There’s at least a short story and maybe a book based in WWII. It begins with Wolfe exercising and planning to enlist. Archie has the unenviable job of explaining the Wolfe’s talents are better used helping the war effort.
Stout didn’t write much during the war years. He was too busy supporting the war in various organizations.
Next, Nero Wolfe vs. the Notorious Dr. Now.
Has anyone seen the 1960 “Nero Wolfe” series, staring Kurt Kasznar as Wolfe and William Shatner as Archie Goodwin?
In one of the lesser 1930s novels (THE RED BOX or THE RUBBER BAND) Wolfe took up an exercise regime to keep his weight down.
For 15 minutes a day, he played darts in the office.
Whoa, easy there, big fella!
I believe he referred to them as “javelins”.
The Rubber Band and Too Many Cooks are two of my favorites. I preferred the early books.
A&E created the best Wolfe Series. Superb details of the house, office and characters. Look for it on Hulu or Netflix .
IMDB says that three episodes were filmed, but never shown.
Damn it! Now I’ll have to search for clips.
Several factors have to be considered. First, what we know about Wolfe is all related by Archie Goodwin. Archie is not too big of a guy, a tough pugnacious character, but clearly sensitive about being considered diminutive by the variety of toughs and heavies he’s had to deal with. Being men, I suspect both Archie and Nero have exaggerated their heights by an inch or two as well. So Wolfe at actually 5’8" and 272 lbs. would seem quite rotund. Nothing indicates that he has the heavy frame that could hide that kind of weight, and as I said earlier, he would inflate his size and deflate his physical condition for effect. The average weight of people then certainly was lower, but large men of that type weren’t freakish, just somewhat less common. One can see numerous movie characters from the period that would conform to the image of Wolfe. There wouldn’t be a standard assumption that such men were sedentary, but in this case it is Wolfe’s self crafted image, related through Goodwin’s eyes, and Goodwin though good friend and business partner was often at odds with his boss and though respecting of the man’s intellect he had a slightly lower opinion of him in general.
From the same text:
In the book, he comments that there’s just no way he would be able to get Wolfe out of the office if he had to physically remove him.
I am skeptical.
This is interesting. It’s been years since I read any of the books, but I recall Archie being described as more of a middle-weight, shorter and lighter than that. 6 foot 180 pounds would be a pretty big guy in the time of the stories. My recollection could easily be wrong though.
Wolfe’s weight fluctuates from book to book and sometimes goes over 300 pounds before Stout settled on the one-seventh of a ton gimmick. Just like the address of the brownstone varies a lot, although almost always high enough to be set in the middle of the Hudson River.
Sidney Greenstreet is the best image of what Wolfe looked like. I can’t find a cite for his weight but he was 5’9" and around 300 pounds. He simply looked different from virtually everyone else in the movies, and that would be true in real life as well. I think it’s no coincidence that he was the voice of Nero Wolfe on radio in the early 50s, and great at it.
I have a fondness for the 1979 tv movie Nero Wolfe. It was supposed to be a pilot for a series but Thayer David, who did a magnificent Wolfe, was ill during the shooting (ironically, he had *lost *weight) and died shortly after.
A&E stayed faithful to the books description of Wolfe. The books mention several times that Wolfe was quite graceful and surprisingly quick for a large man.
https://goo.gl/images/WrrU9h
https://goo.gl/images/QGZGQ7
Maury Chaykin (died 2010) was large but not grossly obese
Archie was feeling **churlish and petulant when he described Nero as a huge man. 
** If you read the books, you’ll recall Archie often got moody. His role to needle Wolfe into action wasn’t easy.
I have only one complaint with the Stout series.
Some of the books push Archie out of the story. Saul and the others are given instructions directly by Wolfe.
That usually happens when the Author has written himself into a corner. We can’t be told that Saul needs to retrieve a specific item or instructed to find a witness because it would give away an obvious ending.
Archie is left in the dark and the reader is too. Since Archie is the narrator.
Stout always makes a big deal out of Archie’s frustration. Which then frustrates me as the reader. 
Agatha Christie and other mystery writers found better ways to keep the reader guessing till the end.
It was The Rubber Band, and definitely not one of the lesser novels.
Interestingly (to me, anyway) that’s the same size that Sam Spade was supposed to be. Although he gets by mainly on his wits, Archie has a number of instances where he has to use his fists or other physical prowesses to deal with, say, intruders into the house, and he does pretty well. If he wasn’t actually as big as described, he was in great shape and probably all well-trained muscle.
Nah, Christie does that all the time, from the very first Poirot book The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot knows things early on (and drops hints about them) but doesn’t tell them to Hastings (and therefore not to us) until the Final Showdown in the Drawing Room. I can’t see that as any different. There is even a supposed reason why some things are kept from Archie: because he is not so good at dissembling, and Wolfe needs to spring a surprise on someone with Archie present. If Archie knew whatever it is, he might not be able to keep from telegraphing it to the culprit.
He was definitely tough and in great shape. That’s what I’m recollecting, that the big guys would try to intimidate or go at it with Archie and come out the worse for the wear.
I still have my collection of Stout books. It’s not complete. I have perhaps a dozen of the novels.
My favorite is a special edition published by one of the Mystery Clubs. Triple Zeck. It has the trilogy in one book. I bought it at a flea market.
How good a job did they do scanning the old books for the Kindle editions?
Unless it is short ton or long ton. 
Yes, Wolfe was big and fat, but capable of easy movement. He did like chairs built to order, but mostly for comfort. However, I have seen a #250 man sit on a wood chari and it collapse, so I suspect Wolfe would have to watch out for that more back in the 30s and 40s.
There are a couple Wolfe stories set during WWII: Not Quite Dead Enough & Booby Trap, two rather long novellas often combined into one book.
Arnold Haiman has written a couple Wolfe pastiches:
http://arnoldhaiman.com/major-goodwin-returns.html
By comparison, this was the world’s heaviest man: Jon Brower Minnoch - Wikipedia