Ruggles of Red Gap
Leo McCarey (1935)
Paris, 1908. By the end of a drunken poker game, the Earl of Burnstead’s heavy losses include his valet, Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton). This English gentleman’s gentleman’s employer is suddenly, to Ruggles’ consternation, a nouveau riche American, who’s vacationing in Paris with his wife. The first thing his new boss does is get Ruggles drunk, too. The valet accompanies genially uncouth Egbert Floud (Charlie Ruggles [sic!]) on a Paris bar crawl – unwillingly until, along with Egbert and a kindred-spirit American pal (James Burke), Ruggles loses his inhibitions. Egbert’s socially ambitious wife, Effie (Mary Boland), is dismayed, but Ruggles, through his hangover, is courteously contrite. Soon after, the couple and their acquisition cross the Atlantic en route to the small town of Red Gap, Washington, where the Flouds reside and Ruggles is a fish out of water.
Leo McCarey’s Ruggles of Red Gap is a just about perfect social comedy, and a highly impressive balancing act. The screenplay, by Walter DeLeon and Harlan Thompson (Humphrey Pearson gets the story credit), is adapted from Harry Leon Wilson’s 1915 novel of the same name. (Ruggles of Red Gap had already been a silent movie twice, in 1918 and 1923, and would also inspire the 1950 romcom Western Fancy Pants.) During the film’s first half, you’re increasingly amazed that a seemingly limited set-up has so much comic mileage. In the second half, Ruggles acculturates in his new surroundings, cultivates a friendship with widowed cook Mrs Judson (ZaSu Pitts), and eventually is self-employed, running his own restaurant. The film expands affectingly yet it never goes soft or stops making you laugh.
McCarey’s harmonisation of moods is epitomised by Ruggles of Red Gap’s most famous scene. In the town saloon, Ruggles gives Egbert Floud, who’s drinking there, notice that he wants to live independently. Egbert takes the news well, comparing it to ‘what Lincoln said at Gettsyburg’, but, when one of his companions asks to be reminded what that was exactly, Egbert can’t say. The camera tours the saloon, in vain search of a Red Gap citizen who can. Ruggles, who has been reading up on American history, then recites the Gettysburg Address, calmly word perfect. Faces that were blank or bewildered are now rapt and mightily impressed. The saloon customers’ change of expression isn’t a contradiction of the comical cameos of a few minutes earlier. These are still the same amusing people, yet their respectful hush is touching, too.
After The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Charles Laughton hardly needed to prove that he had comedic flair as well as dramatic genius. If proof had been needed, though, here it is. Particularly at the start, Laughton’s movement and gestures are borderline camp. They’re also scene-stealing; as the film goes on, the thefts continue, yet Laughton often achieves them – most notably with the Gettysburg monologue – by underplaying. He also makes the most of Ruggles’ more extrovert moments – drunk in Paris or, in the film’s climactic scene, when he ejects Effie Froud’s obnoxiously snobby relation Charles Belknap-Jackson (Lucien Littlefield) from his restaurant on its opening night. This is also a wonderfully detailed vocal performance: Laughton’s Ruggles seems beautifully spoken until you start picking up occasional dropped aitches and vowels that are just a bit off.
The supporting players aren’t Charles Laughton class, but they’re expertly cast and terrific in their roles, or routines. Charlie Ruggles is brimful of real warmth, as well as humour, as a newbie millionaire whose taste in suits favours checks that aren’t so much loud as deafening, and who has an even greater liking for joshing terms of endearment that begin with ‘you old …’ (‘tarantula’, ‘sourdough’, ‘horned toad’, etc). Ruggles’ Egbert is splendidly complemented by Mary Boland’s Effie, with her mangled French and strung-tight social anxiety. You’d expect a role like the Earl of Burnstead in a Hollywood film of this era to be no more than an entertaining caricature: Roland Young is entertaining but so extraordinarily natural that his character is also almost believable. After he falls out with Mrs Judson, Marmaduke Ruggles is absent from the action for a while. That puts the story in suspense, but Roland Young is one half of an excellent interval diversion. Lord Burnstead has shown up in Red Gap hoping to re-engage Ruggles. That plan doesn’t come to fruition; instead, Burnstead finds love with beautiful young local dancer and songstress Nell Kenner (Leila Hyams). The romance is heralded in their meeting at a party, where Nell sings ‘Pretty Baby’, and the Earl of Burnstead, with increasing gusto, accompanies her on drums.
Leland Poague, a scholar of Hollywood Golden Age comedy, has written of Ruggles of Red Gap that Leo McCarey ‘explores the relationship between personality and society and does so in an idealistic literary context which asserts the essential (and necessary) identity of personal and social imperatives’. You wouldn’t guess from that earnest summary how funny the film is, yet Poague is right enough. It’s also quite funny that Ruggles, ninety years on, strikes contemporary chords. As well as enjoyably skewering class distinctions and social pretension, McCarey celebrates the American Dream. That dream is available to an immigrant protagonist. That protagonist discovers who he really wants to be and becomes it.
In Paris, when he’s first transferred to the Flouds, Ruggles is stubbornly deferential. While Egbert couldn’t care less, Ruggles keeps insisting that his master go first – through a doorway or into a horsedrawn carriage (there’s some fine comic business involving the latter). A lovely echo of these after-you contests comes in the final scene. ‘The Anglo-American Grill’ has opened to a full house, but Ruggles fears that, in chucking Belknap-Jackson out, he has blotted his social copybook in Red Gap society. As he takes refuge in the kitchen with Mrs Judson (they’re now reconciled), he hears ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ sung in the dining room. Egbert appears, and yanks Ruggles out of the kitchen – ‘Why, you old plate of soup, they’re singing it for you!’ After thanking the diners, Ruggles tries to get Mrs Judson to share the acclaim, but she modestly resists. Never one to stand on ceremony, Egbert Floud pushes Ruggles back, through the kitchen’s swing doors, to share his triumph in private with his chef and soulmate.
10 November 2025