A Yank at Oxford (1938)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Jack Conway

Writers:

John Monk Saunders (idea)
Leon Gordon (story) ...

Release Date:

18 February 1938 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | Sport

Tagline:

Here's The Yankee Clipper Himself ! A two-fisted terror from the States . . . who landed in England with a chip on his shoulder . . . but let a blue-eyed beauty walk off with his heart ! Bob Taylor's Biggest Picture Hit !

Plot:

Lee Sheridan, a young American comes to study at Oxford University, but is instantly disliked by the other students...

Plot Keywords:

College | Book Seller | Oxford | Rowing | Unsportsmanlike Behavior

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

Runtime:

USA:102 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #4009)

Filming Locations:

Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

Trivia:

In a scene shortly after arriving at Oxford, Sheridan meets with his assigned tutor, who asks him, "What are you reading?" by which he means what is your field of study. Sheridan, confused, replies, "Well, I am reading 'Gone With The Wind', but I am only halfway through it." Vivien Leigh, also in this movie, would of course portray Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (1939) which was released the year after this movie. Reportedly, it was known as early as 1937 from a Selznick memo that Leigh had secured the role.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Vivien Leigh: Scarlett & Beyond (1990) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Before the Days of "Over Paid, Over Sexed and Over Here"

A black-and-white trip back to the glory days of the studio system, "A Yank at Oxford" was MGM's first feature movie filmed in England. Released in 1938 as the Depression was slowly losing its grip on America and the shadow of an inevitable global conflict was sensed by too few, this rollicking comedy about a clash of cultures - small town America and elitist Oxford - is a glimpse of a world that never existed except in movie theaters.

Robert Taylor is super-athlete Lee Sheridan from somewhere in quintessential, rah-rah, white America. His newspaper publisher dad, Lionel Barrymore, holds the presses so that his son's latest track and field victory can be bannered on the front page. Lee is the All-American collegiate sports hero.

Along comes an opportunity for Lee to go to Oxford and he's sent off with a parade, the first of several big processions in this film.

Lee is a boastful American but he's received with good humor and sharp pranks by the English students at the fictional Cardinal College. Conflict develops when Lee is attracted to Molly Beaumont, played by Maureen O'Sullivan. Molly is the sister of Paul, Griffith Jones, a fellow student whose rivalry with Lee is fueled by the latter's arrogant and, from an English viewpoint, unsportsmanlike behavior. The contretemps between the two handsome men is the center of the fable about competition and honor.

Complicating everything is Paul's relationship with pretty, flirtatious Mrs. Elsa Craddock, wife of a curmudgeonly and older bookshop proprietor. Elsa, clearly to our eyes an adulteress, may have been for original audiences little more than a simple charmer who professes love for serial college males but is never shown doing anything less chaste than planting quick kisses. Elsa is acted by Vivien Leigh who two years later had a starring role in some Hollywood spectacle about the Civil War.

"A Yank at Oxford" is a funny, light period piece most interesting for its reflection of a Hollywood that would soon shift gears as the world burned. It did allow Taylor to recast his image as a more manly character, his athleticism a change from the more effete roles for which he was better known. MGM had a plan here and it worked.

7/10 - worth renting.