Ruggles of Red Gap

Some pretty good reviews have been turned in so far. I recommend "All's Right With the World" (telegonus from brighton, ma; 16 August 2002). Also, jayjerry regards it as "My All-Time Favorite" (jayjerry from Burbank, CA; 2 February 2007). In "Making Your Way In A New World" (bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York; 6 October 2006) we get good background on Charles Laughton's personal interest in the story. In "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" (lugonian from Kissimmee, Florida; 18 December 2010) we are provided the film history of the story. In "What did Lincoln say at Gettysburg, anyway?" (theowinthrop from United States; 20 May 2006) we get criticism of the pacing of some scenes, along with the gags that don't entirely work. "Ruggles at Red Gap" starts out as a (not laugh-out loud) comedy about manners. As the story moves from Paris to the Western US, it acquires great depth by way of Laughton's extraordinary reciting of Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" to a saloon filled with cowboys who can't recall a word of it. As freedom and liberation emerge as new themes, love also arrives. Laughton's Ruggles (convincing as a heterosexual) finds a widow (Zasu Pitts as Mrs. Judson) with whom a restaurant adventure is undertaken. Among the first patrons of this restaurant is his former Parisien employer (Roland Young as the Earl of Burnstead) who has found a very charming Washington socialite (Leila Hyams as Nell Kenner). Acquiring richness until the satisfying finale, "Ruggles at Red Gap" should be regarded as among the best films about Americana. Three scenes are standouts: Laughton's exceptional Gettysburgh recitation, Roland Young's musical flirting scene with Leila Hyams and the restaurant sequence climaxed by a rousing finish. Laughton's transformation from a dour and proper man servant to a more popular figure comes with the help of two instigators; i.e., wealthy ranchers Egbert (Charles Ruggels; yes that's confusing) and Effie Floud (Mary Boland). Egbert is a particularly corrupting influence on Ruggles by introducing him to drink and repeatedly insisting that they both share the same class. Each cast member is superb. Leo McCarey is very interesting visually. Note how in this cinematic period how few closeups there are; how often there seems to be a bit much space above characters heads and how far away a group stands from the viewer's perspective, as if seen from a stage. In real life in Washington State (around 1908) there probably would be more than one enemy for Ruggles to contend with; for being out of place, foppish, proper, literary and theatrical. As with many of the other films from the 1930s, common people are depicted idealistically. Somehow McCarey made this beautiful, rich and rewarding commentary about liberty, finding love and gaining acceptance before he appeared as a friendly witness to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) witch hunt. This is not explained by "Ruggles."

The only reason I got a chance to see this movie is that Ed Norton put it on his Top 5 favorite movies list & he said the only reason he found it is because he read it in the screenplay for Barton Fink. Never heard of this movie, which is unreasonably hard to get, but it is now one of my favorites. This movie serves as a love letter to American ideals through the unwilling relocation of an old school English butler to the American West after he is lost in a poker game. Charles Laughton is naturally cartoonish, endearing, and very believable as Ruggles, who is emancipated through the experience. Leo McCarey, whose worst movie just might be the often named "American classic" An Affair to remember, delivers like the cinematic master he is. Wonderful film that everyone should see.

This isn't a great movie, but it is certainly an enjoyable one. An English gentleman's gentleman is taken to America when he's won in a game of cards by a wealthy American's husband. (No, that doesn't make any sense. A gentleman's gentleman isn't an indentured servant. You just have to buy the premise.) At first he is like a fish out of water. Eventually, he finds advantages and pleasure in what are touted as American virtues: all men are created equal, etc. Nothing profound, certainly, but the cast is uniformly good, as are their performances. Some, like Mary Boland's or Zsa Zu Pitt's, are yet another iteration of what they always played. Some, like Charlie Ruggles', are interesting exaggerations. The only performance I found strange was Charles Laughton's. He had a very strange way of showing what I suppose was meant to be seen as bewilderment. A pleasant way to spend 90 minutes.

source: Ruggles of Red Gap

British-born but American-naturalized comedian Bob Hope had first followed his classic Western comedy THE PALEFACE (1948) with FANCY PANTS (1950) where he played a stuffy English butler out West; it was pure coincidence, therefore, that I happened to come across the remake of the former – the Don Knotts vehicle THE SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST (1968) – and the original of the latter (which is the film under review) for this year's Christmas season. RUGGLES OF RED GAP was an oft-filmed novel and this version (perhaps the best-known and undoubtedly the best) was already the third screen treatment. Charles Laughton was clearly on a roll in the early 1930s, with three superlative performances in 1935 alone – the others being his celebrated (and Oscar-nominated) Captain Bligh in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and Javert in LES MISERABLES – but I'd venture to say that his Marmaduke Ruggles is the one that ought to have been singled out for the highest praise. His social standing as a butler doesn't allow him to appear flustered by all the lunacy going on around him and, as a result, his subtle reactions are a sheer joy to behold and a clear testament to the actor's capabilities and emotional range. In fact, the film's first 20 minutes or so (set in Paris, France) are a hilarious succession of events that seriously test the age-old values of the unflappable Ruggles (culminating in a memorable drinking sequence that brought tears to my eyes from laughter). It is ironic that a film which headlines a character named Ruggles should have an actor named Ruggles in a main role but Charlie Ruggles manages to defeat that challenge and emerge almost as shiny as Laughton himself; he plays a hen-pecked American tourist (as usual, he's married to bossy Mary Boland who wins Ruggles in a bet with his reckless master Roland Young) and proceeds to take him to his hometown of Red Gap, Washington, U.S.A. Charlie's persistence in treating Ruggles as his equal and call him "Colonel" gives his compatriots the mistaken notion that Laughton was a high-ranking British officer and, consequently, they start regarding him as a local celebrity. However, his ruse slowly starts to unravel when he meets up with klutzy cook Zasu Pitts and starts giving her pointers on spicing up her meat sauce Although the film eventually loses some of that initial frenzied momentum, it is never less than enjoyable and, occasionally, even moving: at one point, Laughton lets his real cultured self show through in front of his feather-brained American bar-room cronies when murmuring Abraham Lincoln's famous address at Gettysburg – according to Edward Dmytryk (who worked as an editor on the picture), ultra-sensitive Laughton got so emotional in speaking those lines (and which subsequently became favorites of his) that it took director Leo McCarey one-and-a-half days to shoot the scene! Also, according to Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester, the subject was clearly close to his heart as it was he who brought to Paramount's attention and picked McCarey to direct the film, whose sole Oscar nod would be for the Best Picture of the Year (although Laughton did eventually win the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actor). P.S. This was yet another case of DivX foul-up for me as the copy I initially got kept pixelating and freezing before the DVD conversion conveniently resolved the issues satisfactorily.

Memories are short when it comes to remembering the best films ever. Often the older the film the more it tends to fall away in obscurity. Look at many of the top 100 film lists and you'll see that the closer you get to the top the greater the percentage of recent films. Such is the case with a classic film comedy like "Ruggles of Red Gap". The film contains a terrific cast of some of the best comic actors of the time and they are led by Charley Ruggles, Zazu Pitts and Marie Boland. But the comic soul of the film is the hysterically understated performance of the wonderful film and stage acting genius, Charles Laughton. Mr. Laughton was most known as a dramatic actor playing roles such as Henry VIII, Quasimoto and Captain Bligh. But here as Ruggles, the quietly stiff English butler who is lost by his British employer in card game to a couple of roustabouts from the US, Laughton is funny and touching and very human. I won't spill any more of the story. Justy go rent it and see for yourself. You won't regret it!

Delightfully witty dialogue and charming performances by Laughton and Pitts make this a comedy classic. On the minus side: Boland is irritatingly shrill, cinematography and staging are very static--almost a photographed stage play. Made soon after the Production Code was instituted, virtually all allusions to sex are noticeably absent. It seems obvious that the novel and play on which the film was based probably included elements of marital infidelity, for which this film ineffectively substitutes drinking binges. The painted lady, who the respectable women scorn and the men adore, is reduced here to running "beer busts" and singing folksongs with her guests!

This film begins with Roland Young losing his manservant, Ruggles (Charles Laughton), in a poker game! As a result, this fancified gentleman's gentleman is transported from Europe to a small hick town in the state of Washington (the desert Eastern portion). At first, this is a tough transition, as his new master (Charlie Ruggles) insists on familiarity and won't let Ruggles act like a typical servant. Instead, he takes Ruggles drinking with him and fills him full of ideas about equality. After a while, it's obvious that Ruggles is starting to enjoy this--allowing himself a few drinks, dancing and fun. And, in Red Gap, he's a very popular man--and soon becomes an indispensable part of the community. The film is a nice blend of comedy and sentimentality. It also is a bit deeper than you might first think, as it has a lot to say about democracy and the class system. I can easily see how this film helped to make Laughton a star, but it sure didn't hurt that he had such a great supporting cast and excellent direction (as always) by Leo McCarey--one of the truly great comedic directors who directed both Laurel and Hardy films as well as wonderful screwball comedies (such as THE AWFUL TRUTH). A wonderful and sweet little comedy.

Marmaduke Ruggles travels to Red Gap, Washington (circa 1908) after the Floud family wins him in a poker game. Ruggles, afraid he will not adjust to wild western life, has his fears come true. When he arrives in town, the citizens think he is a retired British Army officer, and Ruggles has to go on pretending to be something he is not. Originally believing that all he can ever be is a valet, he gets the idea of opening the town's first restaurant with the help of the widow Judson. However, the return of Ruggles' former employer (the Earl of Burnstead) may make Ruggles think of going back into servitude, making think of what Lincoln said is true about all men being equal. While what I wrote seems to play like a drama, don't be fooled it is quite a witty comedy with Laughton giving one of his most best (and surprisingly) best performances actually doing much of it with facial expressions & body language. Everyone else in the cast gives great stereotypical acting jobs, and the script gives plenty of chances for everyone, especially thanks to McCarey's lively direction. Best scene is obviously Ruggles reciting the Gettysburg address in the saloon, another driving point in the film's theme of all men being created equal. Rating, 9.

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.