An ambitious young accountant plots to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter despite falling in love with a married older woman.

The English factory town is dreary but Joe Lampton has landed a job with a future. To have something to do at night, he joins a theatrical group. His boss's daughter Susan is playing ingenue roles on stage and in real life. She is attracted to Joe, who thinks about how much faster he will get ahead if he is the boss's son-in-law. This plan is complicated by his strong desire to be with an older woman who also belongs to the theatrical group; she is French and unhappily married. Joe believes he can get away with seeing both women.—Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess,com>

1947. Twenty-five year old Joe Lampton has just moved to the small town of Warnley to start working in the Treasury Department of the Town Hall. The only difference between his life in Warnley and his hometown of Dufdon, a largely war-bombed factory town, is that he proverbially will have no grease under his fingernails, the Warnley job which will only get him so far. Although he strives to a better station in life, Joe detests those who were born with silver spoons in their mouths, such people who generally believe they are better than him. Joe is up front to Charles Soames, his colleague and who becomes his best friend in Warnley, that he evaluates girls first by their accessories, the more expensive the better, and second by their looks, he searching for someone he considers "wholesome", arguably for him akin to naive in not realizing that he is using her to advance his social and financial position. Through the Thespians, the community theater group that Charles invites him into, Joe, despite Charles' warning against doing so, sets his sights on Susan Brown, the daughter of arguably the wealthiest and most powerful man in town, an industrialist who also is on town council. Susan's parents would never see someone like Joe as son-in-law material. Susan's boyfriend, Jack Wales, is exactly the type of person from that privileged class that Joe so detests. However, Joe ends up befriending Alice Aisgill, a slightly older Parisienne in an unhappy marriage in that her husband, George, is a chronic philanderer. While Alice starts out being his confidante in she knowing about his pursuit of Susan, they end up embarking on an affair as they fall in love with each other. Thus, Joe ends up in a no-win situation with both Alice and Susan that is destined to end in tragedy for all concerned.—Huggo