Ruggles of Red Gap

Director: Leo McCarey

1935 / 90min / 35mm

British butler Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton), gambled away by aristocrat owner Roland Young over a Paris poker table to nouveau riche hick Charlie Ruggles (purely coincidental), suddenly finds himself in the backwater of Red Gap, Washington State, reckoning with the novel concept of “freedom” after a lifetime of meek vassalage. Among the most charming of 1930s American comedies, and one of the most touching, with Laughton’s recitation of the Gettysburg Address an immensely moving monument to the nation’s oft-forgotten aspirational ideals and the promise it extends to the arriving immigrant.

Distributor: Universal