A Yank at Oxford

A Yank at Oxford with Robert Taylor, Maureen O'Sullivan, and Vivien Leigh.  Lee Sheridan (Robert Taylor) is the star athlete of his local college and the celebrated hero of his small hometown (in no small part because his father owns the newspaper and prints headlines of his every accomplishment).  He is given the opportunity to continue his education at Oxford where he has no doubt he will again be in the athletic spotlight.  At Oxford he presents himself as overweening and arrogant and immediately becomes the target of scorn and practical jokes by the indigenous students.  To their dismay, he is as good an athlete as he claims and soon becomes their best track team member and "stroke" on the rowing team. His refusal to adopt a proper Oxford attitude eventually leads to a long standing animosity with one of his fellow athletes, Paul Beaumont (Griffith Jones).  Things are also complicated by Lee's romance with Paul's sister Molly (Maureen O'Sullivan) and Paul's illicit affair with Elsa Craddock (Vivien Leigh), the wife of a local bookshop owner.

Sheridan is quite the ladies' man.  Upon first meeting Molly he asks her if she ever finds the time to "fling woo".  He also flirts a bit with Vivien Leigh, although she flirts a bit with every man in this movie.  Vivien Leigh steals every scene she is in, and her character was a little racy for these 1938 movies.  She is a married women unashamedly on the prowl to fling some woo with the students of Oxford.  In the end her husband finds out about her affairs with students and decides to move his bookshop to Aldershot, home of the British army, where they will be convenient to the officer's club.

Also in this movie: Lionel Barrymore and Edmund Gwenn.

Vivien Leigh: "I believe you're pulling my leg" 


Robert Taylor: "Well, I'm restraining myself as best I can."