Sunday 14 March 2021

A Yank at Oxford (1938 Jack Conway)

So MGM had Vivien Leigh under contract all the while the 'search for Scarlett' went on - Selznick saw this when it came out, and was already considering her - in fact, there's a reference to the book in this. It's an oddly difficult film to come by now, the official release is twenty quid.

Robert Taylor is the athlete who comes to Oxford, running into disagreement with pupil Griffith Jones (worked steadily, though inauspiciously, into the 80s), though not his sister, Maureen O'Sullivan. Lionel Barrymore is his newspaperman father who comes in at the eleventh hour to save the day. With Edmund Gwenn, C.V. France (absent minded professor), Edward Rigby and AMOLAD's Robert Coote as the pupil who wants to be expelled.

Most entertaining. From an idea by John Monk Saunders, story by Leon Gordon, Sidney Gilliat and Michael Hogan, screenplay by Malcolm Stuart Boylan, Walter Ferris and George Oppenheimer, with various people like F Scott Fitzgerald, Frank Wead and Angus MacPhail having contributed to ideas uncredited.

Photographed by Hal Rosson, editor Charles Frend, under Margaret Booth. The first production at MGM British.



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