So angelt man keinen Mann (1959)

Elsbeth Müller is getting on in years and is a warm-hearted woman. As the mother of three daughters—some still in their teens, others already of marriageable age—with all the problems that entails, she has her hands full making sure none of them comes to grief. The widow has had a hard time managing her own life and that of the three girls alone since her husband, a locomotive driver, died. Gradually, Elsbeth’s children are getting past the most difficult years. Tessy, the oldest, has a good job as a foreign correspondent, while Monika, the next in line, works at a music shop. Only the baby of the family, Angela, is still at school. The lively teenager is an enthusiastic swimmer with a particular passion for diving. To make sure the girls are always provided for, Mother Elsbeth has opened a savings account for each of them, and deposits something whenever she earns a little extra from cleaning and sewing. With a keen eye, this firm, no-nonsense woman makes sure none of her daughters ends up with “the wrong man,” and right now she sees that danger chiefly in Monika’s case. Monika has fallen in love with Fritz Becker and is determined to marry him, but Elsbeth does not think the laconic, lanky fellow is good enough for her Moni. So the worried mother secretly places a newspaper ad, hoping to find a more “suitable” prospective husband for her daughter. Her upstairs tenant and namesake, Mr. Müller, an opera singer, helps her assess the men. Elsbeth looks after his parrot whenever the singer is away on tour. They settle on Anton Scheufele, a young secondary-school teacher, who is then introduced to the family quite casually. But none of the Müller girls likes him very much… One day, Moni’s sweetheart Fritz gets into trouble with his boss, Mr. Reimer. Reimer had caught him doing what he does every day: picking up the three Müller daughters from home and dropping each of them off at her workplace. Fritz tries to get himself out of trouble with a white lie, but Tessy comes to the rescue, and on this occasion she meets Stefan Reimer. Reimer quickly falls for the attractive young woman. He even suggests that Tessy work at his company. Reimer is just the sort of man Mother Müller likes; she thinks the boss is a much more suitable match than any of the men she has seen so far. When Stefan takes Tessy on a business trip to Italy, Elsbeth considers the impending marriage almost a formality. But the de facto pleasure trip to the sunny south ends badly for Tessy: Vera Reinhardt suddenly turns up at the same hotel. Tessy has already seen the attractive woman several times at Reimer’s business, and now Vera seems like unwelcome competition. Back home, Tessy pours her heart out to her mother. But when it rains, it pours: at a swimming meet, where Angela has done well, the supposedly dashing young teacher turns out to be a fraud, and then the bombshell drops that Monika is pregnant by her Fritz. Through gritted teeth, Mother Müller agrees, purely as a formality, to let the two lovers marry, but announces that she will not attend the wedding. Her attempts to reconcile Reimer and Tessy get nowhere, and then Angela fails her exams! The youngest is afraid to go home with the bad news and instead follows her classmate Horst to his apartment, where she gets hopelessly drunk and he makes forceful advances toward her. Günther, who is the same age, gets his classmate out of there and takes her home, where the anxious Elsbeth has been waiting impatiently for her youngest daughter. Fritz and Moni get married, and, of course, Elsbeth Müller secretly slips into the church after all. She has realized that Fritz is a fine fellow. Stefan also finds his way back to Tessy, for he now knows that Vera is not the right woman for him and that Tessy is the woman of his dreams. By the following year, everything has worked out: Tessy and Stefan are now a happy couple, Moni has become a mother, and a first tender romance is beginning between Angela and Günther.