Ruggles of Red Gap. No matter what happens some great American stories stay as irresistable as ever, making you respond to American values you thought you disagreed with, striking chords you didn't know you had anymore. Harry Leon Wilson's turn-of-the-century novel Ruggles of Red Gap doesn't get read much anymore, and none of the at least five movie versions get much play. But the story of Ruggles the butler who came to America isn't dated, because it's about the crude interplay of ideas that don't die. Ruggles is an oh-so-British manservant who never thought to be otherwise: except for a clumsy streak of raw almost-sentimentality, he's in the best Jeeves tradition. In Paris he gets gambled away by his decadent master in a poker game. The proud new keeper is none other than a vulgar American family from the backwoods who struck it rich shouting its way along the grand tour. When they return with poor Ruggles to their frontier town in the Northwest, the butler is utterly lost. Until he begins to discover "what America means." He breaks away from a servile tradition of centuries and strikes off as a small independent businessman. In the famous scene when he recites the Gettysburg Address, it's all one can do to keep it together--the feudal cloud breaks and Ruggles, head high, joins the ranks of people who are "equal," even teaching the Americans a little bit of European style along the way. Wonderful stuff. Edward Everett Horton was Ruggles in 1923, and Bob Hope's 1950 Fancy Pants took its cue from the story. But the real Ruggles was Charles Laughton in 1935--the one to be shown here--in a shambling, sad, brilliant performance.