Cinevent Notes Past: EARLY TO BED (1936) Charlie Ruggles

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Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Notes Past: EARLY TO BED (1936) Charlie Ruggles

Postby Richard M Roberts » Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:31 am

Chester Beatty (Charlie Ruggles) is a glass eye salesman who has a problem with sleepwalking (how’s that for an opening line?). The second problem has kept him from marrying Tessie Weeks (Mary Boland) for 20 years, but they finally take the plunge and honeymoon at Lake Okawookieboogie Lodge, a sanitarium where people take “the cure” and where Chester hopes to get a large glass eye order from patient Horace B. Stanton (George Barbier). Of course, during the honeymoon, Chester’s sleepwalking is discovered, and the Doctor’s at the Lodge tell him it’s his subconscious and that he could be dangerous! Then someone’s jewels go missing, them someone is murdered, and guess who prime suspect numero uno is?

Next to George Burns and Gracie Allen, Paramount’s other comedy love couple of the 1930’s was Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland. First teamed in MAMA LOVES PAPA (1933) , Ruggles and Boland found themselves together in nine paramount comedies, including Leo McCarey’s All-Star SIX OF A KIND (1934) which sent them on a cross-country drive with the very annoying Burns and Allen, then met them up with W. C. Fields and Alison Skipworth, Paramount’s yet other comedy love couple. McCarey also had Ruggles and Boland compliment the terrific comedy cast of his film RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935) , but they also starred in six features on their own, and EARLY TO BED is their sixth film together, deftly directed by Norman Z. McLaod from a story by comic supporting actor Lucien Littlefield (who also appears in the film) and Chandler Sprague, as well as a script by Laura and S.J. Perelman! A good supporting cast including Littlefield, Sidney Blackmer, Gail Patrick, and lots of fellow comics like Billy Gilbert, Dorothy Christy, Tom Wilson, Eddie Borden, Neal Burns, Mickey Daniels, William Irving, and Billy Bletcher all thrown in for good measure.

Charlie Ruggles had along and fruitful film career as a durable comic actor. Brother of Director Wesley Ruggles, Charlie had been on the stage since the 1900’s and though he had made a few silent film appearances in the teens, his movie career started in earnest with the talkies when he appeared as the drunken reporter in Paramount’s first talkie feature made on the East Coast, GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS (1929). Ruggles went over so well that he soon became an ubiquitous presence in Paramount films (proven just by the number we’ve seen him in at Cinevent, last year, he popped up in both ROADHOUSE NIGHTS (1930) and MURDER IN THE ZOO (1933) ).

Like his fellow befuddled comedian Edward Everett Horton, Ruggles was able to work both as a busy supporting actor, but also star in nice comic programmers like EARLY TO BED throughout the 30’s. He eased into continued supporting work quite happily from the 40’s onward, still combining stage work with film and moving into television in the 50’s, where he starred in one of the first family sit-coms, THE RUGGLES, from 1949-52, and won a Tony Award in 1959 for his role in THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY, a part which he recreated in the 1961 film version with Fred Astaire. A quiet and we;;-respected gentleman off-screen, he and his second wife Marian were fervent animal lovers and amassed quite a menagerie of pets in their Beverly Hills home. Busy in television through the late 60’s, Charlie Ruggles died in 1970.

Mary Boland was born into a theatrical family, but was convent-schooled and didn’t make her first stage appearance until she was 25. Though like Ruggles, she had made a few early silent film appearances, Boland established herself as a stage star in the 1920’s already in her middle-years in shows like THE CRADLE SNATCHERS (1925) with a young Humphrey Bogart. She came to Paramount in 1931, making her first talkie, SECRETS OF A SECRETARY, and soon found herself a line in ditzy dowagers. In between her movies with Ruggles and returns to the stage, she also had great roles in films like MGM’s THE WOMEN (1939) plating the predatory Countess De Lave, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ( 1940), playing Mrs Bennett. Her film career began to wane in the 1940’s, although she did get to be a foil for Laurel and hardy in their 1945 MGM feature NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, and she continued to work on the stage and even made some early television appearances. She retired from show business after recreating her Countess De Lave role in the 1955 PRODUCERS SHOWCASE TV version of THE WOMEN, and spent the rest of her life in her suite at the Essex House in New York, passing away in 1965.

Director Norman Z. McLeod was one of Hollywood’s top comedy directors for more than twenty years. He got his start as a gag-writer and cartoonist for comedy producer Al Christie (in fact, McLeod designed and drew the distinctive stick-figures that illustrated Christie Comedy subtitles). McLeod worked for Christie until the late 20’s, then moved to Paramount as a writer and soon-director, handling the likes of The Marx Brothers twice in MONKEY BUSINESS (1931) and HORSE FEATHERS (1932), W.C. Fields in IF I HAD A MILLION (1932) and the classic IT’S A GIFT (1934), and even the occasional drama like the very effective remake of THE MIRACLE MAN (1932) and the bizarre ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1933).

In the late 30’s McLeod moved from Paramount to Hal Roach, helping the Producer make th move to feature films and helming some like the first two TOPPER features, and screwballs like MERRILY WE LIVE (19380 and THERE GORS MY HEART (1938). The early 40’s found him at MGM, directing Wallace Beery and Ann Southern vehicles, and then Samuel Goldwyn used him for two Danny Kaye starrers, THE KID FROM BROOKLYN (1946) and THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947) before McLeod returned to Paramount where he became one of Bob Hope’s favorite directors, handling ROAD TO RIO (1947), THE PALEFACE (1948), MY FAVORITE SPY (1951), CASANOVA’S BIG NIGHT (1954) and the later ALIAS JESSE JAMES (1959). Slowing down as the fifties commenced, McLeod did some television work, notably a number of THE GALE STORM SHOW in 1958, and retired in the early 60’s, his last directorial credit being, quite fittingly, the Buster Keaton episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE entitled ONCE UPON A TIME (1961). McLeod passed away in 1964.

We know you’ll enjoy EARLY TO BED, it’s participants have solid comedy credentials, and it does have a very quirky story that will keep you guessing. Nobody’s sleepwalking through this film except Charlie Ruggles when the plot demands it.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

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