Yank at Eton, A (DVD)

High school football star Tim Dennis has big plans for his future: the University of Notre Dame and gridiron glory! Instead, his mother marries an Englishman, and Tim and his sister are summoned to live with their new family across the Atlantic. There, Tim becomes a student at the distinguished British boys' school Eton, and his free-spirited ways run headlong into time-honored tradition. Mickey Rooney portrays Tim in this fish-out-of-water tale co-scripted by and based on a story by A Yank at Oxford screenwriter George Oppenheimer. Freddie Bartholomew plays Tim's new stepbrother; any chance to see Rooney and Bartholomew together remains one of the great joys of Golden Era movies (it's the last of five features pairing them). The acting constellation, ably directed by Norman Taurog of Boys Town, includes Edmund Gwenn as an avuncular housemaster and Peter Lawford as an arrogant upperclassman.

• classic
• comedy