Ruggles of Red Gap

Charles Laughton was an incomparable actor (did anyone else ever go over the top as much as he did, yet still give brilliant performances?), and he's at the peak of his form in this classic. Laughton is just right as the staid butler who is won in a poker game by a couple from the Old West, circa 1908. Everyone is excellent--Mary Boland and Charlie Ruggles were one of the more popular screen couples of the day, and you'll see why--but it is Laughton who steals the film. His recitation of the Gettysburg Address is a demonstration of his mastery. It should fall flat, but it plays beautifully. See it.

I thought I saw everything until I saw Charles Laughton do comedy. His range is phenomenal. In one film he is playing Captain Bligh, and here he plays a shy, insecure British butler who ends up out west. Some scenes, although subtle, are hilarious. Laughton, besides being an actor, gave performances in oral reading and recital. Here he does a recital of the Gettysburg Address that is just fantastic. I mean, who would think something every grade school kid had to memorize could be moving. But it is. This movie is for anyone who really appreciates a truly gifted actor.

Director Leo McCarey, in his heyday a famous director and rival of Frank Capra's, and now largely forgotten, made one of his best films, Ruggles Of Red Gap, adapted from Harry Leon Wilson's novel, in 1935. It tells the story of a meek English butler named Ruggles, who is "lost" in a poker game by his boss, an English earl. Living out west, in Washington state, he is gradually assimilated into American life, makes himself somewhat of a local celebrity, and falls in love along the way. That's about all there is to the story, and it's more than enough in director McCarey's capable hands.

As Ruggles, Charles Laughton is more restrained than he's ever been, and gives a fine comedic performance of rare delicacy. There's none of the usual hamming one expects of him. As his new "bosses", Egbert and Effie Floud, Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland are wonderful as middle-aged denizens of the Pacific northwest. As Ruggles' girl, Prunella, Zasu Pitts is at her dithering best; while Roland Young is sly and stylish as the earl. The actors interact with exquisite timing, with no one missing a beat, as was nearly always the case with McCarey, who had a rare feeling for the way people actually behave,--as opposed to the way movie people do--which makes his films, when good, a special treat.

This movie is a classic, if a quiet one, and used to be far better known than it is today, which is a pity. Capra's films are shown all the time, while McCarey', aside from his two "Catholic" films of the mid-forties, Going My Way and Bells Of St. Mary's, tend by be neglected. There are no "big scenes" in this one, but an awful lot of brilliant little ones, as when Roland Young learns how to play the drums; or when Charle Laughton recites the Gettysburg Address, the latter the high point of the film, and its most famous moment. One can't help but think, after seeing this movie, that all's right with the world. It isn't, of course, and never has been, but it's awfully nice to feel that way without having to resort to drugs or alcohol. For that one can think Mr. McCarey.

American comedy was at its strongest in the 1930s and '40s. Ruggles of Red Gap is a great representative of that era. There hasn't been an American movie in the past two, maybe three decades that's as funny as this one. Ruggles of Red Gap begins with one of the funniest premises imaginable: a British butler, Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton), is won from his lord (Roland Young) in a poker game by a wily American (Charlie Ruggles) whose pretentious wife (Mary Boland, Ruggles' constant co-star) wants the butler to teach him some manners. The first half-hour is easily the strongest section in the film, with Ruggles (I'll be referring to the actors) the fish-out-of-water in Paris, trying to sidestep his conniving wife and teach Laughton, steeped in the servant tradition, to let himself go and have some fun. When the two men are supposed to be at the Louvre, Ruggles drags his new manservant to a sidewalk establishment and orders them some beers. A fellow resident of Red Gap (the town in Washington State where Ruggles and Boland live, and to where they will later take Laughton) sees Ruggles there and they cause a huge scene with their Wild West antics. They even get poor Laughton drunk, for perhaps the first time in his life, and he learns the most useful of American phrases: "Yippee!" He also learns how to smile. Boland is at her strongest in the first section, as well. Her attempts to speak French are hilarious. "Trays amazing!" she bungles.

When the crew arrives in America, the film loses a bit of its steam, but not much. It has a great story, unlike many of the other great comedies being made at the time (which relied on caricatures like W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers), and that keeps it entertaining. Laughton is such a delight to behold, and he meets up with a lovely woman played by the undervalued character actress Zasu Pitts, best remembered for her neurotic wife role in Erich von Stroheim's 1925 masterpiece Greed. I have only seen her in two non-Greed movies, counting Ruggles of Red Gap, but she's obviously a huge comic talent. Laughton may be the star, but Charlie Ruggles, also a semi-forgotten comic master, steals the movie from him. Boland is funniest when the film is in Paris, but she's still pretty good afterwards. Another scene stealer is Roland Young. I love his mumbling way of speaking. He comes back later in the movie and has a great scene where he learns to play the drums. Leo McCarey is one of comedy's finest directors in comedy's finest era. What a wonderful film this is! 9/10.

Ruggles of Red Gap is the warm and tender story of Charles Laughton, gentlemen's gentlemen to Lord Roland Young who loses his services in a poker game to American western tourist Charlie Ruggles and his wife Mary Boland. Ruggles has some ideas about class distinction and one's proper place in society and he's in for quite a culture shock when he's brought back to the western town of Red Gap in Washington State.

In a way Ruggles of Red Gap is the polar opposite of The Earl of Chicago where an American gangster Robert Montgomery inherits an English title and experiences a reverse culture shock. In that film Montgomery has an English valet in Edmund Gwenn who indoctrinates him in reverse of what Laughton experiences. Of course things turn out a whole lot better for Marmaduke Ruggles than for the Earl of Kinmont.

In a way Ruggles of Red Gap may have been Charles Laughton's most personal film. In his life he became an American citizen because he preferred the American view of no titles of nobility and that one had better opportunities here than in Europe. It caused a certain amount of friction between Laughton and some other British players.

Laughton up to then had played a whole lot of bigger than life parts like Nero, Henry VIII, Captain Bligh, Edward Moulton Barrett, parts that called for a lot of swagger. Marmaduke Ruggles is a different kind of man. Self contained, shy, and unsure of himself in new surroundings. But Laughton pulls it off beautifully. It's almost Quasimodo without the grotesque make up. Also very much like the school teacher in This Land is Mine.

Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland never fail to entertain, they worked beautifully together in a number of films in the early Thirties. They always were a married couple, Boland a very haughty woman with some exaggerated ideas of her own importance and her ever patient and somewhat henpecked husband Charlie. In Ruggles of Red Gap, Charlie Ruggles is a little less henpecked.

My guess is that Zasu Pitts played the role she did because Elsa Lanchester might have been busy elsewhere. I believe she was making the Bride of Frankenstein around this time. Pitts's scenes with Laughton resonate the same way as some of Charles Laughton's best work with his wife.

The highlight of Ruggles of Red Gap has always been Laughton's recital of The Gettysburg Address. In a scene in a saloon where none of the American born people can remember anything of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Laughton the immigrant recited it from memory. It was a harbinger of some of Laughton's later recitals which I remember as a kid on the Ed Sullivan show. The scene is a tribute to all the immigrants who come here because of the ideals this country is supposed to represent. Sometimes our immigrants have taken it more seriously than those who were born here. Immigrants like Charles Laughton.