sardines” and the new nightclub was as wildly popular as the first. After viewing one of her performances at the Del Fey, Variety noted that Bernice Speer and a few other dancing girls “richly deserved their applause.” The fun did not last, however, as federal prosecutors soon closed the Del Fey after it was discovered that a faucet fed by a pipe from an adjacent building was supplying patrons with scotch, gin and champagne.
Later that year, Bernice landed one of the biggest roles of her career when she obtained a spot in the Marx Brothers’ musical comedy, The Cocoanuts. With a score composed by Irving Berlin, The Cocoanuts premiered on Broadway on December 8, 1925 and would run for over two hundred performances before closing on August 7, 1926. Set against the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, the comedy featured Groucho Marx as a hotel proprietor and con man who, assisted by Chico, Harpo and Zeppo, attempts to swindle a wealthy dowager. Bernice appeared in the Second Act, dancing to a musical number entitled “We Should Care.” Following the New York premiere, reviewer Alexander Woollcott wrote, “[T]he high moments had been pretty much the goings on of Groucho and Harpo….Also a moment of a tiny girl named — I think — Bernice Speers (sic), of whose beguilements The Cocoanuts might have made more use without surfeiting any of us.”
After this success, Bernice found a role in the Earl Carroll Vanities of 1926. In December of that year, she celebrated her twenty-first birthday with the cast of the Vanities. In lieu of drinking “giggling water”, as would have been appropriate if Prohibition were not then in effect, the company enjoyed three cakes instead. Although Bernice had officially achieved womanhood, newspapers reported that “pretty little Bernice is still a little girl in the eyes of her associates whose greatest delight is to ‘pick’ on her, particularly because of her diminutive size.”
The story of how Bert Wheeler met Bernice and the events leading up to their marriage is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Having both spent years in vaudeville, they had likely known each other for some time. We know that as early as January of 1927, Bernice was reported in transit to Philadelphia to see her “Rio Rita Romeo”, a reference to the lavish stage musical, then showing in Philly, which joined Wheeler and Woolsey for the first time. It is entirely possible that Bert and Bernice met at one of Texas Guinan’s speakeasies. Shortly after Rio Rita premiered on Broadway in February 1927, a local newspaper reported that Bert had spent an evening at one of Guinan’s nightclubs. Three days later, Bert received a stinging telegram from his boss, impresario Flo Ziegfeld, protesting, “If you must be one of those all night bums why don’t you do it under cover and keep it out of the papers[.] You certainly are killing yourself in NY as quick as possible[.]”
Ziegfeld’s criticisms did not have the desired effect of keeping Bert out of the nightclubs or out of the newspapers. Later that year, Bert and his entourage were carousing at the Little Club on 44th Street, a nightspot where my great grandmother was performing. According to the New York Sun, “Bert Wheeler and his party stopped, looked and listened with the rest of the throng as BERNICE SPEERS (sic) skillfully applied her contagious pep and personality to a popular song. Enthusiastically, someone ventured, ‘She certainly has IT!’ ‘IT?’ cried Bert. ‘Why, man, she’s got THEM!’”
In the summer of 1928, Bert, Bernice and Al Clair traveled to California where they resurrected an old act that Bert had once performed with his ex-wife Margaret “Betty” Grae, Bits of Everything. Then, in August 1928, newspapers announced that Bert and Bernice had secretly married earlier that year in April, with no one being the wiser. The “official story” is that my great grandparents married on April 15, 1928 in Jersey City, New Jersey. But according to a contemporary article in the New York Evening Post, Bert and Bernice had actually married while in California, at least according to Bert’s relatives. In any event, a little over four months after the marriage was publicly announced, Bernice gave birth to my grandmother, Patricia Dolores Wheeler, during the Chicago run of Rio Rita.
In May 1929, Bert, Bernice and Al Clair collaborated once again, this time on Small Timers, an eighteen-minute Vitaphone short in which the trio unsuccessfully attempts to impress a talent agent played by Sam Silverbush. Unfortunately this movie footage has been lost, though the audio elements still survive:
Mignonne Reed
Mignonne “Minnie” Park Reed was born near Atlanta, Georgia on September 26, 1894 (she claimed at various times to have been born in 1896 or 1897). She was the youngest of five children born to Homer and Minnie Park Reed. At the age of sixteen, Mignonne appeared in The Merry Widowers in New York, where, according to hometown papers, she was “fast winning the praise of critical Broadway.” Like Bernice, Mignonne was chaperoned by her mother, who ensured that her daughter studied voice and expression under the best teachers in New York. During this early period, Atlanta papers crowed, “She is a very talented as well as a very beautiful young girl, and has shown a remarkable aptitude for her work….She has been working assiduously for the past three years to perfect herself in her art, and competent critics in New York pronounce her exceedingly clever. She is a girl of fine sense, thoroughly in love with her work, and extremely ambitious.”
Mignonne secured a permanent position at the Herald Square Theatre in New York, but her stage career was interrupted early due to a series of family troubles. At the end of 1910, she and her mother returned to Savannah on account of the illness of one of her sisters. While there she opened a dancing school, which proved to be a success. She continued to dance at various local venues, including the Bijou in Savannah, where she was declared a “hit” by Variety.
Most of Mignonne’s family eventually migrated from Georgia to New York, where they took up residence on Riverside Drive along the Hudson River. A major reason for the move, at least in the case of Mignonne’s father, was to escape from the law. In December 1911, Homer Reed was arrested in Atlanta on a warrant charging him with swindling a man out of three thousand dollars by selling him stock in a defunct insurance company. Finding himself behind bars, Homer appealed to his influential connections, including then Georgia governor Hoke Smith, who vouched for Homer and was able to obtain his release from custody. When Homer subsequently failed to appear for trial, he was arrested again, posted bail through the assistance of an individual named John Kelley, and then promptly fled the state. Two years later, Kelley’s legal representatives found Homer in New York and served requisition papers on the governor there to have Homer extradited to Georgia. He was eventually sent back to his home state to stand trial, but the outcome of his criminal proceeding is unknown. He returned to New York and obtained employment with the Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Whether due to Homer’s legal troubles or some other reason, Mignonne is barely mentioned in the trade journals over the next several years. We know that she resided for a time in Columbia, South Carolina, where she conducted private dance lessons with Easton Yonge, an actor with whom she would later perform in the Broadway musical, Nothing But Love. She subsequently landed a role in The Cohan Review of 1916. That same year, Mignonne contracted with Paramount to appear in a number of silent films, including Little Lady Eileen starring Marguerite Clark. Through an innovative use of double exposure, Mignonne appears in the film as the leader of a dancing group of miniature fairies who intervene to save Clark’s character from an ill-fated marriage.
In 1918, Mignonne landed a role in Leave It To Jane, a successful musical comedy based on the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College. She then joined Oscar Shaw, the leading comedian of that musical, for a series of dance matinees. Mignonne went on to appear in The Velvet Lady (1919), a musical comedy composed by Victor Herbert, the father-inlaw of Robert Woolsey’s ex-wife, Helen Meher.
In 1919, Mignonne obtained her first Broadway engagement when she joined Robert Woolsey on the cast of Nothing But Love, a comedy that seems to have gained notice primarily on account of its beautiful chorus and scarcity of clothing. Following its Boston premiere, Variety wryly noted, “Such a wonderful assortment of knees, bare knees, too, and in some cases thighs have not been seen here for some time. They may not be seen here again in the near future….” Mignonne followed this accomplishment with Bleaty-Bleaty (1920), The Half Moon (1920) (featuring future Wheeler and Woolsey alumna Edna May Oliver), and then teamed up with Robert Woolsey again for another Broadway engagement, The Right Girl (1921).
Following the run of The Right Girl, Robert and Mignonne were married by Magistrate Bernard J. Douras in the summer of 1921. Actor William Harrigan served as the best man, while actress Marion Davies (the daughter of Magistrate Douras and mistress of William Randolph Hearst) served as maid of honor. According to Mignonne’s niece, Bob was the one who insisted that his wife spell her name “Mignonne.” This seems to be corroborated by the newspapers, which usually referred to her as “Mignon” or “Minnie” until the announcement of her marriage to Bob. The newly wed couple soon settled down in Great Neck on Long Island, where Mignonne retired from show business.
Married Life
In the spring of 1929, Bert, Bob and their wives packed their bags and headed west to the sunny climes of southern California to begin making the film version of Rio Rita. By all accounts, the boys and their spouses enjoyed spending time with one another in their new environs. They took up residence near each other in the Malibu Colony, a beach enclave populated by stars of the burgeoning talking picture industry. The Hollywood gossip columns are replete with accounts of their appearances together at various social events. In March 1930, for example, the Woolseys hosted the Wheelers and other friends (including uncredited Wheeler and Woolsey consultant, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle) at a Sunday evening supper dance at the Embassy Club on Hollywood Boulevard. Several months later, the Wheelers returned the favor, inviting the Woolseys and others guests to the same venue to enjoy supper at tables decorated with roses and freesias.
When Wheeler and Woolsey’s Dixiana opened at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles in the summer of 1930, loud speakers alerted the throng outside to the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Wheeler and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woolsey as they alighted from their limousines to run through the gauntlet of adoring fans. Afterwards, Bebe Daniels, Dorothy Lee, Bert and Bob, and other members of the cast appeared on the lavish stage to address the other celebrities and fans in attendance (Bernice would often refer to Bebe Daniels in later years).
Later that summer, when Director Wesley Ruggles threw a beach party for his brother Charles at his residence in the Malibu Colony, the Wheelers and Woolseys were among the guests. Fortunately for posterity, Wesley filmed the beach party with a pee wee camera. Interestingly, Bert, Bernice and Mignonne are depicted sharing a laugh while perusing a newspaper feature about Bert’s ex-wife, Betty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQhB9SeF3r4
Woolsey inspiration and look-alike Walter Catlett was also at the party. Catlett would later bring the summer to a close with a brilliant party of his own at George Olsen’s Revue Club in Hollywood, which was attended by the inseparable boys and their wives. The famous song-writing team of Kalmar and Ruby, composers of several Wheeler and Woolsey musical numbers, was also in attendance.
On November 7, 1930, the boys and their wives were together again in San Bernardino for Dorothy Lee’s marriage to James Fidler. A short time later, they all traveled to the Agua Caliente Casino and Resort in Tijuana to celebrate the new year. While there, Bert and Bob witnessed a highly publicized spat between Luther Reed, the director of Rio Rita and Dixiana, and his wife Jocelyn Lee. The boys were playing blackjack in the casino with Reed when his wife appeared and demanded money. Reed described what happened next: “I gave her half of what I had and she called me a cheap something or other, and then Woolsey said something funny. I forget what it was, and she got even madder than ever. ‘You got plenty to lend to these blankety-blank actors, but you cheap dog, you can’t give your wife any.’ So then, she threw a handful of silver dollars in my face, and the Mexican police took us in charge.” The couple ended up back in their hotel room, where the dispute became even more violent. The next morning, Bert and Bernice saw Reed, bloodied and bruised, at the Grant Hotel in San Diego, while Jocelyn Lee was seen unscathed. Several months later, Bert and Bernice were called to testify about what they had witnessed at Reed’s divorce proceedings.
Bert and Bernice’s appearance in divorce court would, unfortunately, presage things to come for the couple. In June 1931, they separated from each other after they became embroiled in a heated argument over an unspecified matter. Although they reconciled soon thereafter, their marriage remained on the rocks and ultimately would never recover.
Later that summer, RKO sent the boys on a trip to Europe to make personal appearances in connection with their film, Hook, Line and Sinker. The Wheelers and Woolseys joined each other in New York to embark on a voyage aboard the transatlantic liner S.S. Leviathan. My aunt, Bonnie La Barber (Bert’s granddaughter), recently unearthed photographs of the trip which confirm something Bernice had mentioned but which we were never able to confirm: comedian Jack Benny also accompanied Wheeler and Woolsey on their jaunt to Europe. One of these photographs depicts Bert and Bob, their wives, and Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone in an ebullient mood as they imbibe champagne in a Paris bar. Even so, the recent fissure in Bert and Bernice’s relationship is evident. In the photos, Jack Benny has his arm around Bernice, not Bert, who seems to be keeping his distance.
At the end of 1931, Bert and Bernice abandoned their Malibu Colony residence and began living separately in Hollywood apartments. Bernice announced that she would file for divorce, stating, “Bert and I have come to the conclusion it is impossible to continue longer as Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler. It is merely a matter of incompatibility and nothing more. We are sure we will be able to continue as friends.” Bernice retained custody of three-year-old Patty and was made the beneficiary of $100,000 trust established by Bert (Bernice was still living off the trust when we knew her years later). Bernice would not actually get around to filing for divorce until January 1936, when Bert asked her to obtain the decree so that he could marry his third wife, Sally Haines. At the divorce hearing, Bernice testified, “My husband left me in December 1, 1931, and hasn’t returned … We just couldn’t agree.” Her mother Nellie provided a little more insight into the cause of the split. She confided to the judge that Bert once said he wished to be free to come and go as he pleased.
Not too long after the divorce, Robert Woolsey became increasingly ill due to kidney ailments. On October 31, 1938, he died at his Malibu residence with Mignonne and her mother, Minnie Park Reed, at his side. After Bob’s death, Bert went on to make a few more feature films, including The Cowboy Quarterback (1939) and Las Vegas Nights (1941). But Bert thrived in front of a live audience, which is where he largely spent the next thirty years, performing in innumerable shows on stage and on Broadway.
Life After Wheeler and Woolsey
Bernice Wheeler and Mignonne Woolsey remained close friends long after Bert and Bob were no longer in the picture. It is no coincidence that they eventually took up residence in the same city. Given that neither one of these ladies continued to fraternize with the Hollywood crowd, their ongoing friendship suggests the presence of a deeper bond between them. They no doubt leaned on each other as they adjusted to lives without their husbands.
In the 1940s, Mignonne left the Palm Springs and Malibu homes she had shared with Bob and moved into a Pasadena residence occupied by her mother, Minnie, and her two brothers, Adrian and Homer, Jr. Boasting over 13,000 square feet of living space, the stately-looking mansion is an exact replica of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles getaway, Le Petit Trianon. Mignonne’s mother had been living in this residence since 1932, when she moved from New York shortly after her husband’s death. Meanwhile, Bernice also moved in with her mother, Nellie, albeit in a less aristocratic abode. By the 1940s, they resided in the Hollywood enclave of Toluca Lake, where my grandmother Patty would later meet my grandfather at the nearby Lakeside Golf Club. By the 1950s, Bernice and Nellie moved closer to Mignonne in Pasadena and occupied a number of different homes there over the years.
A few years after Robert Woolsey’s death, Mignonne married Robert Andrew Poyer. Mignonne’s niece remembers Poyer as an opportunist who was perhaps more interested in money than in companionship. She recalls a visit from Mignonne and Poyer in 1945 at her family home in Savannah. The following year, she and her sister visited their aunt at her residence in Pasadena. At that time, Mignonne was still living with her mother, her two brothers, and Poyer. The two brothers apparently holed themselves up in their rooms during their visit, an odd circumstance which Mignonne’s niece attributes to the brothers’ ongoing struggles with alcoholism. At that time, Mignonne was fond of wearing long fur coats that nearly touched the ground. Apparently she was also an erratic driver, a fact which my aunt Bonnie would experience years later. As one might expect, Mignonne’s marriage to Robert Poyer did not last and she changed her name back to Woolsey after the couple went their separate ways.
My great grandmother Bernice never remarried, though she did maintain a long-running correspondence with artist Boris Lovett Lorsky. Bernice continued to live with Nellie until she was no longer able to care for her mother and eventually made arrangements for her at a convalescent facility. Bernice helped raise my dad, Michael, and his sister, Bonnie, especially after my grandmother Patty died of cancer at the young age of thirty-eight. Bernice would occasionally attend services at a local Catholic parish and even made a few religious films. Bernice’s records indicate that, after her divorce from Bert, she continued to dabble in dance productions at local theaters.
In the late 1950s, my dad (Bert Wheeler’s grandson) periodically lived with Mignonne over a two-year span. At that time he was attending the Mount Lowe Military Academy in Altadena for the third and fourth grades. About once a month, Mignonne would pick him up in her black Lincoln and drive him back to her residence to stay for the weekend. During the day, my dad had free reign of the rambling mansion, exploring everything from the mysterious attic to the expansive grounds, while at night he slept in the butler’s quarters. In the large French provincial-style Salle à manger (dining room), Mignonne still displayed pictures of “Bobbie” in a glass cabinet. Adrian Reed was still a resident at this time. He was in the habit of traipsing down the road to the Huntington Sheraton Hotel, where he liked to “drink and party.” Mignonne never had any children, but one wonders whether these extended visits from my dad helped to fulfill any maternal instinct she may have had. For his part, my dad enjoyed returning to his “home away from home” in later years. He once took my mother there for a dinner date before they were married.
Bernice and Mignonne, along with my dad and his sister Bonnie, often met for lunch at the old Brown Derby, the Hollywood hotspot where Bert and Bob were so often seen and photographed. At other times they dined at Mignonne’s mansion. On one occasion, Mignonne set out an elaborate china and silverware set, all for the sake of serving Kentucky Friend Chicken! My aunt Bonnie remembers these visits fondly. She recalls sliding down the banister on the grand staircase in the entryway, filling the cavernous residence with the rare sound of a child’s laughter. Not all the memories were so pleasant, however. During one trip to the grocery store, Mignonne crashed her car and left Bonnie with a scar which is still visible today.
When I was born in December 1973, I was immediately toted around to see the Wheeler and Woolsey families. Photographs document the numerous visits: snapshots of my great grandmother Bernice holding me a few days after birth; a picture of Bernice and Mignonne flanking me in front of the large fireplace in Mignonne’s dining room (likely taken on Christmas day); Nellie Speer cradling me in her wheel chair during a visit to her convalescent home. Other photographs document numerous return visits. A few months later, Mignonne gave my mom an expensive stroller and some baby clothes, a maternal generosity that she also displayed towards her nieces and nephews back in Georgia.
I remember Bernice (or “Grandma Audray” as she was known to me) as a petite elderly lady in horn-rimmed glasses, always bundled up in a sweater, her hair still naturally black. We would go out to dinner with her about once a week, picking her up at her apartment which she shared with her little dog “Pookie.” She usually had some gift to give me, like a little plastic film canister filled with pennies, nickels and dimes. Then we would go to her favorite restaurant, Sizzler, where she always picked up the tab.
On one occasion in the 1980s, we went over to Mignonne Woolsey’s mansion for dinner. By that time, Mignonne’s family members and former housemates had all passed away, though she had literally dozens of cats to keep her company! Struggling with dementia, she had forgotten that we were coming over, so we sat outside in the gazebo and ate ice cream. I remember being a little uneasy when she told us that she buried all her deceased cats in the rose garden where we were sitting. That was the last time I ever saw Mignonne.
One day in 1985, we received a phone call from Bernice’s brother, Stan, who told us he had not been able to reach Bernice. After we drove over to her apartment, we learned from Bernice’s neighbors that they had found her lying on the floor and that she had been taken to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, on October 8, 1985, she passed away at Huntington Memorial Hospital. She was interred next to her daughter Patty and her mother Nellie at Live Oak Cemetery in Monrovia. She was survived by Stan, three grandchildren and several great grandchildren.
In February 1986, conservatorship proceedings were commenced in Los Angeles Superior Court to appoint a conservator on Mignonne’s behalf, as she was no longer able to care for herself. A few years later, on April 20, 1989, she passed away at the same medical facility where Bernice had succumbed just a few years before. Although they were separated in death by over fifty years, Mignonne was interred immediately next to Robert Woolsey at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. She was survived by four nieces and nephews and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews.
During their ride of fame in the 1930s, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were pals both on and off the screen. Far from being a relationship of utility, the boys had a true and mutual affection that was evident even when the cameras stopped rolling. Something similar can be said of their wives. Long after the glitz of Hollywood social life had passed out of view, Bernice and Mignonne continued to be good friends and remained so until the end.
Patrick would like to thank Bonnie La Barber for contributing several photos used in this history. He would also like to thank Carol Laurence, Michael Laurence, Ed Watz, Amy Ross, Ted Okuda, and Jamie Brotherton for their assistance and input.
