Die Kleine vom Bummel (1925)

The story of the “little,” well-behaved girl who ventures into the “sinful” big city and risks losing her way there, told in a lighthearted, comic and sentimental vein. The nameless girl is persuaded by an experienced friend to earn her own money as a dancer in a bar, just like her. The “little one’s” father must not find out, because he wants his daughter to lead a respectable, bourgeois life. So his daughter pretends to work night shifts as a telephone operator and keeps her dancing job secret from him. Unlike her frivolous friend, the “experienced one,” however, the “little one” takes care not to endanger her reputation through morally questionable behavior. One day she falls in love with a “gentleman rider” who is already married and intends to separate from his wife if he wins at the horse-racing bets. But the “gentleman rider’s” uncle objects to such a relationship, since he considers a match with a dancer beneath their station, and therefore refuses to give his approval. Only when the uncle learns that he had mistaken the “little one” for the “experienced one”—that is, the dancer reputed to be a reckless concubine—does he change his mind. In the end, the “gentleman rider” is free and can finally lead his “little one” to the altar.