A Yank at Oxford

A Yank at Oxford (1938)

The roving romances of a two-fisted American!

A brash young American aristocrat attending Oxford University gets a chance to prove himself and win the heart of his antagonist's sister.

Date of release
1938-04-01
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (12)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Drama, Romance, Comedy, Adventure
Director
Jack Conway

Casting

Interesting facts

A Yank at Oxford is a 1938 comedy-drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Vivien Leigh and Edmund Gwenn. The screenplay was written by John Monk Saunders and Leon Gordon. The film was produced by MGM-British at Denham Studios.

Production

A Yank at Oxford was MGM's first British production, with MGM head Louis B. Mayer taking a personal interest in casting. He visited the set several times. British playwright 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 pieces of dialogue.

To the surprise of other actors, Taylor was able to do all of the physical scenes himself, especially running and rowing. He had competed in track and field as a student at Doane College.

At first, Mayer was reluctant to cast the then little known 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. During the filming of A Yank at Oxford, Leigh gained a reputation for being "difficult" to work with.

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. Because of the dispute, her manager, Alexander Korda, sent Leigh a message stating that if her behaviour did not improve, he would not renew her contract. Leigh's behaviour did shape up and her contract was renewed.

Some film historians believe A Yank at Oxford was instrumental in Vivien Leigh being noticed by David O. Selznick for Gone with the Wind. Regardless of her prior behavior, Leigh managed to make her way through the filming of A Yank at Oxford without much additional acrimony and made an impression on her costar, Robert Taylor.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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