East is East 1916
Victoria Vickers, a little East End Cockney girl, is left a vast fortune by an uncle in America. She is finally discovered hoppicking in Kent by her solicitor, who has given up the search and gone off on a photographic holiday instead! The conditions of the legacy are that she must spend three years learning to be a lady before she inherits absolutely. ‘Vicky’ does her best, but she is not happy in high society. Meanwhile her old East End beau Bert accepts a loan from her in order to ‘better himself’ and starts a highlysuccessful fishandchip shop business. He takes elocution lessons and buys gentleman’s clothes in the hopes of aspiring to her hand. But Vicky, who thinks he has deserted her now she is a fine lady, is lonely enough to accept an offer of marriage from her guardian’s spendthrift son, and when Bert reads of the engagement in the newspapers he abandons London and goes down to live in Kent where they were once happy together. When Vicky discovers her suitor’s true mercenary nature, however, she abandons the high life and the conditions of her fortune along with it and seeks out Bert… who is nowhere to be found… With the last of her money she goes back to the hopfields and the little house they once wished they could buy. Unbeknownst to her, Bert used the profits from the sale of his business to buy it himself and the lovers are reunited, with Victoria’s troublesome inheritance happily relinquished to charitable works.
