U pokladny stál (1939)

A hospital orderly at St. James’s Hospital, Kryštof Rozruch (Vlasta Burian), receives a set of false teeth from the health insurance office by mistake, instead of a voucher for “mud baths” to treat his sciatica. He decides to go to the insurance office and file a complaint. There, the employees mistake him for his superior, chief physician Dr. Leon Marek (Antonín Streit), who is supposed to come to the cashier’s office. So the health-insurance doctor, Bruner (Jaroslav Marvan), sends Rozruch to the spa at Rochov for treatment. Bruner goes with him. At the same time, Marek also travels to the spa with his girlfriend, Heda Pěnová (Anna Gabrielová), but he pretends to be Rozruch so that his chosen one will not know how wealthy he is. The councilor Pěna (Čeněk Šlégl) also goes to the spa with his mistress, Věra (Adina Mandlová). Pěna does not know that his daughter is there, and she does not know that he is there either. Rozruch knows the councilor; they met at the insurance office. After several comic scenes and Rozruch’s recitation of his ballad about delirium tremens to Bruner, the whole complicated situation is sorted out and revealed. In the meantime, Rozruch has also agreed with Marek that they will impersonate each other. Then everything comes out: Pěna and Věra are exposed by Věra’s mother (Marie Blažková), and Pěna’s daughter and Leon are exposed as well. Rozruch returns to Prague. There, he gets into an argument with a doctor (Karel Postranecký). Then Rozruch treats councilor Pěna’s injured thumb (Rozruch had trapped it in the insurance office). At that moment, the councilor has no idea that Rozruch is not a doctor. But everything is “exposed” in the presence of Marek, Bruner, Věra, Heda, the offended doctor, and Pěna. In his defense against their objections, Rozruch presents his diploma, saying that he too has been a doctor since that morning (he graduated that same morning). Doctor Bruner secures Rozruch a job at the health insurance office.