Ruggles of Red Gap

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

In answer to Paul Delany's inquiry, here's Pauline Kael's short review, from the
Cinemania CD-ROM:

Ruggles of Red Gap 
US (1935): Comedy 
Pauline Kael Review: . stars out of 0 
 
92 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette 
Charles Laughton starred in this justly honored version of the venerable 
comedy by Harry Leon Wilson. (There were two earlier versions-one in 
1918, and one in 1923 with Edward Everett Horton-and a later version in 
1950, called FANCY PANTS, with Bob Hope.) The Laughton film, directed 
in a calm, restrained style by Leo McCarey, is just about irresistible, even 
with its big scene-Laughton, an English valet in the Old West, reciting the 
Gettysburg Address in a saloon, as the camera pans across the awed faces 
of the cowhands. It's a bit much, but it works like magic. The cast could 
hardly be better: Roland Young is the Englishman who loses the valet in a 
poker game, Mary Boland and Charlie Ruggles are the rich American couple 
who win him, and ZaSu Pitts is the widow the valet courts. With Maude 
Eburne, Lucien Littlefield, Willie Fung, Libby Taylor, and Leila Hyams. 
Paramoun 



Notice that the film also co-stars veteran character actor *Charles* Ruggles--though
we'd have to stretch to relate him to TRP, since Charles was actually born in
LA in 1888.  (Katz's Film Encyclopedia mentions that he's the "brother of Wesley
Ruggles"  ???  This begins to sound like Constant and Variable Slothrop!  Ah,
research!--checking on another source reveals that Wesley Ruggles was a film
director himself.  He lensed the Keystone Kops, which seems quite appropriate as
a Kute Korrespondence, if nothing else.  Here's another KK--W. Ruggles later
directed SEE HERE, PRIVATE HARGROVE (1944), a service comedy of exactly the type
parodied in "The Secret Integration" [recall the sounds from tvs drifting down
the street as Tim Santora rides his bike]).

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)