A Yank at Oxford

A Yank at Oxford
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jack Conway
Produced by	Michael Balcon
Starring	Robert Taylor Lionel Barrymore Maureen O'Sullivan Vivien Leigh Edmund Gwenn
Music by	Hubert Bath Edward Ward
Cinematography	Harold Rosson
Editing by	Margaret Booth Charles Frend
Studio	MGM-British Studios
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	18 February 1938
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	(Domestic earnings) (Foreign earnings)

A Yank at Oxford (1938) is a British film, directed by Jack Conway from a screenplay by John Monk Saunders and Leon Gordon. It was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios at Denham Studios. The film was parodied in the 1940 Laurel and Hardy film A Chump at Oxford and remade in 1984 as Oxford Blues.

Plot summary

A cocky American named Lee Sheridan (Robert Taylor) receives a scholarship to attend Oxford University. At first, Lee is reluctant to go to the college due to his father's limited income, but he finally does attend. Once in England, Lee brags about his athletic triumphs to Paul Beaumont (Griffith Jones), Wavertree (Robert Coote), and Ramsey (Peter Croft) on the train to Oxford. Annoyed, they trick Lee Sheridan into getting off the train at the wrong stop. However, Lee does make his way to Oxford where the students attempt to trick him again, this time into thinking that he is getting a grand reception. Seeing through the deception, he follows the prankster impersonating the Dean and after chasing him is thrown off and ends up kicking the real Dean of Cardinal (Edmund Gwenn) before retreating.

Lee considers leaving Oxford but stays on after being convinced by Scatters (Edward Rigby), his personal servant. Lee meets Elsa Craddock (Vivien Leigh) (a married woman who "helps" the new campus students) and starts a relationship with Paul Beaumont's sister Molly (Maureen O'Sullivan). Lee makes the track team and just when he begins to fit in he is hazed for pushing Paul out of the way during a track meet when asked to rest. In a fit of anger, Lee goes to a local bar and finds Paul in a private booth with Elsa. He starts to fight with Paul when Wavertree comes in and warns them of campus officials coming. Lee and Paul run and when they are almost caught by one of the campus officials Lee punches him. Wavertree tells his friends that he saw Paul throw the punch and it is Paul who gets in trouble for hitting the official. He is scorned for saying it was Lee who punched him and Lee is soon the favorite of Paul's old friends. Molly begins to see him again, but Lee still feels poor for what has happened between her and Paul.

Lee begins rowing and tries to make amends to Paul after winning a race, but Paul rejects the offer of friendship. Though his offer of friendship was rejected, Lee still helps Paul by hiding Elsa in his own room when Elsa is looking for Paul. The Dean catches the two of them together and expels Lee from Oxford. Lee's father, Dan Sheridan (Lionel Barrymore), comes for the bump races having not heard of Lee's expulsion from Oxford University. When Lee tells him that he had been having an affair with Elsa, Dan believes he is lying. Judging from Lee's letters about Molly he feels that Lee could not possibly have had an affair with Elsa due to the way he feels about Molly. Dan meets with Molly and the two devise a plan to get Lee back into college. Dan meets with Elsa at the bookstore and convinces her to talk to the Dean. After flirting with the Dean and telling him that Lee was only hiding her from Wavertree, Lee is allowed back into Oxford and Wavertree (much to his disgust for he has been trying to get expelled for an inheritance from his uncle) is let off with a slap on the wrist. Lee and Paul finally make amends and win the bump races.

Cast

• Robert Taylor — Lee Sheridan
• Lionel Barrymore — Dan Sheridan
• Maureen O'Sullivan — Molly Beaumont
• Vivien Leigh — Elsa Craddock
• Edmund Gwenn — Dean of Cardinal
• Griffith Jones — Paul Beaumont
• C.V. France — Dean Snodgrass
• Edward Rigby — Scatters
• Morton Selten — Cecil Davidson, Esq.
• Claude Gillingwater — Ben Dalton
• Tully Marshall — Cephas
• Walter Kingsford — Dean Williams
• Robert Coote — Wavertree
• Peter Croft — Ramsey
• Noel Howlett — Tom Craddock
• Ronald Shiner — Bicycle repairman (uncredited)
• Jon Pertwee — Extra (uncredited)

Casting

This was MGM's first British production, and so MGM head Louis B. Mayer took a personal interest in casting, and visited the set several times. At first, Mayer was reluctant to cast the then unknown Vivien Leigh in the role of Elsa Craddock, until persuaded by Michael Balcon, who stated that she was already living in Britain and it would cost much more to fly someone else out to England. (Mayer and Balcon later got into a fight on set, within earshot of Vivien Leigh and Maureen O'Sullivan, that led to Balcon resigning from the film.)

This film was instrumental in getting the then-unknown Vivien Leigh noticed by David O. Selznick for the film Gone with the Wind. However it was known perhaps as early as 1938 that Vivien Leigh had (secretly) secured the role of Scarlett O'Hara, which she started filming in 1939. There is a moment in "A Yank at Oxford" just a couple of minutes before Vivien Leigh first appears when Lee Sheridan goes in to his tutor. His tutor asks him what he's reading, meaning in British parlance what he planned on majoring in. Confused, Lee replies he is "about half way through 'Gone with the Wind.' Events surrounding Leigh at the time either make this a coincidental piece of scripting, or a knowing reference to those events.

The film pairs Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor as a romantic lead couple, a configuration repeated in the 1940 remake of Waterloo Bridge. Before this film, Taylor was seen as the "romantic love interest" and thus as a 1930s equivalent to Rudolph Valentino, with men therefore starting to doubt Taylor's masculinity. His casting in this film (by Mayer) was a successful attempt to put paid to such doubts, and dramatically boosted his reputation with both men and women.

This film marked Jon Pertwee's (uncredited) film debut.

During the filming of A Yank at Oxford, Leigh garnered herself a reputation as being "difficult" to work with. According to her biography by Alexander Walker, Leigh felt judged by Maureen O'Sullivan, (whom she had befriended years earlier at school) because O'Sullivan was happily married and Leigh was in the midst of a scandalous affair with Laurence Olivier and awaiting word of a divorce from her first husband, Leigh Holman. Therefore, the relationship was "strained." Also Leigh had developed a foot problem whereupon she asked to go to London to see her chiropractic. As Leigh was preparing to leave, the wardrobe department developed a manner in which they cut a hole in her shoes so that her toe would be at ease. According to Leigh, she was forced to pay for her own shoes and demanded that MGM help her make some of the payments. On the other hand, MGM said that they bought all of Leigh's shoes and she didn't have to pay a penny on the film. Due to the dispute, her manager, Alexander Korda, sent Leigh a message stating that if her behavior did not improve, he would not renew her contract. Leigh's behavior did shape up and her contract was renewed. Regardless of her prior behavior, Leigh managed to make her way through the filming without much acrimony and made an impression on her costar, Robert Taylor. Taylor returned to Hollywood talking of the great English actress he had worked with and suggested to Selznick, who was still searching for his Scarlett O'Hara, that they ought to look at her.

Reception

Although this film and its sequel (the 1942 A Yank at Eton) portrayed the United Kingdom in a mainly positive light, it was thought to harm US-British relations at such a sensitive time.

Script

Jon Pertwee's father Roland Pertwee was one of several uncredited writers, and F. Scott Fitzgerald also spent three weeks working on the script, touching up rough points and adding bits of dialogue.

External links

• A Yank at Oxford at AllRovi
• A Yank at Oxford at the BFI Film & TV Database
• A Yank at Oxford at the Internet Movie Database