A Yank at Oxford

A Yank at Oxford
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJack Conway
Written byRoland Pertwee
John Monk Saunders
Leon Gordon
Sidney Gilliat
Michael Hogan
Angus MacPhail
John Paddy Carstairs
Screenplay byMalcolm Stuart Boylan
Walter Ferris
George Oppenheimer
Frank Wead
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Produced byMichael Balcon
StarringRobert Taylor
Lionel Barrymore
Maureen O'Sullivan
Vivien Leigh
Edmund Gwenn
CinematographyHarold Rosson
Edited byMargaret Booth
Charles Frend
Music byHubert Bath
Edward Ward
Production
company
Distributed byLoew's Inc[1]
Release date
  • 18 February 1938 (1938-02-18)
Running time
102 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,374,000[2] or £262,435[3]
Box office$2,736,000[2]

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.

A Yank at Oxford was Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor's first film appearance together; they would later appear as the romantic lead couple in the remake of Waterloo Bridge (1940). Before this film, Taylor was seen as the "romantic love interest" and thus as a 1930s equivalent to Rudolph Valentino, with men therefore starting to doubt Taylor's masculinity. His casting in this film (by Mayer) was a successful attempt to put paid to such doubts, and dramatically boosted his reputation with both men and women.[4]

  1. ^ A Yank at Oxford at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  2. ^ a b "The Eddie Mannix Ledger." Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles.
  3. ^ Chapman, Llewella. "'The highest salary ever paid to a human being': Creating a Database of Film Costs from the Bank of England". Journal of British cinema and television, 2022-10. Vol. 19, no. 4. Edinburgh University Press. p. 470-494 at 481.
  4. ^ Wayne 1973, p. 79.