Ruggles of Red Gap

It was not until Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), however, that McCarey directed a film bearing many of his trademarks: a comic sense that blended reality and farce, a glorification of the American character concurrent with a condemnation of American materialism and naïveté, a reflection of McCarey’s own Roman…

…the mild-mannered British valet in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) and the pathetic Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). He even dabbled in broad comedy, most memorably in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952). Laughton’s inclination toward hammy self-indulgence was not universally appreciated by his coworkers, but…