His early career was spent as an aerial trapeze acrobat in an act with partner Bill Frobel: Ruge and Frobel played Montreal in 1899,[1] and shared a bill at London's Hippodrome with W. C. Fields, Houdini, and Sandow over the Easter holiday of 1904.

[2] 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.

[4] Ruge and Rose continued on until at least the early months of 1924,[5] overcoming an initial trade review that labeled the team as "small timers" with "nothing really worth while to offer.

"[6] At the start of the next decade, apparently shorn of Rose,[7] Ruge toured in a positively-reviewed revival of Babes in Toyland.

[8] 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.