Otto ist auf Frauen scharf (1968)

Authorized commercial signatory Otto Zander is a bureaucrat and stick-in-the-mud through and through. He doesn’t smoke or drink, doesn’t go out with women, and lives for his job. His workplace has remained unchanged for decades, and he keeps fit by refusing to use the elevator. The new secretary, Annabelle, is the first disruption in his life. When an auditor from the American parent company announces that he is coming to inspect the subsidiary’s finances, Otto is in trouble. His boss, Christian Bongert, is a playboy and womanizer who has set up an expensive love nest at the company’s expense in Warehouse 6. At the same time, he regularly siphons off company funds to finance his lavish lifestyle. The company’s majority owner, his aunt Bertha, pays him far less than a boss deserves. The auditor turns out to be the attractive Gloria Anden, who begins examining the accounts in accordance with her professional duties. It soon becomes clear that all the money is disappearing into Warehouse 6. When Otto tells Christian that he would do anything to save the company, Christian pretends that the warehouse belongs to Otto. He claims Otto is manically obsessed with sex, but knows tax matters so well that he can’t be fired. Christian makes Otto move out of his apartment and into Warehouse 6. Since Christian’s lovers continue to turn up there as usual, Otto soon finds himself in compromising situations. Gloria, who was skeptical at first, eventually believes that Otto really is the man Christian says he is. The police are looking for Otto so they can give him an award for 25 years of accident-free driving. Since no one knows what he looks like, Annabelle identifies him from a photograph. By mistake, however, the photograph ends up not on the award certificate but on a wanted poster intended to help catch a swindler who has defrauded people of millions. Soon Otto’s portrait is posted all over town. A reward of 10,000 marks is offered for his capture. Just before leaving, Gloria insists on seeing the accounts Otto has prepared. Since they would reveal that Christian’s lifestyle has bankrupted the company, Otto goes into hiding and has Annabelle say that he took the books with him. Otto plans to spend the time Gloria has left at the company with his former school friend Wackernagel, who doesn’t recognize him and thinks he is crazy. Wackernagel, in turn, is himself thought to be crazy, and the two end up in a psychiatric hospital, from which Otto manages to escape after some chaos. By accident, Otto finds himself on the television program *Was bin ich?*, hosted by Klemke, who has spontaneously decided to guess the occupation of an ordinary man from the street. When Otto is brought in and the audience shouts that he is the swindler who defrauded people of millions, Otto flees again. Christian has also watched the program in Warehouse 6. Gloria wanted to test him and had tried to seduce him, so he pretended that he wanted to watch *Was bin ich?* as usual. Now he confesses the truth to Gloria: Otto is actually an exemplary employee, and everything is his—Christian’s—fault. Meanwhile, by way of a hippie club, a women’s sauna, and finally a police swimming event, Otto gets hold of a police uniform and commandeers a police car, which he drives to his office and, together with secretary Annabelle, eventually back to Warehouse 6. Aunt Bertha has arrived there in the meantime; she has long known that the company is bankrupt. She hopes that this will allow the company to break away from the American parent company, which Christian had linked it to without Bertha’s knowledge. But it turns out that Gloria, who is in love with Christian, will conceal the company’s problems from the parent company—and can get away with it because the head of the parent company is her father. Otto also arrives with Annabelle. The police officers on his trail are stopped, since the real swindler has been arrested in Paris. Christian and Gloria become a couple, and Otto and Annabelle also end up together.