It's a beautiful little movie, effortlessly funny and wonderfully made. Directed by Leo McCarey, and starring the great Charles Laughton as well as the unfairly forgotten Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland, this is one of the great comedies. Sadly, though, it is also almost completely forgotten. Had you ever heard of 'Ruggles Of Red Gap' before looking at the title of this post?
This may require some thought before we continue. Perhaps we should talk about the story, then Laughton, then Ruggles the actor, and finally toss in a few words for McCarey and the mumbling Roland Young?
The story is exceedingly simple. A bumbling Earl (Roland Young) loses his extremely repressed butler Ruggles (Charles Laughton) to a Washington state couple (Ruggles and Boland) in a poker game, and the nervous servant slowly becomes liberated as he is assimilated into the American society around the turn into the nineteenth century. Everything else in the movie is a natural consequence of the character interactions between butler Ruggles and actor Ruggles, as the latter slowly releases the former from his traditional bonds, while Boland tries her best to keep those bonds in place!
The core of the movie is Laughton's wonderfully buttoned-down performance as the valet, and in the brief glimpses of a brilliant interior life that he seeds increasingly as the movie goes on. The man was truly a master, pulling off comedy here as well as he did drama in other famous instances. There is one marvelous drunken scene with actor Ruggles that works so well that it could almost have been a movie by itself. There are a couple of problems near the beginning of the movie, when the possibility of interminable sedateness becomes a fear, but it soons works itself out, as Laughton and actor Ruggles settle into their back and forth. Ah, Charlie Ruggles. a great comedic talent. You may have also seen him in 'Trouble in Paradise' or 'Bringing Up Baby', although I didn't realise it at the time and have no idea if he was any good.
One of the most famous aspects of the movie, apart from the marvelous checked suits of actor Ruggles and the wonderful interludes between Laughton and ZaSu Pitts, is the scene where a whole saloon fails to remember the contents of the Gettysburg Address, before being stunned by Laughton's quiet recital of the famous words. It's truly the turning point of the movie, and shows off Laughton's oratorical ability. Coupled with the closing moments, and the secondary conversion of the Earl when he visits the titular town of Red Gap, it makes for a great arc to the whole piece. Leo McCarey judges the tone precisely, possibly borrowing from the original play where necessary, and Roland Young takes mild-mannered to a whole new level as the Earl, before revealing some hidden depths of his own.
A grand old classic comedy. Well done, Leo McCarey.
O.
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