Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

An English valet brought to the American west assimilates into the American way of life.

Director:

Leo McCarey

Writers:

Harry Leon Wilson (novel), Walter DeLeon (screenplay)

Stars:

Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 3 wins.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Charles Laughton	...	Ruggles
Mary Boland	...	Effie Floud
Charles Ruggles	...	Egbert Floud (as Charlie Ruggles)
Zasu Pitts	...	Prunella Judson (as ZaSu Pitts)
Roland Young	...	George--Earl of Burnstead
Leila Hyams	...	Nell Kenner
Maude Eburne	...	'Ma' Pettingill
Lucien Littlefield	...	Charles Belknap-Jackson
Leota Lorraine	...	Mrs. Belknap-Jackson
James Burke	...	Jeff Tuttle
Dell Henderson	...	Sam
Clarence Wilson	...	Jake Henshaw

Storyline

While visiting Paris in 1908, upper class Lord Burnstead loses his butler playing poker. Egbert and Effie Floud bring Ruggles back to Red Gap, Washington. Effie wants to take advantage of Ruggles' upper class background to influence Egbert's hick lifestyle. However, Egbert is more interested in partying and he takes Ruggles to the local 'beer bust'. When word gets out that "Colonel Ruggles is staying with his close friends" in the local paper, the butler becomes a town celebrity. After befriending Mrs. Judson, a widow who he impresses with his culinary skills, Ruggles decides to strike out on his own and open a restaurant. His transition from servant to independent man will depend on its success.

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Plot Keywords:

valet | self discovery | washington state | culture clash | national film registry | 

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Taglines:

SH-H-H-H! TONIGHT'S YOUR NIGHT TO HOWL! And howl you will at this funniest of all comedies...

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English French

Release Date:

8 March 1935 (USA)

Also Known As:

Det begyndte i Paris

Filming Locations:

Paramount Ranch - 2813 Cornell Road, Agoura, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Leila Hyams retired from the film business the following year at the age of 31. She still remained active in Hollywood circles thanks to her marriage to leading agent, Phil Berg.

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Goofs

When Effie tells Ruggles to take her husband to the art museums she shows him a book that he uses to record his impressions of the art he's viewed, when the camera angle changes the book has changed from her hands to her husbands hands without any pause in her lines.

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Quotes

[Ruggles and Prunella are looking at the rough and cluttered store space that Ruggles will use for his restaurant]
Prunella Judson: It's a mess isn't it?
Ruggles: It's wonderful.
Prunella Judson: Well, I don't see anything wonderful about it.
Ruggles: You don't?
Prunella Judson: No.
Ruggles: You don't? My father was a gentleman's gentleman... and his father before him. And from that heritage of service miraculously there comes a man. A person of importance, however small. A man whose decisions and whose future are in his own hands.
Prunella Judson: It's wonderful, isn't it?

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits are shown over various silhouettes of a butler.

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Connections

Version of Producers' Showcase: Ruggles of Red Gap (1957)

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Soundtracks

By the Light of the Silvery Moon
(uncredited)
Music by Gus Edwards
Lyrics by Edward Madden
Played during the opening credits
Also sung by Leila Hyams and others

User Reviews

Making Your Way In A New World

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.