What I watched: A first-season episode of early TV sitcom The Ruggles. The series starred Charlie Ruggles as himself, more or less, with co-stars Erin O’Brien-Moore, Tom Bernard, Margaret Kerry, Judy Nugent, and Jimmy Hawkins. “Charlie’s Lucky Day” was written by Fred Howard and Irving Phillips and directed by George M. Cahan. This episode aired on February 19, 1950 on ABC.
What happened: We get a glimpse of the opening credits through the mail-slot of an idyllic suburban home. This leads to a silent pan over the Ruggles family, with the two sons and two daughtesr getting up to their various activities in identical striped shirts. Family patriarch Charlie is bored, so he starts singing some scales and playing the xylophone, to the annoyance of his children. His wife doesn’t want anything to do with him either, as she’s busy fixing up some clothes.
Charlie’s boredom is finally relieved by a man at the door, Mr. Melcher, who proclaims that he’s won an enormous prize. He comes complete with a photographer who wants to take pictures of the lucky family. Melcher talks a mile a minute, refusing to explain himself. He’s soon bothered by another guy, who promises him a guaranteed winning at the racetrack. Next up is Mr. Snodgrass, who Charlie takes to be a plainclothes police officer. Snodgrass is quickly suspicious of the tinker-toy that the twins are building.
It’s soon revealed that, instead of a police officer, Snodgrass is an inventor trying to get Ruggles to invest $10, 000 in his latest idea, a tool to rid the world of ants by leveling their hills. Charlie lets him out the door. Following this, there’s some sort of an ad break, followed by a voice-over narration summarizing the plot of the first half. The rest of the family has heard that a TV crew is stopping by to report on the prize, and that the house has to be wired for sound. Mom gets a call from her own mother, and the rumoured prize is now up to $15, 000.
The family comes to suspect that they’re the subject of a radio prank show. Someone else is at the door: it’s Mr. Ash, who claims to be from the IRS, and has heard a rumour about $20, 000. There’s a lot of IRS jokes, as Ash urges Charlie to be careful with his newly-won money. The TV crew arrives, complete with flood lights and a novelty cheque. The whole family gets together to pose for a photo.
Speaking directly to the camera, the host welcomes the Ruggles to the Tender, Delicious Raspberry Show. Charlie just has time to notice that he’s being described as “T. D. Ruggles” before the show launches into commercials. He’s being given the award ($1000 and a year’s supply of raspberries) for having the same initials as the product. However, when Charlie points out they’ve got his name wrong, the show immediately breaks down, with the company owner demanding to fire everyone. It turns out the show copied the wrong line from the phone book. The crew leaves in a flurry. Everyone quickly gets back to their quiet evening pursuits, and Charlie starts singing again.
What I thought: It’s hard to nail down from this episode exactly what The Ruggles is, or wants to be. With the other early sitcoms we’ve looked at, there’s a strong lead character with an obvious comedic hook. Riley is a hothead, Molly Goldberg is a busybody, and both cause comedy despite their attempts to help their family. Charlie Ruggles is obviously meant to be the central figure in the show, with his name the only one before the credits, but his comedic hook is… being a little annoying? Liking music? I’m not sure.
Charlie Ruggles had traveled a long road to make it to TV. He was born in 1886, and had been part of the film industry since the silent-movie days. He had first became a headline name on radio with The Charlie Ruggles Show before moving into early television. This means he was 64 years old during the first season of The Ruggles, about 15 years older than his on-screen wife Erin O’Brien Moore. In fairness, Ruggles doesn’t look a day over 48.
Like The Life of Riley, but distinctly unlike most series of the day, The Ruggles was shot on a stage in Los Angeles. This would have meant it aired off Kinescopes in most of the country, but it was still filmed in the live-TV style, without a live audience. Because of the limitations of a single set, most episodes took place entirely within the family home, including “Charlie’s Lucky Day.” It kind of seems like a “worst of both worlds” situation to me, but hey, nobody really knew what the TV sitcom would be at this point.
The plot of this episode is indicative of how self-reflexive early TV could be. Charlie and his family unexpectedly become the subject of a TV program, specifically a crassly commercial give-away. (We don’t have much of this type of program in our list so far, possibly because nobody bothered archiving them, but I really associate these kind of big give-aways with radio and later 50s TV.) Of course, television is revealed to be intrusive, gaudy, and hopelessly in thrall to its commercial sponsors. Ruggles was one of the first comedians to embrace television, but he nevertheless couldn’t help doing jokes about how it was basically worthless.
There’s a looser, more abstract element to this show than The Life of Riley or The Goldbergs. The opening scene, with the whole family working in quiet silence, is obviously artificial, and the wacky events which unfold are comedic to the point of absurdism. There’s obviously less focus in The Ruggles on creating a believable world and more on using the stock characters and setting of the family sitcom as a setting for cartoonish gags. Comedies would get much more absurd over the following decades, but even in 1950 there’s an emerging split between realism and pure comedy.
The Ruggles would continue to run for three seasons. Not many episodes survive, but there are a few available on YouTube and the Internet Archive. We’ll see if some of the wild generations I provided above continue to hold true in other episodes. And maybe at some point, I will be able to find out what exactly The Ruggles is.
The Eternal Couch Potato 