Everything's Rosie

1931's "Everything's Rosie" was the result of RKO's attempt to split the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey (after six successful comedies together), in the mistaken belief that the duo would bring in twice the revenue by working in separate films. Wheeler's picture, "Too Many Cooks" (issued AFTER Woolsey's by the way), had just been completed when Woolsey began shooting his own, a story that has been described as a ripoff of W. C. Fields's stage hit "Poppy," previously made as the silent "Sally of the Sawdust," but not remade until 1936 (interestingly, Woolsey was a co-star in the Broadway version). Director Clyde Bruckman became notorious for borrowing other people's material, having worked with the likes of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. What has never been discussed is the fact that "Rosie" also looks forward to such W. C. Fields titles as "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man," where Fields hilariously takes on high society. Cast as J. Dockweiler Droop ('Doc' for short), Woolsey is a carnival huckster revealed to have a heart of gold, adopting a three year old girl named Rosie who attaches herself to him. Growing into lovely adulthood (Anita Louise, breathtaking at 16), Rosie wants to move on from their wandering lifestyle and marry a wealthy young man who falls for her after splashing the girl with mud. 'Doc' name drops uncles all over the world, and the socialites always eat it up, even falling for the old shell game. There's really no part for Bert Wheeler in this film, and Woolsey is quite funny in his asides with suckers, not in the same league as Fields, but able to hold his own. Among the familiar faces are Noah Young (Harold Lloyd), Leo Willis (Laurel and Hardy), Frank Darien (Charlie Chase), and three performers who later worked with W. C. Fields himself- Nora Cecil ("You're Telling Me," "The Old Fashioned Way"), George Chandler ("The Fatal Glass of Beer"), and 15 year old Rochelle Hudson, "Poppy" herself, in only her second feature film (among the party guests). The experiment having failed, RKO quickly reunited Wheeler and Woolsey, who went on to do an additional 14 more features for the studio, only ending with Woolsey's untimely death in 1938.