Meine Tochter lebt in Wien (1940)

Because Gretl, the daughter of village shopkeeper Klaghofer, did not want to marry the Gruber farmer chosen for her by her father, she “fled” her parents’ home for Vienna and secretly married her admirer, Karl Ewald. The young couple both work as domestic staff at the villa of bath-salt manufacturer Felix Fritsch, and they are expecting their first child. Klaghofer knows nothing about any of this, since he has always burned his daughter’s letters without reading them. One day, however, a postcard arrives showing Gretl in front of “her” villa, in “her” car. This prompts the shopkeeper to visit his daughter in the big city and give her his belated paternal blessing for the marriage. When he arrives in Vienna, his daughter is out. She has left the villa with her employer’s young wife—whom she serves as a maid. Marga Fritsch has had a quarrel with her husband because he is still carrying on a relationship from his bachelor days with the dancer Ada de Niel and refuses to break off contact with her. When Marga has had enough, she promptly moves to the country to stay with her aunt Ottilie, accompanied by the maid. Frau Kindermann, the villa’s housekeeper, mistakes Klaghofer for the father of her employer, and this misunderstanding sets off a series of complications. Klaghofer brusquely dismisses a creditor of the bath-salt manufacturer. Then he goes to the dancer and takes her jewelry away, because he believes it belongs to his daughter. He gives his supposed son-in-law a dressing-down over his womanizing and demands his word of honor that he stop cheating at once. When Marga Fritsch comes home that evening, Klaghofer takes her for one of his supposed son-in-law’s lovers and drives her out onto the street. Then he discovers his daughter in the arms of Felix Fritsch’s chauffeur, Karl Ewald, and concludes that she, too, is cheating on her husband. He now decides to leave the immoral household; but first he gives the master of the house a thorough piece of his mind and slaps him. After his daughter lets out a horrified scream, the misunderstandings gradually clear up, and everything turns out well. When Klaghofer then learns that he is soon to become a grandfather, he can no longer be angry with his Gretl.