Ruggles of Red Gap

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) is a Hollywood comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Leo McCarey and drawn from Harry Leon Wilson's novel. Marmaduke Ruggles — gentleman's gentleman to an English earl — is lost in a poker game to a blundering American cattle rancher and shipped off to the small town of Red Gap in Washington State.

Charles Laughton plays Ruggles with slow-burning precision: a man so thoroughly trained into servitude that the idea of his own preferences barely registers. Mary Boland and her husband Colonel Floud (Charles Ruggles) give him orders he can't quite parse. Then one night in a saloon, Ruggles recites Lincoln's Gettysburg Address from memory — and the room goes quiet.

McCarey keeps the comedy warm and the cultural observation sharp without turning either side into a caricature. Ninety minutes, no wasted scenes. Stream Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) online on iFILM.