Heinrich Oberländer

The plot revolves around an oil swindle in a South American country.

When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.

On a steamer bound for Europe two competing European investors try to get hold of a contract for exploiting oil wells in Brazil. Several agents cleverly play off one investor against the other to up the ante of a bogus scheme.