A Chump at Oxford

This wild Laurel and Hardy film casts the pair as street cleaners who stop a bank robbery. As their reward, they are both given full-ride scholarships to Oxford (which seems a bit odd, since it was the middle of the Depression). When they arrive at the British institution of higher learning, however, they become the objects of extensive pranks by the other students, who are upperclassmen in more ways than one and look down their noses at the working-class buffoons. Except for one thing: Stan, as it turns out, was one of Oxford's most distinguished and accomplished scholars before a blow on the head turned him into the easygoing dimwit we know and love. Another knock on the noggin turns him back into the veddy British lord, who promptly sets the other students straight. Some very funny business with the boys and a stuffy dean, whose quarters they invade. --Marshall Fine