[1] In other London productions in 1932–33 he played the Guide in Miracle at Verdun, Master Klaus in The Witch and Godfrey Perry in Wild Justice.

He made his Broadway debut in the same year, in the Old Vic's production of St Helena, playing Las Cases to the Bonaparte of Maurice Evans.

[1] After returning to London, Wheatley's last stage roles of the 1930s were Disraeli in Mr Gladstone, with Devlin; Mosca in Volpone, with Donald Wolfit,; Frank Harris in Oscar Wilde with Francis L. Sullivan; Sebastian in Walk in the Sun, with Terence de Marney; and Sir Patrick Cullen in The Doctor's Dilemma, with Clifford Evans.

[1] The Times said of him, "His clarity of diction and balanced speaking voice became well known in war-time Europe, where people in occupied countries turned to the BBC for information".

[6] While serving with the European Service Wheatley met Rafael Nadal, a friend of Federico García Lorca, and developed an interest in the poet's works.

[8] When BBC television resumed after its suspension during the war, Wheatley played a wide range of characters, from Sam Weller again (1946), to the humorously cynical schoolmaster Rupert Billings in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1949) and the tragic king in Richard II (1950).

[10] Wheatley's film credits in the 1940s include Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), The Rake's Progress (1945), Appointment with Crime (1946), Brighton Rock (1947) and Calling Paul Temple (1948).

At the end of the year he joined the company at the Mercury Theatre, London, where his roles included the Greek and Tegeus in a double bill of W. B. Yeats's The Resurrection and Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Frequent,[11] Julian in Ronald Duncan's This Way to the Tomb (which the cast also played at the Studio Champs-Elysées in Paris and the Garrick Theatre, London), and Harry in T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion.

[1] In December of the same year he played Abanazar in Aladdin, a lavish show at the London Coliseum, with songs by Cole Porter, production and choreography by Robert Helpmann, and co-starring Bob Monkhouse, Ian Wallace and Ronald Shiner.

He played Richard D'Oyly Carte in a three-part BBC television series Gilbert and Sullivan: The Immortal Jesters (1961), and appeared in episodes of Maigret (1962 and 1963), Doctor Who, where his character was the first ever to be seen being killed by a dalek and Compact, both in 1964.

He acted in adaptations of plays by writers including Noël Coward and Somerset Maugham, and of novels by Alexandre Dumas, James Hilton, Anthony Powell and C. P. Snow among others.