Billy Ruge

Billy Ruge was an American film actor. His early career was spent as an aerial trapeze acrobat in an act with partner Bill Frobel Ruge and Frobel played Montreal in 1899, and shared a bill at Londons Hippodrome with W. C. Fields, Houdini, and Sandow over the Easter holiday of 1904. According to Ruge, prior to playing his first silent film part for Edison he had just returned from a seven years engagement in the variety houses of Germany, England, France, Russia, South America, Belgium, and Spain. Ruge eventually appeared in 64 films between 1915 and 1922, mostly onereeler Comedy Shorts. He frequently worked for ActorDirector Willard Louis, filming in Jacksonville, Florida for the minor studios Lubin Studios, the Vim Comedy Company, and the Jaxon Film Corporation. Ruge is best recalled for his films with Oliver Babe Hardy, playing the part of Runt opposite Hardys Plump in what can be seen as a precursor to the more famous Stan and Ollie partnership. Afterplus shorts, Hardy moved

By May 1922, Ruge returned to vaudeville in an acrobatic comedy act with new partner Joe Rose, booked for a year on the Loews Circuit. Ruge and Rose continued on until at least the early months of 1924, overcoming an initial trade review that labeled the team as small timers with nothing really worth while to offer. At the start of the next decade, apparently shorn of Rose, Ruge toured in a positivelyreviewed revival of Babes in Toyland. A Billboard obituary reports Ruge died with no immediate survivors in 1955 at age 89 in New York City, which would indicate a birth year of 1866. However, a U. S. Census survey submitted for June1900 states that an Actor William Ruge age 29, born August 1870 was living in New York City with his Actress wife of seven years, Anna age 28, born November 1871.

Source: Wikipedia