- In West Berlin during the Cold War, a Coca-Cola executive is given the task of taking care of his boss' socialite daughter.
- Berlin is the epitome of political and economic polarization. A microcosm of that polarization is the life of American C.R. MacNamara, known as Mac to his friends. He is Coca-Cola's head of West Berlin operations, although he feels he deserves to be Coca-Cola's head of European operations based in London. His wife Phyllis wants him to get a steady, stable job back in head office in Atlanta. His West Berlin staff is still used to treating him like their old master, the Führer. The one exception is his secretary Ingeborg, who is the latest in his long line of secretary mistresses. And he's working on a trade agreement of getting Coca-Cola into the Russian market. His life goes into a tailspin when he hosts Scarlett Hazeltine, 17-year-old spoiled partygirl daughter of his Atlanta-based boss, Wendell Hazeltine. Unlike most of the stops she's made on her European trip, Scarlett seems to like West Berlin and stays longer than expected. On the day that Mac learns that Mr. and Mrs. Hazeltine will be in Berlin in 24 hours to retrieve their daughter, he learns that Scarlett has married Otto Ludwig Piffl, a staunch East German Communist. Mac feels this marriage will ruin his career and does whatever he can to get rid of Otto for good and wipe any record of the marriage off the official books. But when Mac further learns that Scarlett is pregnant, he must get Otto back, which is more difficult than getting rid of his was, and to make him respectable in Mr. Hazeltine's eyes. Meanwhile, Phyllis has her own ideas of what is right and wrong in both Scarlett's and Mac's lives and takes appropriate action.—Huggo
- C.R. "Mac" MacNamara is a high-ranking executive in the Coca-Cola company, assigned to the corporate office located in West Berlin. Mac's dreams are to climb the corporate ladder in the company to eventually become the head of Western European Coca-Cola Operations. One day, Mac receives a call from his boss, W.P. Hazeltine, to look after his 17-year old socialite daughter, who is coming to West Berlin, while he is on a trip. Soon enough, Mac finds himself in the undesirable circumstances of trying to take care of this young whirlwind and manage all of the problems she causes.—Kyle Perez
- In 1961, C.R. MacNamara is the manager of Coca Cola's West Berlin branch. His boss's daughter is on a European tour and ends up staying with MacNamara and his family for several weeks. One day she reveals that she has married an East Berlin communist. This will not be good for MacNamara's career, so he sets out to undermine the relationship.—grantss
- In post-WWII Berlin, C.R. MacNamara presides over the German branch of Coca-Cola and works hard and trying his very best to impress the Atlanta headquarters, since he's heard that European headquarters in London will soon be looking for a new head. Now, Coca-Cola boss Mr. Hazeltine asks MacNamara to take care of his daughter Scarlett, who is taking a trip to Europe. But Scarlett doesn't behave like a respectable young girl: instead of sightseeing, she stays out all night partying and finally falls in love with Otto Piffl, a flaming young Communist from East Berlin, and marries him. When MacNamara hears of this, he schemes mightily with his assistant Schlemmer to get Piffl into an East German prison, but when he then finds out that the Hazeltines are coming to Berlin to fetch their daughter, he needs to get Piffl out again, convert him to Capitalism, and present him as a noble young husband in order to get his London post, and all of that very quickly.—Julian Reischl <julianreischl@mac.com>
- In his last starring film, James Cagney plays Coca-Cola executive C.R. MacNamara. Assigned to manage Coke's West Berlin office, MacNamara dreams of being transferred to London, and to do this he must curry favor with his Atlanta-based boss, Hazeltine Thus, MacNamara agrees to look after Hazeltine's dizzy, impulsive daughter, Scarlett, during her visit to Germany. Weeks pass, and on the eve of Hazeltine's visit to West Berlin, Scarlett announces that she's gotten married. Even worse, her husband is a hygienically challenged East Berlin Communist named Otto Piffl. The crafty MacNamara arranges for Piffl to be arrested by the East Berlin police and to have the marriage annulled, only to discover that Scarlett is pregnant. In rapid-fire "one, two, three" fashion, MacNamara must arrange for Piffl to be released by the Communists and successfully pass off the scrungy, doggedly anti-capitalist Piffl as an acceptable husband for Scarlett. MacNamara must accomplish this in less than 12 hours, all the while trying to mollify his wife, who has learned of his affair with busty secretary Ingeborg. Seldom pausing for breath, Billy Wilders film is a crackling, mile-a-minute farce, taking satiric scatter shots at Coca-Cola, the Cold War (the film is set in the months just before the erection of the Berlin Wall), Russian red tape, Communist and capitalist hypocrisy, Southern bigotry, the German "war guilt," rock music, and even Cagney 's own movie image. Not all the gags are in the best of taste, and most of the one-liners have dated rather badly, but Cagneys mesmerizing performance holds the whole affair together.
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