Charles Ruggles makes flustered speech funny without making the speaker contemptible. We value the precision of his fussing and faltering, though his many put-upon husbands and fussy men can become familiar company.
Fi1m perspective
In Bringing Up Baby (1938), Charles Ruggles gives the befuddled big-game hunter Major Applegate a fluttery delivery that makes his fussiness funny before he has much chance to be imposing. We laughed at his faltering speech, because it makes the hunter seem so poorly equipped to cope with other people. Howard Hawks's farce is driven hard by Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and Ruggles's jumpiness fits its pace. We recommend it warmly, though Hawks gives the performances less breathing space than they sometimes deserve.
That comic manner was well established before Applegate. Ernst Lubitsch cast him as another Major in Trouble in Paradise (1932), while Leo McCarey's Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) gave him Egbert Floud, a husband used to being overruled. The domestic farces he made with Mary Boland in the 1930s repeatedly put his mild manner under pressure. These are parts that need an actor to make small changes in confidence audible. Ruggles can do that without turning every hesitation into a request for applause.
His own explanation was practical: "It was my mastery of the sputter system of dialogue which was my chief asset as an actor." The broken voice and jumpy phrasing give him something precise to play even when the part amounts to a man being overwhelmed. In Bringing Up Baby, that economy is useful: there is already plenty competing for our attention. The limitation is the repeated casting, which can make one flustered fellow hard to distinguish from the next. We enjoy the timing more than the surprise.
Later parts included the benevolent billionaire Mike O'Connor in It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947). After a period concentrated on stage and television, he returned to films in the 1960s, playing a grandfatherly figure in The Parent Trap (1961). He continued to find work in the mild-mannered comic parts that had served him for decades. For a first encounter, choose Bringing Up Baby and pay attention to his voice, even when Grant and Hepburn are keeping everyone busy.
Biography
Charles Ruggles, also credited as Charlie Ruggles and Charles Sherman Ruggles, was an American actor. Born on 8 February 1886 in Los Angeles, California, he died on 23 December 1970 in Santa Monica, California. He began his career on stage in 1905 and made his film debut in The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914).
Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films over six decades. He was paired with Mary Boland in several comedies in the early 1930s. His credits include Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) as Egbert Floud, Bringing Up Baby (1938) as Major Applegate, It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) as Michael J. 'Mike' O'Connor, The Parent Trap (1961) as Charles McKendrick, and The Ugly Dachshund (1966) as Dr. J. L. Pruitt. He also appeared in television series including Bewitched (1964) and The Andy Griffith Show (1960).
He was the elder brother of film director Wesley Ruggles.
