Synopsis

Unemployed and convinced that a lack of education is holding them back, Stan and Ollie unexpectedly receive scholarships to Oxford after helping capture a bank robber. Their arrival brings hazing, mistaken identities, and a night spent lost in a supposedly haunted hedge. After Stan suffers a blow to the head, he becomes the imperious Lord Paddington, turning their academic adventure into even greater chaos.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was originally made as a 42-minute featurette. United Artists wanted a full-length release, so Hal Roach added approximately 21 minutes, including the opening employment-agency and society-party material. The expanded version runs about 63 minutes.

• The added opening material reworks ideas from the earlier Laurel and Hardy silent comedy *From Soup to Nuts* (1928), allowing the longer version to begin with the duo searching for work before reaching the Oxford storyline.

• The title is a comic variation on *A Yank at Oxford* (1938), the MGM college film starring Robert Taylor. The Laurel and Hardy picture turns the earlier film's confident American student into a typically hapless comic pair.

• Production took place from May 31 through June 21, 1939, with additional scenes filmed from September 5 through September 9. It was released in the United States on February 16, 1940.

• The picture was one of the final Laurel and Hardy films made at Hal Roach Studios and was followed by *Saps at Sea* later in 1940.