Dan Sheridan has spent so much time and money helping his son Lee in his collegiate athletic career that he is in danger of losing his small town newspaper. When Dean Williams of Lakedale State College offers Lee a Rhodes Scholarship to Cardinal College at Oxford, Lee is overjoyed, but turns it down so that he can help repay his father. Dan gets the badly needed money from banker Ben Dalton, however, and Lee is on his way, cheered on by his local friends and fans. After arriving in England, Lee makes such a fool of himself bragging about his athletic triumphs that Paul Beaumont and his friends Wavertree and Ramsey trick him into leaving his train before Oxford to avoid a non-existent reception committee at the station. This introduction to Oxford makes him want to leave, but Scatters, his “scout,” convinces him to stay on. Soon he starts to date Beaumont’s sister Molly, study and win track meets. When he is told to rest rather than enter a relay race, Lee pushes Paul aside at the last moment and wins, but in retaliation for unsportsmanlike conduct, the entire college takes his pants at a hazing. Blaming Paul, Lee looks for him at a tavern. In a scuffle, Paul is blamed for hitting the dean of Cardinal, even though Lee threw the punch. Because Wavertree thinks that he saw Paul do it, Paul is scorned by his friends when he says that Lee did it. Though slightly ashamed of himself, Lee lets Paul take the blame and becomes the new class favorite. Lee tries to make amends with Paul and to defend him to Molly, but Paul will not accept his overtures. One night, however, Lee is able to do Paul a favor when he hides Elsa Craddock, a married woman with whom Paul has been having a clandestine affair, in his own room. Rather than expose Paul, Lee accepts the blame when Tom Craddock arrives, and is therefore sent down by the dean. Though saddened to leave Oxford, Lee is overjoyed at the parade that his fellow students offer him until he sees his father, who has come to England to watch the big crew race against Cambridge. Dan knows that Lee loves Molly too much to be seeing another woman and so, with the help of Elsa, Molly and Wavertree, Lee is reinstated. Elsa tells the dean that Lee was merely being a gentleman and that it was Wavertree whom she was seeing. Wavertree, who wants to be sent down to gain his rich uncle’s approval, is overjoyed, and Paul and Lee are reconciled in time to win the big race together with the happy Molly and Dan cheering them on. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Watch A Yank at Oxford (1938)
