Alfred J. Goulding | A Chump at Oxford / 1939, released 1940

 paradise lost, paradise regained

by Douglas Messerli

Charley Rogers, Felix Adler, and Harry Langdon (screenplay), Alfred J. Goulding (director) A Chump at Oxford / 1939, released 1940

 

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s A Chump at Oxford, completed in 1939, but released in 1940 seems like a feature made up of parts, which it truly is, three films in one, originally released as a 20-minute featurette that had nothing to do with the main plot of Laurel and Hardy’s experiences at Oxford.

      In the first part Stan and Ollie hitchhike, apparently over a long route, on their way to the employment office where the two utterly broke friends are looking for any job they can get. Overhearing a conversation from a client seeking a maid and butler for that evening’s dinner, Ollie leaps at the chance to get his friend once more into female drag playing the role of Agnes, a figure to whom Stan introduced us in their 1930 film, Another Fine Mess.

     Sent to the Vandeveer home, the two cause general chaos with their insufferable manners and actions. At one point Agnes spills a complete tray of hors d’oeuvres which all the guests have previously rejected—perhaps because she offers them individually by hand instead of presenting on the tray where they are all set out—onto the lap of the hostess, scooping them up off the employer’s dress and putting them back onto the tray upon which Mr. Vandeveer (James Finlayson) accidently sits.

     After calling the guests to dinner in a “come-and-get-it” manner, Ollie seats all the men on one side and the women at the other of the dinner table; when told to correct the seating, he conducts a long series of musical chair-like maneuvers which results only in all the men being seated on the opposite side and the women on the other.

      When asked to serve the salad without dressing, Agnes retreats momentarily to the kitchen, reappearing with the salad bowl, she wearing her underclothes only. Watching her blithely serve the lettuce leaves, again by hand, Mr. Vandeveer also disappears for a moment, only to return with a rifle aimed at both the butler and maid’s behind.

       The second episode finds them working as street cleaners, again quite ineptly. During a lunch break the two attempt to figure out why they cannot get ahead in their careers and realize the problem is they never had an education and are just too dumb to improve themselves. At that very moment a bank robber attempts to escape out of the door in front of which they sit, tripping over Stan’s tossed away banana peel. The two attempt to help him to his feet, but trip themselves along with the robber once again, rising up just in time for the arrival of the police who hail them for having apprehended the villain. As a reward, the head of the bank grants them their wish for an education, sending them to the very best school in the world, so he attests, Oxford.

       The Americans arrive at Oxford dressed, unwittingly, in Eton College outfits, immediately encouraging the snobby Oxford boys to provide them with a series of mean initiation pranks. The

students (Gerald Rogers, Victor Kendall, Gerald Fielding, and Peter Cushing) begin by sending the two newbies into the campus maze, where, as they carry their suitcases and heavy trunk, the two become trapped. Exhausted they sit down on a bench for a snooze while another of the Oxford boys (Eddie Borden), dressed as a ghost, sticks his hand through the bushes to provide Stan and later Ollie a third hand. If nothing else, the skit which involves a great deal of touching and hand holding by and with the foreign male body part is rather homoerotic.

       By morning, they are led out of the maze only to be sent to the Dean’s office where the quartet have gathered to pretend they are college officials while the real dean is away at a lecture. The nasty Oxford boys offer the Dean’s own quarters as Stan and Ollie’s new rooms. And by the time the Dean has returned, they have consumed most of his liquor and turned his sleeping quarters into chaos.

      When the Dean finally returns and discovers the mess, he becomes outraged as the duo become increasingly convinced that his reaction is yet another Oxford razz, a prank played upon the innocents. Meanwhile the perpetrators have snuck back into the outer office to watch the results of their evil-doings and are soon discovered by the Dean, who perceives that the American duo were convinced that they were the real school officials.

      The Dean accordingly expels their leader and sends Stan and Ollie off to their real quarters, where the lackey Meredith (Forrester Harvey) awaits his new masters. Meredith is shocked to see in Stan the spitting image of his former master, Lord Paddington, who was the university sports hero and a genius who even Einstein is seeking to meet. Paddington, he explains, was looking out the open window when the raised portion fell back upon his head rendering him without memory and, evidently, without any of his former prowess and intelligence.

     The boys see this as yet another instance of Oxford humor. But soon a large group of students has gathered in revenge for what the expelled leader claims was Stan and Ollie’s snitching, a crime worthy of defenestration. As the group marches upon Laurel and Hardy’s room, Stan leans out of the window, precisely as Paddington had several years earlier, the raised portion falling back just as before upon Stan’s head. As Stan, momentarily stunned, stumbles back into the room he reawakens as Paddington, confused by all the hubbub and the presence of a large stupid fat man in his quarters.

      Paddington, also regaining his strength and the signal of his rising anger with wiggling ears, tosses the students, one by one, out of the window along with his old friend.

      The role of Paddington allowed Laurel to return for a few moments on screen to his native British accent and to act in a manner that we never observed before or after, as a rather conceited, critical, and prissy Britisher who, having hired Ollie as his manservant, calls him “fatty,” demands he hand him his daily addendum which sits a few inches from his reach, and puts off meeting Einstein until the middle of the week. But when he taunts Ollie for being stupid and having a double chin, “Fatty” quits, determining to abandon Paddington/Stan and return to the US.

      Paddington’s fellow students come by outside to cheer his athletic achievements and, going to the window once more to hear their acclaim, he leans out as before the upper half crashing down upon his skull to return him to his former stupid self.

      As Ollie storms in to shout out a few further barbs against Paddington, a worried Stan wonders if he is really leaving without his old pal. Seeing what has happened, Ollie comes rushing over to hug his dear friend come back into his life.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).