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 London's 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 one-reeler Comedy Shorts. He frequently worked for Actor/Director Willard Louis, filming in Jacksonville, Florida for the minor studios Lubin Studios, the Vim Comedy Company, and the Jaxon Film Corporation.