A Chump at Oxford **** (1940, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Peter Cushing) – Classic Movie Review 965

Director Alfred J Goulding’s 1940 movie A Chump at Oxford is a thoroughly likeable, appealing and enjoyable vintage comedy from movie greats Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, even if it is arguably maybe a mere fraction less brilliant than their best form. Whatever, it is a blissfully happy 63 minutes of celluloid.

Actually it was originally a blissfully happy 42 minutes of celluloid when it was released as a Hal Roach streamliner featurette. But the original version was slightly re-edited and 20 minutes of footage largely unrelated to the main plot were later added for European and, later, American distribution. These dinner party scenes at the start are a partial remake of Laurel and Hardy’s 1928 silent short film From Soup to Nuts, and also feature that film’s co-star Anita Garvin.

Laurel and Hardy are pleased to be given a scholarship to Oxford University as a reward for capturing a bank robber. And so Stan and Ollie become the unlikeliest of students at Oxford (apparently the place has gone down hill terribly) in a silly plot that finds Laurel masquerading as a maid and Hardy as a butler for a dinner party at the Vandeveres’ and the duo installing themselves in the dean’s bedroom. Naturally, the boys’ shenanigans do not go down too well with the sniffy local students.

Time-honoured, tried-and-tested jokes are cooked in with some then fresh and inventive new ideas as lots of laughs are to be found in a maze with a make-believe ghost and a subplot that has Laurel assuming the character of an English nobleman, Lord Paddington. This involves Laurel using an upper class accent and apparently is the only time Laurel used a voice different from his Stan character’s on film, apart from when he was in drag.

Happily Laurel and Hardy’s eternal nemesis James Finlayson makes the trip to Oxford too, and gets his laughs as as Mr ‘Baldy’ Vanderveer. But the young Peter Cushing makes a surprise appearance in a Laurel and Hardy film as one of the students, and unusually he seems less comfortable than the Yanks at Oxford.

The title refers to the 1937 Robert Taylor movie A Yank at Oxford, which A Chump at Oxford sets out to parody.

Also in the cast are Forrester Harvey as Meredith, Wilfred Lucas as Dean Williams, Sam Lufkin as water wagon driver, Forbes Murray as Banker, Frank Baker as Dean’s Servant, Eddie Borden as Student Ghost, Gerald Rogers as Student Johnson, Charlie [Charles] Hall, Victor Kendall  and Gerald Fielding as students, and Anita Garvin as Mrs Vanderveer.

A Chump at Oxford is written by Charles Rogers, Harry Langdon and Felix Adler, shot in black and white by Art Lloyd, produced by Hal Roach and scored by Marvin Hatley.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 965

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