A Chump at Oxford

In 1940, Laurel and Hardy made their last two movies for Hal Roach, A Chump At Oxford and Saps At Sea. Oxford is the better film, but both are entertaining. In any case, this was the last time the pair had any creative input regarding their own films. (At MGM and Fox, they were handed a script and told to do it "the studio way.")

A Chump At Oxford is really two movies in one. The opening shot shows Stan and Ollie hitchhiking to an employment agency. The only job that's open requires a maid and butler team, so for the second time in his career (the first was in Another Fine Mess), Stan plays Agnes the maid. What follows is a partial re-make of another short, From Soup to Nuts (in fact, as dinner is about to be served, Ollie announces, "We've got everything from soup to nuts.") Stan once again serves the salad undressed, but he is also drunk, having taken Mr. Vanderveer's (Jimmy Finlayson) instruction to "Take all those cocktails" a bit too literally. He chases them out of the house with a shotgun, shooting a policeman in the derriere along the way.

In the next scene, Ollie and Stan are sweeping streets. Ollie, usually the eternal optimist, is more depressed here than in any L & H film. "Well, here we are, right back down in the gutter. We're just as good as other people, but we don't advance ourselves. We never get anywhere." They decide to attend night school, but their fortunes change sooner than they expect. Like W.C. Fields in The Bank Dick, they (quite accidentally) capture a couple of bank robbers. As Ollie explains that they have no education, the bank manager rewards them with the finest education money can buy, at Oxford University.

Arriving in England, our friends are preyed upon by a dreary crowd of students, among them old nemesis Charley Hall and a very young Peter Cushing. They play childish pranks on the boys, getting them lost for hours in a weird-looking maze, and dressing up like a ghost to scare them to death. Soon after they arrive, Stan makes it very clear that he is out of his element.

Johnson (Peter Cushing): Haven't you come to the wrong college? You're dressed for Eton (the famous British prep school).

Stan: Why, that's swell, we haven't eaten since breakfast, have we Ollie?

The worst prank of all is when Johnson disguises himself as the dean and directs them to the real dean's rooms, telling them that these are their quarters. When the dean (Wilfred Lucas) returns and the students are caught, he tells them they will all be expelled. They vow to take revenge against Stan and Ollie.

Shown to their proper quarters, the boys meet their valet Meredith (Forrester Harvey). He refers to Stan as Your Lordship, stating that before a window came down on his head and he wandered away, he was the greatest athlete and scholar in the history of Oxford, and "oh, what a brilliant mind." When Ollie hears this, he bursts into laughter. "Why I've known him for years and he's the dumbest guy I ever met."

Meanwhile the expelled students are heading for their lodgings singing a bizarre "chant of revenge." As Stan looks out the window, it crashes down on his head, and he becomes Lord Paddington. As the students enter his room, His Lordship fights them all, throwing them all out the window (in a rather cruel weight joke, he throws Ollie out, too, and he makes a huge crater in the ground when he lands.)

A certificate on the wall informs us that Lord Paddington has been reestablished as the leading scholar/athlete at the University. He speaks like a cultured English gentleman, and Ollie is now his valet. (This is not too hard to understand when you consider that Stan was the creative genius of the team, writing many of the gags we see in the films.) Ollie is now a humiliated figure, and no other actor can use camera looks to express humiliation like Oliver Hardy. At one point, the dean comes in to tell Paddington that Professor Einstein has arrived from America and is a bit confused about his theory. Could he straighten him out? Ollie is incredibly shocked, muttering under his breath, "If it wasn't for that bump on the head, he wouldn't know Einstein from a beer stein." But he's helpless to do anything about it.

I saw this movie several times as a child and only recently I saw it again. I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked the movie and this surprised me, as this was completed as the pair's career was heading downhill. Shortly after making this movie, then Saps at Sea, they made the mistake of signing with 20th Century Fox and made a string of completely forgettable and unfortunate comedies (they simply deserved better material).

The story is a takeoff on the MGM film A YANK AT OXFORD and so much of it parodies this film. Stan and Ollie accidentally help a rich guy and are rewarded by receiving an all expense paid admission to Oxford! Talk about being in the wrong element! The movie then moves at a very leisurely pace in their adventures trying to fit in to this fancy-schmancy school.

It's not the best they did, but a nice well-worth seeing picture nonetheless. Another decent movie they did in this same period is Blockheads--it's well worth a look as well.

This is Stan Laurel's show all the way, sure enough Ollie plays his part, but in this double package it's the genius of Laurel that comes to the fore. The double package in question is the now widely available European release of this film, the first 20 minutes sees the boys making their way to an employment agency where they jump at the chance of a job as maid and butler to the Vandevere family. Yes, this sees Stan dress up as a woman {Agnes} with hilarious results, not only does he buffoon his way thru serving dinner, he gets drunk into the bargain as well !. After being chased off the property by Mr Vandevere, the guys end up road sweeping and whilst taking a break they inadvertently foil a bank robbery and as a reward they get to fulfil their wish of a better education.

This sends the guys to England and a place at Oxford, the fun starts straight away as they are dressed for Eton !, upon seeing that these two are candidates for pranks being played on them, some of their fellow students send them into a big maze on the bluff that it's the way to the Deans office. This sets us up for a number of great sequences, most notably a brilliant set of events that sees Stan with three hands, from here we see the boys set up {as a prank} in the Deans own quarters and this of course causes much mirth when the Dean shows up to find the guys boozing away in his bedroom. Roll onto Stan banging his head and suddenly being transformed into an aristocrat called Lord Paddington and you just know that Laurel is getting a pure mania role to get his teeth into, the results are excellent, especially as Stan gets to boss Ollie around.

One of the best films the boys ever did in my honest opinion, 9/10.

In A Chump at Oxford the duo dream of gaining a good education as a means to escape from the string of dead end, boring jobs by which they have been consistently exploited for a measly pay cheque which no doubt gives them just enough money to 'get by' on.

Having only enough money to get by on means that the duo are denied the best education. Then by chance the duo inadvertently foil a bank robbery and are duly rewarded with that elitist education they were dreaming of, but otherwise couldn't afford from a grateful bank president.

For the duo to obtain this elitist education the grateful bank president sends them to Oxford University in England which is then exposed for its upper class haughtiness via Laural and Hardy's enrolment at this ancient medieval institute of higher education, which has been dominated for centuries by upper class nitwits who think an elitist education here is their right alone, because they have the correct breeding.

This means that those people such as Laural and Hardy are viewed by the traditional Oxford student with disdain, because they are among the common 'new rich' who have no breeding, and who have merely bought their way to Oxford with so called 'new money' which is viewed by them as vulgar. So, the traditional elitist students' endeavour to evict the common pair that is Laural and Hardy from Oxford by way of student pranks, which are in fact a form of bullying . However, it is because Laurel and Hardy may well have the brains, - but lack the education - that they actually win through by seeing how institutes of learning, such as Oxford University are ensuring that higher education remains in the hands of the ancient upper classes, and escape it by heading back to the USA!

I remember watching this on BBC2 when I was about 8 years old and finding it hysterical. So, much to my pleasure, Universal has released it on DVD (Region 2 only) along with many other Laurel and Hardy movies. I chose to watch the black and white version as that is how I originally saw it.

There is an extended opening featuring a remake of 1928's 'From Soup to Nuts' short in which Stan and Ollie cause havoc at a swanky dinner party before being employed as street sweepers. During their sweeping lunch break they inadvertently foil a bank robbery and as a reward they are sent to Oxford for a good education, perhaps finally getting them out of the gutter.

Once there, the students (including a young Peter Cushing) play all sorts of pranks on them and Stan loses (or restores) his memory when he is hit on the back of the head. Now he's Lord Paddington (I must add he does brilliantly with the accent) and he gives Ollie some amount of grief for his weight.

Very funny indeed, I suggest you check it out whenever it comes on TV.