Frank Wheeler

Frank Wheeler was a comedian of the highest rank, with a penchant for "gagging" that often left his company helpless with laughter.

Biography

According to D.C. Boonzaier (1923), he was "a comedian of the highest rank, with a penchant for "gagging" that often left his company helpless with laughter", adding that "(F)ew who witnessed their farewell performance of The Girls of Gottenburg in the Opera House stage of Cape Town ever forgot the scene where the entire company, joining in on the hilarity of the audience, abandoned all pretense at acting and abandoned themselves to the mirth he had introduced 'outside the lines' ".

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Together with his father, Ben Wheeler, he founded The Wheeler Theatre Company in Cape Town in May 1886. They became among the foremost theatrical managers in South Africa in the period before the Anglo-Boer war, were famous in all the large towns in South Africa and acted as impresarios to many great singers and musicians. Over the course of their period in South Africa both the company and the father-and-son business were usually referred to as Ben and Frank Wheeler, The Wheeler Brothers or simply The Wheelers, but they also created, named and managed a number of different companies by going into partnerships with other managers, and the name of the company was thus adapted to fit the case

In 1899, Frank and Ben Wheeler opened the Earl's Court Garden Theatre in Johannesburg.

As actor, Frank Wheeler appeared in Dandy Dick (1887), The Private Secretary (1886 and 1903), Falka (1889), Erminie (1890), Patience (1890), Pepita (1890), Dorothy (1890), The Yeomen of the Guard (1890), Walker, London (1892), L'Enfant Prodigue (1893), La Poupee (1898), Struck Oil (1903), The Merry Widow (1908 - his final performance in Cape Town).

For more information

For more information, see Wheeler Theatre Company.

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