Zwei Matrosen auf der Alm (1958)

The story begins on Hamburg’s waterfront. There, the two sailors Hein and Fietje work aboard a proud three-masted ship. Fietje keeps up a correspondence with many young women around the world. One of them is Resl, a woman from Bavaria, whom Fietje is determined to visit in her home village of Egenhofen now that he is on leave and going ashore. To make sure he doesn’t get up to too much mischief, his friend Hein decides to accompany his sailor buddy Fietje. Also along for the trip is a monkey, the ship’s mascot. On the way, they plan to visit another of Fietje’s pen pals: the wealthy widow Schmitz in Cologne. When Fietje sees the elderly lady, he immediately wants to make a run for it, while Hein finds the situation rather amusing. Under cover of darkness, the two make a getaway … and run straight into the arms of two Cologne beat cops. After a brief check, the two lads from Hamburg continue on to Egenhofen. Unbeknownst to them, Mrs. Schmitz’s dog Wotan has joined them, and from then on the monkey looks after him. Meanwhile, in Bavaria, Rosl is arguing with her father, Alois, the owner of the Sterntaler Inn, about her prospective groom, border policeman Toni Leitner. He doesn’t like Rosl’s sweetheart, and dislikes even more that he works as a border inspector. The old grump runs a brisk black-market trade in all kinds of alcohol, without anyone being supposed to know about it. Near Egenhofen, Hein and Fietje pass Toni, ask him about Resl, and show him the photo Fietje was sent. But Toni’s Rosl is in the picture too: it’s a case of mistaken identity. Now Leitner-Toni believes his Rosl is cheating on him. At her father’s inn, however, Rosl is able to clear up the misunderstanding at once. Rosl, in turn, tells Resl that her pen pal from Hamburg has arrived. Resl is not at all pleased, since she only sought Fietje’s acquaintance to make her crush, Stephan—a pedantic postal clerk—jealous. Fietje, for his part, already thinks he is well on the way to winning “his” Resl. When he goes to serenade Resl at her window, he promptly gets to know the fist of Resl’s beau, Stephan. Hein also gets into trouble when the jealous customs officer Toni sees him hiking in the mountains with “his” Rosl, and the two men nearly come to blows. Meanwhile, the widow Schmitz has set off for Egenhofen to get back her supposedly kidnapped dog, Wotan. In the meantime, Fietje and Hein have made themselves comfortable at farmer Veit’s Joch-Alm. There, Veit’s wife Josefa confides how troubled she is that her husband is involved in the Sterntaler Innkeeper’s alcohol smuggling. To do Josefa a favor, the two northerners promptly pour out the smuggled alcohol and fill the containers with clear spring water. A little later, the Sterntaler innkeeper and his buddy Veit haul the huge containers of water into the inn’s taproom, believing they have carried herbal schnapps. Toni is already on the smugglers’ trail. He climbs into a basket intended to hold the enormous schnapps bottles, and the groaning Sterntaler innkeeper carries him down to his inn. But the bottles contain only the water the two sailors substituted, so Toni can’t arrest the innkeeper. Gradually, everyone realizes that the two sailors must be behind the switch. Resl finds her way back to Stephan, and Rosl to her Toni. Wotan, too, returns to his mistress’s arms. In the end, all of Egenhofen turns out to see the two sailors off again.